The Gulf states have had a rude awakening. They have been ensconced in the belief that hosting a multitude of US military bases in their countries and in the case of Bahrain, hosting the US Fifth Fleet, augmented by funnelling countless billions of petrodollars to the US thereby helping to prop up the debt-ridden US economy would guarantee their safety and security. The harsh truth is that this has proven highly mistaken and there were recent warning signs that the US was not a reliable partner. Thus, last May, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE fawned over Trump during his visit whereby they collectively promised some $2 trillion of investment deals. Qatar’s craven attitude was exemplified by its “unconditional” gift to Trump of a Boeing aircraft valued at $400m. But this did not prevent it from being bombed by Israel in September with American knowledge. This should have sent alarm bells ringing.
The Gulf states knew that another Israel/US assault on Iran was forthcoming notwithstanding Oman—who was mediating the latest round of “negotiations”—believing that a deal was in the offing. Indeed, the Washington Post reported that the Saudis had privately been lobbying the US for an attack and, if true, is not unduly surprising given that back in 2010, following the release by Wikileaks of US diplomatic cables, Reuters reported that King Abdullah “frequently exhorted the US to attack Iran to put an end to its nuclear weapons program”. “Cut off the head of the snake”, the Saudi ambassador to Washington, Adel al-Jubeir, quotes the king as saying during a meeting with General David Petraeus in April 2008 (Mohammed and Colvin, 2010).
However, they sensibly told the Americans that they could not use their bases or fly over their territories for their bombing campaign. But this did not save them given that immediately after Israel and the US launched their unprovoked war of aggression on February 28th, Iran retaliated by attacking these very bases—all have been targeted—and much else besides, massively damaging their economies. Indeed, rather than the bases being a guarantor of security, they have been the source of Iranian attacks; yet the primary purpose of the bases and attendant intelligence apparatus is to deter Iran given the Sunni Sheikhdoms’ profound fear of Shia Iran. To add insult to injury, these vassal states now see that the US is only interested in defending Israel.
This must come to them as the world turned upside down, but they ought not to be unduly surprised. If they had been keeping a close eye on American politics, they would realise that Israel and the Israel Lobby control the American political class, especially the president. Trump has been bribed and blackmailed by Israel: bribed because he has received vast amounts of campaign funds from AIPAC and the likes of the Adelsons, prominent Jewish American Zionist billionaires. Blackmailed—though there is, at present, no definitive proof of this—by highly incriminating evidence in the Epstein files. In other words, the Israelis have Trump over a barrel which explains why he acts as a de facto Israeli agent. Despite his election campaign promises that he would be a president of peace and would not get embroiled in foreign wars, being pushed by Israel into a war with Iran demonstrates that he is not America First but rather Israel First.
Given that Iran has a chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz and oil and gas prices are continuously rising, this will have a severe impact on the global economy. Accordingly, in combination with rising casualties, Trump will come under increasing pressure to end the war from many quarters. So, approaches will likely be made to the Iranian government in the not-too-distant future to return to the negotiating table. This time, however, Iran will doubtless make tough demands including cast iron assurances that they won’t be bombed again and it would be entirely rational for them to speedily develop (or acquire) a nuclear weapon as the ultimate guarantor of security. A central demand would be that the US closes its Gulf bases and leaves the Middle East altogether.
And it is here that the Gulf states need to show resolve, and stop being useful idiots for the Americans, that is, be independent and join with Iran to demand that the US shuts down all its bases in their countries. This pincer movement will concentrate American minds and they may well accede. The Gulf states can then formulate a comprehensive peace treaty with Iran which could, for example, be guaranteed by China with whom they have a good relationship.
This is not so far-fetched. Admittedly, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Qatar are craven supplicants of the USA, but the two most important states, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, have recently shown some independence from the US as in the following examples.
The murder of Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi led Joe Buden, in his US presidential campaign in 2019, to state: “And I would make it very clear we were not going to, in fact, sell more weapons to them. We were going to, in fact, make them pay the price and make them, in fact, the pariah that they are”. (Democracy Now, 2022). Though this ultimately proved to be bluster, the Saudis did not take too kindly to the threat. The Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman later issued an implied threat of his own: “We have a long, historical relationship with America … Our aim is to keep it and strengthen it … Where is the potential in the world today? It’s in Saudi Arabia. And if you want to miss it, I believe other people in the East are going to be super happy” (cited in Wood, 2022). We can take it that by “other people in the East”, he primarily meant China and Russia.
After the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the price of oil and gas sharply increased and the US applied pressure on Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states to increase oil supply to bring down the price. Ordinarily, they dutifully comply but, stung by Biden’s hostility, the Saudi’s refused to oblige—a most unusual act of defiance and independence from US edicts. Furthermore, the kingdom has taken a neutral stance on the Russia-Ukraine war and the Saudis warmly hosted Russian President Vladimir Putin in December 2023, again alienating the Americans.
The UAE has also shown some independence by not complying with western sanctions on Iran and it too has taken a neutral stance on the Russia-Ukraine war. The reason for such recalcitrance is succinctly provided by the Emirati political scientist Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, in an interview with Newsweek in 2022:
[The UAE’s decision] is consistent with the new UAE foreign policy activism, which stems from being confident of its decisions and its approach to global and regional politics … Confidence has a lot to do with this [UN] vote … that finally we are independent enough, competent enough to take this kind of position, which is consistent with our own way of doing things … Maybe it doesn’t resonate too well in Washington … but that’s the way things are going to be from now on
This doubtless astonished the Americans as they rarely encounter such brazen thinking from vassal states. But it is precisely the kind of “foreign policy activism” that is now needed from the Gulf states—and that means telling the US that they have been betrayed and so want all their bases removed from the region. If Saudi Arabia and the UAE take this step, the other Gulf states will likely follow so that this becomes the position of the Gulf Cooperation Council.
