Showing posts with label Saudi Arabia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Saudi Arabia. Show all posts

14 March 2026

Trump’s War Has No Plan But It Does Have a Goal – To Destroy Opposition to US & Israeli Hegemony in the Middle East - Whatever the Cost

 What the War Exposes is the Underlying Weakness and Brittleness of US Domination & the Complicity of the Arab Regimes With Zionism & Genocide

John Mearsheimer: No Winning in Iran for the U.S.

The war against Iran and Trump’s threat to escalate it are a perfect example of the madness of capitalism and its military-industrial complex, which is based on destruction for its own sake. Having got himself into a war Trump doesn’t have what John Mearsheimer describes as an off-ramp.


Trump and Hegseth’s only strategy is to go yet further up the escalation ramp and to threaten even more devastation unless Iran stops blocking the Straits of Hormuz. This is highly unlikely to work. On the contrary Iran has the ability to take out nearly all of the neighbouring Arab state’s oil facilities, meaning there will be no need to block the straits.

Desalination plants are crucial to the very existence of the Gulf states. In Kuwait, about 90% of drinking water comes from desalination, the figure is 86% in Oman, about 70% in Saudi Arabia, 42% in the UAE, 90%  and about 50% in Israel.

There have already been attacks –  by the US on a desalination plant on the island of Qeshm, in the Straits of Hormuz and an Iranian attack the next day on a Bahranian plant. Iran is less dependent on desalination but if the US military or Israel is mad enough to attack its plants then Iran could strike back.


It goes without saying that an attack on desalination plants is a war crime but Israel has continually attacked water treatment plants in Gaza. In March 2025 two desalination plants in Deir al-Balah were forced to close after Israeli forces cut electricity supplies.

Before the war broke out I agreed with Mearsheimer that there was a good chance that the US would not attack Iran. Why? Because it was impossible to see what the end game was. But that was to ignore the essential irrationality of US imperialism and its drive for hegemony in the Middle East.

Even Starmer understood that you can’t effect regime change from the air, which is why he initially refused to allow the US to use British bases. This attracted the wrath of Britain’s most notorious war criminal, Tony Blair, for whom war is like a love potion. Starmer then reversed his decision.

It appears that the sole reason for the war is to inflict as much damage on Iran and if possible to make it a failed state. It is blood letting for its own sake. The purported reason for the attack, the issue of nuclear weapons, is a fiction since not only was Iran not building such a weapon but the assassinated President Khameini had issued a fatwa in 2003 prohibiting their development. US intelligence concurred.



 

Nor was the war intended to liberate the Iranian people from an oppressive regime. On the contrary it is inflicting as much pain as it can on them including murdering over 175 people, mainly school girls in Minab, an all-girls elementary school.

This has been verified by Bellingcat among others. Our own miserable ‘Defence’ Secretary John Healey condemned ‘indiscriminate’ Iranian attacks on Bahrain military bases but refused to condemn US attacks on Iran, including the bombing of the school. Trump simply denied US responsibility claiming that Iran had done it.


Why America is Losing the War With Iran (w/ John Mearsheimer) | 

The Chris Hedges Report

The war in Iran is not though simply a war fought on the whim of an incontinent and deranged felon who became President because of the lack of an alternative.

It would also be wrong to describe the war as having been fought on behalf of Israel, despite Secretary of State Marco Rubio having said that if Israel had not given notice that it would attack Iran regardless, there would probably have been no war. Trump apparently feared that the US’s bases would be targeted by Iran in the case of an Israeli attack.

It would however have been quite possible for the US to tell Israel that it was on its own if it attacked Iran. It could even have informed Iran that in the event of an Israeli attack it wouldn’t be joining in or defending Israel from its missiles, which would have meant that Iran would have concentrated solely on Israel. However this would fly in the face of US foreign policy which is to defend Israel at all costs.


John Mearsheimer: U.S. Already Lost Iran War - No Off-Ramp in Sight

There is not surprisingly a deep scepticism and disbelief about the incoherent and contradictory reasons given for the attack on Iran - nuclear enrichment, support for ‘terrorist’ groups and ballistic missiles.

That explains why the belief that Trump is trying to knock Epstein off the front pages is so strongly held. Democrats agreed with this by an 81-14 margin. Even a quarter of Republicans believe that Trump launched the war as a distraction from Epstein.

