Iranian Aggression and the Impact of Inherited Narratives
The ongoing Iranian aggression against Kuwait and the Arab Gulf states, which has persisted since March of last year, necessitates a pause to reflect on the lessons learned and to analyze the positions and opinions that have raised, and continue to raise, many legitimate questions and substantive debates.
Some analysts and former Arab officials, including Amr Moussa, have sought to link the developments in the region to events in the occupied Palestinian territories, emphasizing the Palestinian cause more than focusing on the blatant reality of the Iranian aggression, which targeted Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member states, including civilian and vital infrastructure, as well as energy, water, air, and land ports.
Undoubtedly, the Arab-Israeli conflict is a long-standing historical and political struggle, and the tragic practices committed by the occupation authorities against the Palestinian people are undeniable facts. However, this should not obscure another reality: the Iranian aggression against the Arab Gulf states represents a dangerous and unprecedented precedent in its direct targeting of the region’s countries, peoples, and interests.
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There is a causal relationship between these entrenched positions and their dominance over a segment of the Arab political mindset, and the recurrent tendency to invoke the “Zionist” project and link it to the fate of the Gulf region, even during these difficult days when the region is witnessing a systematic Iranian aggression targeting its countries and peoples.
This emotional linkage to the Palestinian cause has extended to some Kuwaiti voices and parties. Instead of justifying the delay in condemning and denouncing the Iranian aggression, Israel was brought into the catastrophic circumstances facing Gulf states, with discussions focusing on how much the occupation authorities benefit from the ongoing events, in a veiled reference to justifying or supporting the Iranian position in its war with the United States.
These shameful positions, along with the accompanying ambiguous facts, are not new to the Kuwaiti scene; they have recurred on previous occasions, even before the Iranian aggression. For instance, one Kuwaiti daily newspaper dared to distort the text of a speech by the late Emir Sheikh Nawaf Al-Ahmad, may God have mercy on him, which was delivered on his behalf by His Highness the Crown Prince Sheikh Meshal Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, may God protect and guard him, when he was Crown Prince, during the Cairo Summit in October 2023.
A Palestinian-origin editor, known for his affiliation with Hamas, the Palestinian wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, in collaboration with another Arab editor, deliberately distorted the text of the high-profile speech by replacing the phrase “occupation authorities” with “Zionism,” despite the fact that this description never appeared in the official Kuwaiti speech text.
The matter did not stop there; political fervor and allegiance reached the level of professional misconduct by assigning two different headlines to the same news story: one on the front page and another on an inside page in red, which contained the deliberate distortion to serve personal agendas and political and ideological affiliations.
It is regrettable that the Ministry of Media has not exercised its supervisory role, which requires reading published content, analyzing its substance, and comparing it with official texts, thereby allowing such transgressions to pass without accountability or scrutiny.
In light of the Iranian aggression we are witnessing, it is not inconceivable that some news reports and media content will continue to be disseminated in this manner. We are living in a state of war imposed by Iranian aggression on the Gulf Arab states. Anyone who claims otherwise must act responsibly, refrain from unregulated commentary and ill-considered speculation, and stop their obsession with seeking visibility on the “X” platform or resurrecting historical conflicts at the expense of a clear-eyed assessment of the current reality, which demands to be addressed with awareness and responsibility, free from slogans and emotional reactions.