A further instance of foreign policy activism is for the UAE (and Bahrain) to rescind their membership of the Abraham Accords—it is an absolute disgrace that they have not done this despite Israel having committed genocide in Gaza and myriad other crimes. Furthermore, the GCC should now meaningfully support the Palestinians whom they have totally abandoned in favour of Israel.
References
Democracy Now (2022) June 15, Biden to Visit Saudi Arabia After Vowing to Treat Kingdom as a “Pariah” for Human Rights Violations | Democracy Now!
Mohammed A and Colvin R (2010) ‘Saudi king urged US to attack Iran: WikiLeaks’, Reuters, 29 November, http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/11/29/us-wikileaks-usa-idUSTRE6AP06Z20101129
Newsweek (2022) February 27, Why US Friends India and UAE Won’t Back Biden Against Russia on Ukraine (newsweek.com)
Wood G (2022) ‘Absolute power’, The Atlantic, 3 March, Inside the Palace With Mohammed bin Salman - The Atlantic
Washington Post (2026) February 28, Push from Saudis, Israel helped move Trump to attack Iran
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Why does the world illiterately accept the hegemony of any currency? How much of the abilities of those that manifest a 'will toward dominance' would be eliminated by correcting the Misrepresentation of Money? Iran and Venezuela and other places prohibit usury...but is that enough?
Imagine the healing of a world that will come from the leadership of a country that recognizes and abandons the ages long conceptual error of attempting to attach the features of a fungible commodity to their 'unit of measure' in their production and exchange and record keeping about 'value.' The leadership of every country must have its sights on what the Real Value is: the resources and labor and innovation and creativity and capacity of its land and people.
But can that full capacity manifest when the means by which the bookkeeping about their own economic activity holds an abstract Unit of AcCount - Money - to also BE an item of value akin to and/or equal, even superior, to the very natural resources of the land?
When we stopped using fungible physical commodities as 'trade goods' and moved to bookkeeping about the value contained in the goods and services of our interchange, we mistakenly and foolishly and illiterately assigned "value" to the number units themselves using symbols ($, etc.) as though those units were still commodities that had just lost their physical form.
The very conceptual subjugation of the full capacity of a society to an illiterate preoccupation with the preliminary acquisition of an abstract acCouting unit is a mistake of monumental proportions that even the best intentions cannot overcome while not correcting it. The 'inherited or imposed illiteracy' that surrounds money itself cannot be cured by holding the actors in this melodrama accountable for their actions within the illiterate paradigm. You see, one first has to think of, or be forced at gunpoint to accept, that money is an item of value that can also perform the function of 'unit measure of value.' But those two are mutually exclusive. The function called 'measure' is not sensible or reliable if the unit is constantly in flux and self-referential. That is the core illiteracy about money in the 'educated' class of the present day.
The 'reality transformation' that first occurs is the assumption that abstract units of representation possess the same characteristics of their predecessor trade goods and that some magical entity has the power to 'create' the abstract units of representation representing nothing but themselves!
But 'Money creation', from nothing and yet turned into a thing of 'value' - Poof! - is NOT a power that anyone actually has, not anyone, not any government, not any bank.
The first premise most people willingly go along with is the absolute illiteracy and illegitimacy of there being these so called "financial powers." WE ALL are the ones accepting the nonsense that the origination of the monetary unit is a magical process of 'creation' by some magical monetary power within government or banking. And we accept that this whole process must precede and subjugates economic activity of genuine value. And we accept this nonsense because we think that the monetary unit is an actual item of 'value'. It is NOT.
So, when the leadership of a society truly is motivated to establish "inclusive and sovereign endogenous development” it must realize that the present system and conceptual basis of money itself cannot assist but only interfere with this effort.
But won't it be amazing for a society's leadership to abandon this age old problem and correct the conceptual error by calling the world to genuine liberation through the establishment of a genuinely Logical and Mathematically Literate System of The Abstract Representation Of Value !?
Here are the Resolutions that can be presented in every jurisdiction that will call the world to correction of the conceptual error. https://www.moneytransparency.com/msta-resolutions
Remaining within the framework of the conceptual error leaves people thinking that they must contend with others in ways that can only bring more and greater cycles of conflict.
We cannot keep accepting self-declared 'authority' on the part of the "issuer" of the numbers we use to do the bookkeeping about our own activity. Nor can we accept that the numbers on the ledger (or the coins of the realm that came before) are items of value all by themselves.
Yet, most all are going along with this.
Money is not a resource at all. That is the core illiteracy that people struggle with. Holding back genuine economic activity waiting for the abstract units to record that activity is like waiting for some of the inches to be available so that you can measure the boards to build something. And the unit of money is itself an absurdity in the field of Applied Math. How can one make sense of equations using a term that is undefined and unstable?
https://bibocurrency.com/index.php/downloads-2/19-english-root/learn/299-stop-wwiii
Marc Gauvin
"If we debunk our current notion of money as the misrepresentation that it is, then no one has power over anyone, yet all become far better informed than they currently are.”