The irony is that both the US and Israel possess nuclear weapons and Israel has hinted that in the event of a threat to its existence, even from conventional weapons, it would put into operation the Samson Option, i.e. destroy everybody.

It is important to understand that even if Trump didn’t want the war to begin at a time of Israel’s choosing, he was forced to join Israel’s attack, not because of the Lobby but because it can’t allow its rabid attack dog, Israel, which is the projection of US power in the Middle East, to be battered by Iran’s missiles. A defeat for Israel would be a defeat for American prestige and power in the region.

Those who think that Israel and ‘The Lobby’ controls American Foreign Policy, like e.g. David Miller, can’t explain how a tiny country with few natural resources can control a superpower many times its size and power. Which explains Miller’s belief that a Global Jewish Empire has arisen which has successfully captured the US (& British) states!

What the war has done, with Iran’s attack on US bases in the Gulf, is exposed both the complicity of the Arab regimes with US domination of the Middle East and their fragility. Every single Gulf regime harbours US bases, whose main purpose is to protect the regimes against their own people as much as any external enemy. The regimes are junior allies of the Americans in the oppression of their peoples.

Given that Israel is supported to the hilt by the US, and the genocide in Gaza could not have happened without its support militarily, these Arab regimes are fully complicit in both the genocide and the annexation and terror on the West Bank.

Politically what this means for the Palestinian struggle is that the Arab regimes are no less an enemy than Israel and Zionism. Their relationship to US imperialism and therefore Israel is much like that of a prostitute to a pimp.

War on Iran threatens global energy supply

What Trump has also demonstrated is that the US Empire has no rationale or justification beyond its assertion that might is right. There was no logic or rationale in attacking Iran. Trump did not pretend, as Bush and Blair did in 2003 in Iraq, that this was a war for democracy and nation building.

Trump paid lip-service to Iran’s protesters. His promise to protect them was hollow. His only concern was about the interests of the Empire and its main ally Israel. This is not something that an Empire confident in itself would do. It suggests that the days of a unipolar world are coming to an end and that the US Empire is overstretched, militarily and economically.

Trump was accused of trying to effect regime change but even this is doubtful. The killing of Khameini by Israel was an end in itself. It is unlikely that his assassination was seen as likely to cause the regime to crumble. Creating a failed ethnically divided state seems to have been the main objective.

There will be no nation building or pretence that there is anything good likely to come out of the attack on Iran.

Trump is an ideal representative of the decline of US imperialism. He personifies mafia capitalism. Apart from the allegations of rape, child abuse and paedophilia against him he is incapable of telling the truth (a trait Starmer shares), amoral, narcissistic and venal. His corruption, racism and authoritarianism mark him out.

The fact that European leaders  such as Merz, Macron and Starmer do their best to placate and praise him demonstrates that servility, deference and fawning are the main qualities needed in bourgeois politics today.

The US went into Venezuela and kidnapped its President in order to steal its oil. There used to be a fiction that imperialism benefitted those it oppressed. It was the White Man’s Burden. We drained India of its riches on the pretence that we were bringing it civilisation despite the natives’ ingratitude. Trump doesn’t even pretend to be serving a greater good.

The US blew fishermen’s boats out of the water in the Caribbean and then ‘War Secretary’ Pete Hegseth instructed the military to kill any survivors in a ‘double tap’ strike.

Judges of the International Criminal Court are sanctioned as is the UN Rapporteur on Palestine, Francesca Albanese. Trump even threatened to invade Greenland. The attack on Iran is part and parcel of the criminality that Trump has made into an art form. Israel is his ideal partner.

Meanwhile the Zionist state, which should be seen as the United States’ crazy diseased dog in the Middle East is indulging its own blood lust in Lebanon as part of Netanyahu’s Greater Israel fantasy.

Despite the terrorist pager attack last year, Israel has been surprised by Hezbollah’s defence of Lebanon. Hezbollah realises that if it doesn’t strike now then it will suffer later.

Cabinet Ministers such as Clare Short and Robin Cook resigned from Blair’s government at the time of the Iraq War. It says everything you need to know about the Labour government today that not even one of Starmer’s cabinet has anything approaching a backbone.

