Chauvinistic dynamics of Mideast geopolitics

…also published in Daily Trust  

Obviously, since time immemorial, the geographical region known today as the Middle East has never been tension-free. As the cradle of Islam, Christianity and Judaism, the region witnessed perhaps all the struggles and dramatic encounters between various messengers of Allah the Almighty and various tyrants who reigned in the region at various points in history.

In modern times also, the region has always been the centre of the geopolitical and global power struggle among regional and world powers due to its strategic geographical location, which interconnects Asia, Europe and Africa, and its immeasurable oil and gas resources. World powers locked in global power struggle jostle for closer diplomatic ties with regional powers in the region, and indeed compete for stronger military alliances and bigger strategic economic investment presence in the region.

Though the region is dominated by Arab countries in terms of number, three of the five regional powerhouses are non-Arab countries; they are Turkey, Iran and Israel while Saudi Arabia and Egypt constitute the other side of the equation in the geopolitical power struggle. Also, though the three non-Arab countries pursue different regional agendas, they are considerably motivated by their respective underlying chauvinistic prejudices, which they are hell-bent on achieving at the expense of the Arab countries.

As a product of arguably the most blatant Chauvinistic agenda in modern times i.e. Zionism, Israel is particularly notorious in this regard. It officially and unapologetically claims to be a Jewish state by identity based on a false premise that the Jewish race is inherently superior to the rest of the human races.

However, though Israel enjoys absolute support from the world powers, which tacitly agreed to ensure that it remains the strongest military power in the region, it’s, unlike Iran and Turkey, too obsessed with its survival that it cannot afford to unnecessarily distract itself with influencing the internal affairs of the Arab countries to blackmail their governments politically. 

On its part, Iran pursues its Persian Chauvinistic agenda in the region and beyond under the disguise of the theocracy of Wilatul-Faqeeh established in 1979 by Ayatollah Khomeini.

Obviously, until the advent of Islam, the two dominant tyrannical empires in the world i.e. Persian and Roman empires looked down contemptuously on Arabs dismissing them as a mere uncivilized, backward and illiterate race.

Also, though following the dismantling of the oppressive Persian Zoroastrian empire by Muslim liberators under the Caliphate of the second rightly-guided Caliph, Umar bin Al-khattab (RA), and though Persians generally accepted Islam willingly and wholeheartedly and indeed produced many reputable Muslim jurists, scientists and other experts in various fields of knowledge over the subsequent centuries, many diehard Persian Chauvinists, albeit supposedly Muslims, refused to come to terms with the new development.

Ever since then, there have been generations of vendetta-habouring Persian chauvinists. Empires, e.g. Safavid Empire, and regimes were founded across the regions at various points on the bases of Persian Chauvinism albeit mostly under the disguise of Shiism. Hundreds of purportedly Islamic books heavily mined with subtle and explicit Persian chauvinistic propaganda were produced over the centuries.  

The current Iranian theocratic regime operates accordingly using Shiism as a smokescreen. For instance, even in the country’s standard schools curricula, the introduction of Islamic religion to Persia following Muslim liberators’ dismantling of its despotic empire is still presented as a conquest of the Persian civilization by primitive Arab Bedouins, which explains Iranians’ particular hatred against Umar Ibn Al-Khattab (RA) under whose Caliphate the feat was achieved. Besides, in the Iranian city of Kashan, there is a symbolic shrine built in honour of Umar’s Persian assassin, Abu Lu’ulu’a Al-majoosy where Iranians used to pay homage until 2007 when Iranian authorities bowed to pressure and banned the ritual, albeit the shrine still exists there.

Anyway, motivated by this vendetta against Arabs, Iran continues to unleash chaos in a growing number of Arab countries through its sponsored militia whose loyalty is always to the Waliyyul-Faqeeh in Tehran rather than their respective countries. The target is to enable such militia and/or their political wings to take over the governments of their respective countries directly like in Yemen, or indirectly like in Iraq and Lebanon, so as to bring them under the direct or indirect control of Iran.

Now, though to a lesser extent, Turks also display apparent superiority complex towards Arabs, which they obviously derived from the Ottoman Empire rule over Arabs among other Muslim nations for more than five hundred years before its formal collapse in the early 20s.

Yet, since 2003 with the political rise of the Turkish President Erdoğan, a Muslim Brotherhood politician, a growing number of Arab countries in the region have accused him of pursuing a kind of “neo-sultanistic” agenda allegedly to restore Turkish influence over them. They have accused him of pursuing this agenda by manipulating the Muslim Brotherhood politicians in their countries over whom he obviously wields enormous and indeed unchallenged influence. 

On their part, the Saudi-Egypt-led Arab countries’ resistance against these agendas is never equal to the enormity of the challenge, for they (Arabs) are simply too disunited to conceive a collective agenda or even a collective strategy to counter the agendas targeting them as a whole.