US Air Force personnel load munitions onto bombers at RAF Fairford in southwest England ahead of strikes on Iran, on 10 March 2026 (Henry Nicholls/AFP)
It should be clear to Gulf Arab states hosting US bases that the American presence does not protect them but instead places them in danger.
Originally published in Middle East Eye .
For the past month, US President Donald Trump and his secretaries of state and of war have emphasised a vision of the United States as a white Christian European nation at war with the non-Christian, non-white world.
It was therefore unsurprising that, before they attacked Iran on 28 February, American commanders reportedly told their troops that this was a war for "Armageddon " and would bring about the "return of Jesus".
Reports circulating on social media claimed that US Air Force personnel were served steak and lobster for their "last supper" before embarking on their missions.
The obscene spectacle of Trump surrounded by Protestant Evangelical Christian Zionist religious leaders , praying for an American and Israeli victory against the non-white non-Christians they are bombing, set the tone for the US administration's propaganda.
But it also reflects a deepening ideological divide within right-wing American politics. On one side are Evangelical Christian and Jewish Zionists who support wars against Iran and the Palestinians ; on the other are right-wing Christians who believe that America is being drawn into wars on behalf of Israel.
Similarly, many on the American left, including progressive Jews such as Congresswoman Sara Jacobs , argue that Israel has pulled the United States into war. Rather than seeing the US-Israeli imperialist attack as serving the bellicose American billionaire class that fully backs it, these right-wing and left-wing critics contend that Benjamin Netanyahu tricked Trump into attacking Iran primarily for Israel's benefit.
However, it is crucial to understand that Israel's bellicose policies are an element of the overall US strategy in the region and do not exist independently of it. It is hardly far-fetched that the US aims to intensify the Arab states' hostility towards Iran and incite them to openly join the US-Israel attack.
Blaming Israel Some right-wingers cite the fact that prominent American billionaires, including Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, Bernard Marcus and Paul Singer , have promoted hostility towards Iran for the past decade as proof that such figures are "Israel firsters", rather than "America firsters", and that Israel controls US foreign policy.
They ignore how major American defence industries and energy companies directly benefit and stand to make huge profits from this war. Palantir, Lockheed Martin, Exxon, Raytheon and Boeing can hardly be accused of being Israel firsters, even if, like the billionaires, they believe that Israel's regional military dominance serves the interests of US imperialism.
Instead of framing their criticism of the attack on Iran as driven by the imperialist warmongering of US financial elites – for whom the genocidal Israeli state is both an asset and a proxy – these right-wingers accuse Israel of "controlling" Washington's decisions, thus effectively exonerating the United States of responsibility.
Israel and its intelligence and military apparatus and personnel are tightly integrated into the US war machine, but this is not proof, as some might argue, of Israeli "control" over this system, but rather the result of the US subcontracting significant intelligence and military functions to a trustworthy proxy.
Both Maga and left-wing critics of the war have interpreted recent comments by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio as an admission that Israel dragged the US to war.
What they forget is that Washington – on which Israel is almost entirely dependent for weapons supplies – could have ordered Israel not to attack. But the US chose not to do so, meaning that it approved of Israel's war plans and coordinated with it beforehand.
Arab silence Not a single Arab regime condemned the US-Israeli aggression against Iran, save for Oman , which described it as a "violation of international law ". Nor did any of them, except for the Yemeni Ansar Allah (Houthis), offer condolences to Iran for the massacre of more than 170 Iranian schoolgirls and staff in Minab, or for the murder of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his family and aides.
Even Recep Tayyip Erdogan, president of Nato member Turkey , saw fit to send condolences to Iran, while Arab governments remained silent. Iranian officials noted this in talks with Egyptian and Turkish counterparts aimed at de-escalating the conflict.
Algeria , which stood by its anti-imperialism for decades before recently switching to a pro-imperialist position when it voted for Trump's anti-Palestinian "Board of Peace" at the United Nations, confirmed its new orientation by refusing to condemn the aggression, while expressing solidarity with the Arab regimes against Iranian retaliation.
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In Cairo, the Grand Imam of al-Azhar also registered his solidarity with the United Arab Emirates , Bahrain, Kuwait and Jordan (though curiously not Qatar or Saudi Arabia ) by condemning Iran, but not the US-Israeli aggression. He, too, offered no condolences for Khamenei, a religious leader revered by Shia worldwide.