War demonstrates US weakness in Middle East

What the war also demonstrates is the fundamental weakness of Trump’s policy in the Middle East, its incoherence and the failure to articulate the reasons for the attack on Iran. This is reflected in the fact that the war is unpopular even in the United States, in contrast to the support the Iraq War had. This is compounded by the fear that the attack on Iran has weakened rather than strengthened the US position in the Middle East.

The war is also unpopular in Europe. Only in Israel is the war popular, some 93% of Israeli Jews supporting it. Blood letting is one of the few things that bind Israelis together.

The attack on Iran left America’s Arab allies vulnerable whilst being unable to take out a regime hostile to it. An attack on what you perceive an enemy without a clear aim or goal is not a sign of strength. Trump simply ignored the economic consequences of his war.

Absurdly Trump demanded that he should have a say over who was Iran’s new leader before demanding unconditional surrender. His narcissistic behaviour is more akin to a child who can’t get his own way issuing threats and indulging in bluster.  Trump is a child in charge of a deadly military.

What is amazing is that Iran’s blocking the Straits of Hormuz was not anticipated. Anyone with a cursory knowledge of the region could have forecast that. What is hurting the United States government today are the economic repercussions and the rise in the price of oil above $100. Economists forecast it could go above $150 a barrel.

A War Based on a Lie

Truth is always the first casualty in a war. If you only watched the BBC you’d be forgiven for believing that no Iranian missiles have struck Israel. Israel has strict censorship and the BBC is happy to comply in spirit and deed.

In 2003 we had WMD in Iraq but none is so dishonest as Trump’s claim that he had launched the war in order “to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime.”

No one in their right mind could seriously believe that the United States was under ‘imminent threat’. Yet Trump justified his war of aggression by claiming that:

we sought repeatedly to make a deal. We tried. They wanted to do it. They didn't want to do it. ... They just wanted to practice evil.

But Iran refused, just as it has for decades and decades, they rejected every opportunity to renounce their nuclear ambitions, and we can't take it anymore.

In fact negotiations were in progress when the United States launched its attacks. Trump’s lies are not even convincing.

This after Trump had claimed in the summer that he had ‘obliterated Iran’s nuclear capability.’ In fact a deal had almost been reached, according to Oman’s Foreign Minister, when Trump attacked.  A carbon copy of what happened in the summer.

The claim that Iran was developing nuclear weapons was entirely bogus. Iran’s threat was to Israel’s domination of the region. Slightly more plausible is Iran’s support for resistance organisations in the region – Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis. As for their final demand, to remove their ballistic missiles, this was in effect demanding that Iran render itself defenceless against future Israeli attacks.

Despite Israel’s assertion that Iran is an existential threat to it, in 1985 it behaved very differently. As Peter Beinart writes

Israel sold Iran 100 anti-tank missiles. Israel spent much of the 1980s arming Iran in its war against Iraq, which the Jewish state saw as a much graver threat.... When Iran acquired its first ballistic missile in 1985, in an effort to counter Iraq, Israel supplemented the Islamic Republic’s arsenal with shorter-range missiles of its own. Haaretz has even reported that some of the anti-tank missiles later fired by Hezbollah at Israeli forces were likely sold by Israel to Iran in the 1980s.... (as) Trita Parsi (noted) in his book A Single Role of the Dice, “Throughout the 1980s, no one in Israel said anything about an Iranian threat—the word wasn’t even uttered.”

Beinart goes on to say that

In May 2003, after the Bush administration’s invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, Iran sent the US government a secret message: If the US lifted sanctions, ceased trying to overthrow the Islamic Republic, and accepted Tehran’s right to peaceful nuclear energy, Iran would end its support for Hamas and Islamic Jihad, pressure Hezbollah to disarm, place its nuclear program under international inspection, and support the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative,

In 1996, according to Parsi’s book, Treacherous Alliance, Iran pressured Hezbollah to accept a ceasefire after a 16-day skirmish with Israel. If the claim that Iran poses a grave threat to Israel is far-fetched, the claim that it poses a grave threat to the United States is even more absurd

In other words this is a war fought on lies to defend the indefensible. And contrary to the propaganda of the BBC and other media, support for Iran against imperialism’s attack is not defence of the regime itself.

