Analyse: Der Krieg, den die arabische Welt beobachtet – Der Nahe Osten hat eine andere Geschichte über den Krieg mit dem Iran und der Westen hört sie nicht

Submission statement:

Western coverage of Operation Epic Fury has unfolded almost entirely on Iran’s own terms.

The dominant frame across European and American commentary treats the Islamic Republic as the aggrieved party narrating its resistance, and the discussion in mainstream outlets and across social media platforms has largely been organized around what Iran claims, what Iran endures, and what Iran dares to threaten.

This frame leaves an enormous gap in the picture, and **the gap is the Arab world** — a civilization that has spent forty years watching the Islamic Republic erode its institutional, theological, and cultural foundations.

To grasp what is actually happening in the Middle East, a Western observer needs to hold three dimensions simultaneously, and the architecture of Western political debate makes this structurally difficult, if not in certain cases impossible.

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For Arab nationalists, including secular nationalists and even those with deep reservations about Israeli policy, **Iran represents a greater and more immediate threat than Israel does**.

This is a position that Western media are structurally ill-equipped to render intelligible, because Western discourse on the Middle East has been organized for decades around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as the primary axis of regional injustice.

The United States and Israel, long cast in Arab political culture as the twin engines of regional oppression, are being processed by a significant and growing portion of Arab opinion as something closer to liberators, not in the language of gratitude, which Arab dignity would resist, but in the language of relief.

The Gulf States have the most to lose out of all this. And it’s amazing Israel is the only one mentioned as egging Donald on for this escapade.

The reason for Israel being the focus in the West is that the dominant narrative now is that Israel is a colonial project created by the West. I personally see that as true to be clear. With that in place, the two threads that come from it are either to support them in their endeavours or take responsibility for their actions. It makes anyone else in the MENA region nothing more than an extra in the story. And yes, that’s not good, it leads to blind spots and mistakes happening.

But here is the thing, many in the MENA region share that view as well. They want the West gone, freedom from colonialism, real and perceived, ended. That means the Israel-Palestine issue becomes the flash point. Iran is not a pleasant regime by any measure, but they are fighting the problem, which is why there is support for them, hence why this is a PR nightmare for the West and any other anti-Iran voices in the region.

EDIT: I’ll add that if the outcome of this war is the withdrawal of the USA from the Middle East (very unlikely, maybe drawn down massively but not gone), I’d expect all those issues to break out in a series of wars. Just because Britain and France drew some lines on the maps, it didn’t get rid of the underlying history of the region.

[A quick check suggests that at least the Saudi newspaper Al-Arabia is considerably more both-sideish](https://english.alarabiya.net/News/middle-east/2026/04/11/iran-us-to-hold-peace-talks-overshadowed-by-mutual-mistrust-) than western press and that despite getting shot at by Iran recently. So, I guess this is just telling Americans what they want to hear.