The claim by the Gulf Arab states and Jordan that Iran is violating their sovereignty, while overlooking the fact that American forces are using their territory and airspace to violate Iran's, is eminently unpersuasive.
All the Arab regimes whose countries were targeted by Iranian retaliation have ceded sovereignty over parts of their territories to the United States – and in some cases also Britain and France – allowing them to establish military bases to attack Iraq , Syria and now Iran.
Meanwhile, these states neither condemn nor attempt to prevent Israeli warplanes from traversing their skies to attack Iran – despite their protestations of "neutrality".
Bases and sovereignty Under the agreements governing US military bases, none of these countries has the right to know how many American troops enter or leave their territory, or to have any say over US military activities launched from them.
The bilateral agreements that allow American forces to be stationed in Qatar and Saudi Arabia have never been made public, and the unpopular agreement with Jordan is considered by many Jordanians to violate the Jordanian constitution by infringing on the country's sovereignty.
If Iran were to host Russian or Chinese military and intelligence bases used to attack the Gulf Arab states and Jordan, would these countries not consider it their right to retaliate?
It remains curious that Qatar's air defence system provided no early warning and no defence against the Israeli attack on Doha last September (nor did the US warn it, even though the Israelis informed the US of the impending attack), while it is apparently capable of detecting and at least attempting to defend US military and diplomatic assets in the country against Iranian retaliation.
Add to this reports claiming that Israel is behind several false-flag attacks targeting Aramco oil facilities in Saudi Arabia, as well as sites in Oman, Turkey and Azerbaijan.
The Iranians , who have readily taken responsibility for the attacks on Kuwait, Bahrain , Qatar, the UAE and the American military Prince Sultan airbase in Saudi Arabia – which the Saudis keep insisting is a "Saudi" base (as do the rest of the Arab countries, which claim that US bases on their territory belong to their own military forces) – denied any role in these other attacks.
Moreover, Gulf Arab states have complained that the US moved air defence systems stationed on their own territory to Israel, leaving them with minimal capabilities and increasing the damage across the region. No matter how much the Arab regimes give the Americans, this is a stark demonstration that Israel will always be Washington's priority – at their expense.
Who threatens whom It should be clear to Arab countries hosting US bases that the American presence does not protect them but places them and their populations in grave danger.
Without these bases, they would have been immune to Iranian retaliation.
Since the 1979 revolution, Iran has never attacked any country, including the Gulf Arab countries and Jordan – which provided massive financial, military, logistical, propaganda and diplomatic support for Iraq's unprovoked invasion of Iran between 1980 and 1988, which killed more than a million people. Iran did not retaliate against them even once, as Iraq launched its invasion from its own territory, not from these Arab countries.
It is the Arab countries that have threatened Iran and supported aggression against it ever since the triumph of its revolution against the American-backed, Israel-allied dictatorship of the Shah.
Since 1981, the Saudis have advanced an Arab strategy – first presented by then Crown Prince Fahd – of normalising ties with Israel to contain an alleged Iranian threat and to convince the Arab peoples that Iran, not Israel, is the major enemy of the Arab nation, even though Israel, then and now, has always threatened both Arab countries and Iran.
Fahd's initiative was revived in Crown Prince Abdullah's so-called Arab Peace Plan in 2002.
That all these Arab concessions to Israel and Arab collusion against Iran have only further endangered Arab states and the Palestinians – now being subjected to genocide – has not deterred Arab rulers.
Indeed, this week, their ambassadors appealed to Russia to pressure Iran to halt its retaliation targeting US installations in their countries. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov reminded them that they have sided with the US-Israeli aggression against Iran from day one, and their pretence of neutrality is just that.
If the damage they have suffered during this war does not convince these Arab states that the true threat to their safety is their alliance with the United States and Israel, then nothing will.
Joseph Massad is professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia University, New York. He is the author of many books and academic and journalistic articles. His books include Colonial Effects: The Making of National Identity in Jordan; Desiring Arabs; The Persistence of the Palestinian Question: Essays on Zionism and the Palestinians, and most recently Islam in Liberalism. His books and articles have been translated into a dozen languages.
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