Tony Greenstein

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26 September 2025

Stop the Oil – Stop the Genocide - The Moral Rot of the Arab and Islamic World

 But for the Corrupt, Client Arab Regimes, Israel’s Holocaust in Gaza Could Have Been Prevented

As Rumy Hassan, an Emeritus Associate Professor at Sussex University explains, there was nothing inevitable about Israel’s Holocaust in Gaza. It could have been prevented from the start if the Arab regimes had exercised their economic and political power to prevent it.

Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed Bin Salman, Qatar’s Al Thani clique, Kuwait’s Sabah dynasty and all the other corrupt cliques that rule the Middle East are more afraid of their own people than the imperialist powers. These Arab elites are parasites who rob their people of their wealth. They prefer to fete and fawn over Trump than insist on an end to Israel’s genocidal rampage.

One of the ways that the West has achieved domination is by playing on the divisions in Islam. They have used the Islamic religion in order to divide and rule, playing on the differences between Shi’ite and Sunni Islam.

Ibn Saud was plucked out of the desert in the early 20th century and both armed and funded by British imperialism. The austere Wahabi sect was used to attack Arab nationalism and Hussein bin Ali, King of the Hejaz. Islam was their justification for repressing their own peoples. We have seen many iterations of this subsequently.

ISIS under its original name, Al Qaeda of Iraq, was a consequence of the American invasion of Iraq. Al Qaeda itself was a product of the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan and consisted of the fighters that Saudi Arabia exported to that country at the US’s request. As Hilary Clinton admitted Al Qaeda too was a creation of the US funding all manner of Islamic Fundamentalist groups as was the Taliban (in concert with Pakistan’s ISI – intelligence agency). See Whose Monster? A Study in the Rise to Power of al Qaeda and the Taliban

Hamas are exceptional in being from the Sunni branch of Islam although originally they were intended by Israel, which supported their creation, as a counter-weight to secular Palestinian nationalism.  Netanyahu in particular made support for Hamas an integral part of his opposition to a 2 State Solution. It is because they morphed into becoming a resistance organisation that Saudi Arabia has become their bitter enemy.

In the Yom Kippur War in 1973 Egypt and Syria attacked Israel, hoping to reconquer the territories they lost in the 1967 War. After initial successes they were pushed back by Israel with the help of the US Administration under Henry Kissinger.

Egypt’s Third Army, having crossed the Suez Canal, was surrounded in the Sinai peninsula. The Americans under Henry Kissinger applied extreme pressure on Israel not to attack them.

The Arab regimes, led by Saudi Arabia, instituted an immediate halt to oil supplies. There were 50% cuts in the first week increasing after that. Oil prices rose four-fold and the United States got the message and forced Israel under Prime Minister Golda Meir to call a halt.

The same could have been done anytime during the current Holocaust if the client Arab regimes had done the same. Unfortunately the situation in the Middle East today is not what it was in the wake of the disastrous Oslo Accords that Yassir Arafat signed up to which normalised relations with the Israeli state.

Having recognised Israel the PLO gave the green light to the Arab regimes to do the same. It is unfortunate that it was the leadership of the PLO led by Fatah who paved the way for America’s client regimes in the Arab East to also recognise and normalise relationships with the Israeli state, in what became known as the Abraham Accords.

It is significant that no Palestinian faction has made the demand to stop the oil (as far as I’m aware). This disastrous attitude to the Arab masses, who hold the key to the situation, has allowed Israel to attempt to complete the Zionist project unopposed by ethnically cleansing Gaza. The West Bank is set to follow if they are successful in Gaza. Indeed it is already happening.

It is a matter of shame that the Arab masses and the working class in particular have sat idly by watching the unfolding horror in Gaza. The death of these wretched regimes is long overdue. Not only are the Palestinians experiencing Genocide and unspeakable horrors but the Arab masses also have an interest in seeing that the wealth of the region is not squandered by their rulers in the casinos of the West and in buying up prestigious parts of London and Paris.

The Arab Spring of 2011 needs completing. The key Arab regimes that need to be deposed are those of Egypt, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. The Al Qaeda HTS regime in Syria, which the West has given its full support to, should be next in line. The United States and the West are doing all they can to force the Lebanese state to disarm Hezbollah in order that Israel can have free reign to reconfigure Lebanon according to their confessional plans and no doubt begin to colonise the southern part up to the Litani river.

