The on-going war in the Middle East provides important geopolitical lessons for Muslim leaders, the political class, Muslim analysts, thinkers and wider Muslim populations concerned with improving the affairs of the ummah.
US-Israel deals mean nothing
It’s well known that Omani led talks between the US and Iran were close to a deal on the eve of the US-Israel war with Iran on 28 February 2026. The first strike by US tomahawk missiles on an Iranian school killing over 170, mainly girls, ended any deal in an instant as they were designed to do.
These initial strikes also killed several high-ranking members of Iran’s leadership and negotiating teams. One way to kill any deal is to kill the dealmakers and that’s exactly what the US led war has achieved.
If any further evidence was necessary that the US-Israel deals are not worth the paper they are written on then look no further than Gaza, where Israel has killed over 750 people in the 6 months since the Gazan ceasefire came into effect on 10 October 2025.
For the US, Israel comes first
The US has bases in several Gulf states including Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the UAE. The decades-old bases are there to protect the Gulf states and are part of integral strategic security pacts to maintain regional stability.
The US-Israel war on Iran has demonstrated the US prioritised its relationship with Israel over and above guaranteeing the Gulf states’ security. Moreover, the bases have proven ineffective in preventing missiles devastating oil facilities in Gulf states. In fact, the bases themselves were penetrated and were ineffectual in defending US forces.
All the Petrodollars that have been recycled to the US as part of the security pact, not to mention the billions of Gulf oil revenues, directly paying for US defence systems proved ineffectual.
Material interest drives capitalist foreign policy
Israel, a settler colony in the Middle East, serves US interests. Israel, the US security pacts and Petro-dollar agreements are all tools to exploit the oil and gas resources of the Middle East. Thus, the US has no permanent friends, only interests.
Before the US’s dominance over the Gulf, it was the British that colonized the Middle East. The French and Dutch were similarly exploitative over their colonies, extracting resources and raw materials with little regard for the peoples of the occupied nations.
While direct colonisation is out of vogue, Imperialist tendencies have not gone away. Western foreign policy is perpetually about grabbing other people’s resources hidden behind the facade of eliminating weapons of mass destruction (aka invasion of Iraq) and executing an unwinnable war on terrorism.
Economics is by far the most common way of securing foreign interests, however, aid and foreign loans tied to implementing World Bank and IMF restructuring programmes have hollowed out industries while ‘legally’ acquiring assets and raw materials through corrupt privatisation programs and unfair trade agreements with developing countries.
Powerful Nations wield international law for their own ends
International law governs the relationship between states ensuring that powerful nations respect international borders and norms, a country’s economic resources are not usurped, and strong military powers do not start wars without legal justification just because powerful nations can.
One plain truth Trump’s presidency has exposed is the fallacy of international law.
With Trump the facade of human rights, freedom and democracy is completely unnecessary as the US captures Venezuela’s president, while usurping the world’s largest oil reserves, and then declares war on Iran, without legal justification, in a bid to secure even more oil and gas reserves.
However, what Trump is doing in plain sight is what the US has done out of sight for many decades. Declassified papers have revealed the US has toppled democratically elected leaders across the globe from central America to the Middle East through coups, insurgencies and rebel groups. Key examples include the 1953 Iranian coup, 1954 Guatemalan coup and the 1973 Chilean coup.
Muslims must build a state rooted in Islamic ideology, free from foreign dependence
Islam mandates political unity, and the material conditions for it already exist. The Muslim world collectively holds the population, resources, land and geography to be fully self-sufficient. Consolidated into a single state, this human capital, finance and natural wealth would create a superpower capable of standing up to the bullies that dominate the current world order. Built on the Sharia’s economic, social and political principles, it would circulate wealth internally, meet the needs of its people, and offer genuine hope to billions of oppressed people worldwide who have no one to speak for them