So far Hezbollah have rejected calls to disarm, knowing full well that if they do so they will leave Lebanon defenceless against Israeli attacks. Those, led by President Aoun, who are trying to strong arm the Shi’ite militias are doing Israel’s work for them. So far Hezbollah has refused to disarm.

All the Arab Kings and Sheiks, from the UER and Kuwait to Qatar need to be overthrown and the Arab people can then take their destiny in their own hands. Instead we saw, with Trump’s visit to the region, the Arab regimes from MBS in Saudi Arabia to the al-Thanis in Qatar fawning over Trump, a political gangster and felon.

Amazingly these regimes offered Trump trillions of dollars in arms contracts. The Al Thanis of Qatar outdid themselves in their fawning obeisance, obscenely offering Trump a new $400m presidential jet. The thanks that the Qatari Emir got was Israel’s bombing of the Hamas delegation in Doha.

Rumy Hasan’s article lays bare the fawning and treacherous behaviour of the Arab  regimes in all its gory detail.

Tony Greenstein

This article first appeared in Savage Minds, September 2025

The Moral Rot of the Arab and Islamic World

These Countries Have Been Complicit in the Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in Gaza

Rumy Hasan

Sep 21, 2025

Outside the mainstream media, there has been much commentary on the inaction of western governments regarding Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza, many of whom are complicit, and in the case of the USA, not only complicit but a participant joined at the hip with Israel. So, when it comes to Israel, they are morally bankrupt and rank hypocrites by their complete disregard for international laws and conventions that they implore other countries, such as Russia, to follow. But there has been little comment on the role of the Arab and Islamic world—this is important because Palestinians are overwhelmingly Sunni Arabs. This article provides a small contribution to filling this lacuna.

On 11 November 2023, just over a month after the 7 October attacks by Hamas on Israel, Arab and Islamic countries held an extraordinary summit in Jeddah with the objective of discussing “the Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people” (OIC, 2023). By then, it was clear that Israel was not just going after Hamas but systematically destroying Gaza and its citizens: the commencement of genocide. The lengthy resolution (which does not have paragraph numbers; Saudi Press Agency, 2023) that was adopted on 12 November stipulates:

We decide to: Condemn the Israeli aggression against the Gaza Strip and the war crimes as well as the barbaric, inhumane and brutal massacres being committed by the colonial occupation government against the strip and the Palestinian people in the occupied West Bank, including East Al-Quds. We demand ceasing this aggression immediately.

It further states:

Inaction is considered a complicity that allows Israel to continue its brutal aggression that kills innocent people, children, the elderly, and women, and turns Gaza into ruin.

Call upon member states of the OIC and the Arab League to exert diplomatic, political, and legal pressures, and take any deterrent actions to halt the crimes committed by the colonial occupation authorities against humanity (emphasis added).

So, these two paragraphs point for the need for concrete actions to halt Israel’s “brutal aggression” and “crimes”. It further makes this commitment:

Activate the Arab and Islamic Financial Safety Net … to provide financial contributions and support — economic, financial, and humanitarian — to the government of the State of Palestine and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).

It sets out this precondition: “The precondition for peace with Israel and the establishment of normal relations rests on ending its occupation of all Palestinian and Arab territories.”

So, what happened in the weeks and months after this summit? Pretty much nothing as no concrete actions were ever taken. Hence, no deterrence was provided and the slaughter and destruction continued. The countries which had normalised relations—Egypt, Jordan, and the signatories to the Abraham Accords (UAE, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco)—did not rescind these. UNRWA was banned by Israel in early 2025 without a peep from the Arab and Islamic world.

The resolution makes this reference to Egypt: “Support all steps taken by the Arab Republic of Egypt to confront the consequences of the brutal Israeli aggression on Gaza. We support its efforts to bring aid into the strip in an immediate, sustainable and adequate manner.”

This was a grotesque distortion of the truth as Egypt, the largest Arab country with a population of over 100 million, has been complicit in the blockade of the Gaza strip: it has allowed Israel to control its border with Gaza, so that little aid has been allowed through, contributing to starvation and disease. Moreover, like Jordan, it ruthlessly represses public anger at the genocide. Egypt’s priority has been to ensure that it continues to receive the almost $2 billion aid from the USA each year, so adheres to the Camp David Accords and, accordingly, refrains from challenging Israel.

Leaving aside the actions of the non-state actors Hezbollah and the Houthis, since the 2023 summit, true to form, the governments of Arab and Muslim countries continued to do nothing despite the mounting toll amounting to over 200,000 deaths and injuries, the vast majority civilians, and Gaza being reduced to an uninhabitable rubble. A glaring example of their moral rot came in September 2024 when, during a meeting with the then US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman confessed: “Do I care personally about the Palestinian issue? I don’t, but my people do …” (The Atlantic, 2024).

A further example is that of the UAE which had kept a deafening silence throughout Israel’s assault and never hinted at leaving the Abraham Accords, when suddenly, following Israel’s announcement of more Jewish settlements in the West Bank in August 2025, its foreign minister Lana Nusseibeh piped up by proclaiming “Annexation in the West Bank would constitute a red line for the UAE” (BBC News, 2025). It beggars belief that the genocidal assault on Gaza and the killings and destruction in the West Bank did not cross a red line.

Wind the clock forward by 22 months, on 15 September 2025, the Arab and Islamic countries again held an extraordinary summit—this time in Doha, Qatar. The trigger for this summit was the bombing by Israel on 9 September of premises in Doha where Hamas representatives were deliberating upon a ceasefire deal. The Qataris naturally reacted with fury; housing the USA’s largest military base in the Middle East, they felt betrayed by the Americans, a supposed ally, for not preventing the attack. They now know that future Israeli attacks are possible and will, again, be greenlighted by the Americans.

There was some hope, even expectation, that this time, the summit would agree on concrete measures against Israel. The Final Communique makes many forceful points including:

1. Reaffirm that the brutal Israeli blatant aggression against the sisterly State of Qatar, and Israel's continued aggressive practices, including crimes of genocide, ethnic cleansing, starvation and siege, as well as settlement activities and expansionist policies, undermine prospects for peace and peaceful coexistence in the region.

Paragraph 6 stipulates:

6. Support the efforts of States engaged in mediation, in particular the State of Qatar, the Arab Republic of Egypt, and the United States of America, to end the aggression on the Gaza Strip, and, in this context, to reaffirm the constructive role played by Qatar and its valued mediation efforts with their positive impacts in support of endeavors to establish security, stability, and peace …

The truth is that the USA is militarily and diplomatically assisting Israel in its aggression on the Gaza Strip and Egypt has been complicit in the blockade—hence, notwithstanding Qatar’s mediation efforts, there is no “security, stability, and peace” in the Strip. Quite the opposite.

There is as usual much condemnation and appeals to international law. Paragraph 14, however, makes a general reference to “urgent action”:

14. Reaffirm the necessity of urgent action by the international community to halt Israel's repeated aggressions in the region and to stop its ongoing violations of the sovereignty, security, and stability of States …

This is naïve and self-delusional as the “international community” (a meaningless epithet) has never taken any action “to halt Israel's repeated aggressions in the region” especially in the past two years when Israel’s actions reached genocidal levels.

Finally, paragraph 15 does advocate concrete action:

15. Call upon all States to take all possible legal and effective measures to prevent Israel from continuing its actions against the Palestinian people, including by supporting efforts to end its impunity, holding it accountable for its violations and crimes, imposing sanctions on it, suspending the supply, transfer, or transit of weapons, ammunition, and military materials — including dual-use items — reviewing diplomatic and economic relations with it, and initiating legal proceedings against it (emphasis added).

But there is no sign of any sanctions being imposed. The “supply, transfer, or transit of weapons, ammunition, and military materials” is done by western countries, above all the USA, which has shown no interest in halting this nor of ending economic relations. There has been no indication that the Arab countries who normalised relations with Israel, are reviewing, let alone terminating, these.

Paragraph 20 makes this false statement:

20. Commend the pivotal role played by the representatives of Arab and Islamic States that are members of the Security Council, foremost among them Algeria, Somalia, and Pakistan, in defending the Palestinian cause, in putting an end to the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip, securing a ceasefire …

These countries certainly argued for it, but they decidedly did not put an end to the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip and secure a ceasefire. As usual, the USA blithely ignored such overtures.

Paragraph 24 is, to put it euphemistically, economical with the truth:

… calls upon OIC Member States to exert diplomatic, political, and legal efforts to ensure Israel’s compliance, as the occupying power, with its binding obligations under the provisional measures issued by the International Court of Justice on 26 January 2024 in the case concerning the Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip.

There is no mention that the ICJ’s ruling stemmed from the initiative of South Africa—not of any Arab or Islamic country—to charge Israel for violating the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip.

So, just as in the 2023 summit of Arab and Islamic states, no concrete actions were set out in the communique of the 2025 summit for OIC members to take. With 57 member countries, comprising of an estimated 1.8 billion people or nearly a quarter of the world’s population, the Organisation of Islamic Countries boasts that after the UN, it is the largest bloc of nations. But when it comes to these countries’ co-religionists being mercilessly starved and slaughtered in Gaza, they have proved resolute in not taking any actions that could put real pressure on Israel and its backers to stop the genocide.

In May 2025, US President Donald Trump visited the Gulf states of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE. While some $2 trillion of investment deals were reached, there was no mention by the Gulf leaders of Gaza, let alone their leveraging this enormous commitment, to pressure Trump to stop Israel’s assault. Qatar could also have used its personal “unconditional” gift to Trump of a Boeing aircraft valued at $400m to apply pressure but refrained from doing so. It acted as a US vassal and was rewarded by being bombed by Israel four months later with Trump’s knowledge

By wilfully ignoring a key point of the 2023 summit, Arab and Islamic countries thereby acknowledged their complicity in the genocide: Inaction is considered a complicity that allows Israel to continue its brutal aggression that kills innocent people, children, the elderly, and women, and turns Gaza into ruin.

Concrete actions that could have been taken

The most effective measure, with an immediate impact, would have been the Gulf states halting exports of oil and gas, and they could have asked other OPEC member states to join the embargo: spot prices would have shot up with governments becoming worried about the deleterious impact on their sluggish economies. There would have been inevitable anger from consumers, already suffering from high energy prices caused by the Ukraine war, and pressure on their governments to take firm measures. In turn, real pressure would likely have been applied to Israel to stop its offensive and withdraw from the Strip. This has a precedent: the 1973 OPEC oil embargo against countries that had supported Israel during the 1973 October (Yom Kippur) war.

Furthermore, they could have threatened to not follow through with investments promised to Trump with a further threat of disinvesting. This would certainly have concentrated western leaders’ minds, and the penny would have dropped that support for Israel was having a profound cost.

Another important measure would have been the annulling of all treaties with Israel: Egypt rescinding the Camp David agreement and Jordan annulling its peace treaty. True, the USA would have threatened to withdraw aid, but they could have retorted that stopping genocide is more important. The UAE, Bahrain and Morocco could have annulled the Abraham accords and so ended normalisation. The Palestine Authority could have terminated the Oslo Accords, thereby stopped being a quisling entity—and started to vigorously lobby Arab governments to take these actions, as well as lobbying western governments, especially the USA, to stop supporting Israel’s genocide and other myriad crimes.

The Arab League and OIC could have submitted a motion to the UN General Assembly similar to that of resolution 3379 of 1975 which deemed that “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination”—this would have doubtless again been adopted. They could also have called for an annual public holiday on May 15th to commemorate the Nakba demonstrating that the Palestinians are not isolated.

Not only were these actions of solidarity not taken but there is little sign of their even being seriously considered. The ineluctable truth is that over the genocide in Gaza, the Arab and Islamic world has demonstrated a deeply set moral rot.

References

BBC News (2025) September 4, UAE warns Israel that annexing West Bank would cross 'red line' - BBC News

Final Communique Issued by Arab-Islamic Emergency Summit in Doha (2025) September 15, Qatar news agency

OIC (2023) Joint Arab-Islamic Extraordinary Summit, November 11,

https://www.oic-oci.org/

Saudi Press Agency (2023) November 12, Joint Arab Islamic Extraordinary Summit Adopts Resolution on Israeli Aggression against the Palestinian People

The Atlantic (2024) Franklin Foer, September 25, The War That Would Not End - The Atlantic

Previous articles by Rumy Hasan on Savage Minds:

The Gaza War - by Rumy Hasan - Savage Minds

Free Speech and Hypocrisy - by Rumy Hasan - Savage Minds

An Assault on Free Speech - by Rumy Hasan - Savage Minds

(3) The BBC’s Coverage of Israel - by Rumy Hasan - Savage Minds

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