by Our Foreign Affairs Editor
The West’s strategy to isolate and eliminate Iran is not a spontaneous foreign policy decision born in the halls of Washington or Westminster in recent years. It is a mission that began the moment the Shah of Iran—a loyal servant to Western powers—was overthrown in the Islamic Revolution of 1979. When Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Tehran and declared the Islamic Republic, it was not only a blow to Western imperialism but also a moment that exposed the deep fractures and latent betrayals embedded within the Muslim world. Since then, Iran has been under siege—not only from the outside but from within its supposed Muslim brotherhood.
One must ask: how did we arrive at a place where Muslim nations, possessing vast wealth, powerful armies, and shared history, have become instruments in their own undoing? How is it that decades after colonialism was supposedly buried, the map of Muslim lands looks more broken, more divided, and more internally hostile than ever before?
The answer is bitter: betrayal, disunity, and the cancerous spread of national and sectarian egotism. Muslim countries have, over and over again, chosen to betray each other, serving Western interests while damning their own.
Take the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. It would have been impossible without the airbases, logistics, and silence offered by neighbouring Muslim countries. It was not just Washington that toppled Baghdad; it was also Riyadh, Amman, Doha, and others who stood by or aided the fire that consumed the heart of Mesopotamia. Iraq, one of the most advanced Arab nations, was turned into a playground for foreign troops and proxy militias, with millions dead, maimed, or displaced. As the poet Mahmoud Darwish once said, “The war will continue… until the dove finds a branch to perch upon far away from the gunman’s shoulder.”
But where were the doves when Baghdad burned? Where were the calls for Muslim unity when Syria was plunged into war, when Libya was shattered into tribal fiefdoms, when Yemen was turned into a testing ground for foreign-manufactured bombs dropped by fellow Muslims?
Worse still, some Muslim countries have not only stood idle but have actively chosen to make pacts with those who seek to weaken and humiliate their own. Today, Israel finds more friends among Arab capitals than it ever has in history. As Gaza lies in ruins, with tens of thousands slaughtered in cold blood, the Arab world, with its billions of dollars in wealth, chooses “normalisation” over justice, silence over solidarity.
The betrayal is not passive—it is active, deliberate, and shameful.
The late Malcolm X said, “If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” The media narratives and diplomatic posturing of many Muslim regimes today mirror this exact truth. Iran is demonised, not because it is perfect—it surely is not—but because it refuses to kneel. It refuses to accept Zionist occupation as legitimate, it refuses to give up its nuclear ambitions while Israel possesses hundreds of warheads with impunity, and it refuses to let Western interests dictate its political and economic path.
This stubborn independence is precisely why Iran is hated—not only by the West but by some of its Muslim neighbours. It is the same reason Syria was targeted, the same reason Hezbollah is called a “terrorist group” while settler militias in the West Bank are celebrated as “heroes” in Western capitals.
This disunity, this betrayal, has cost us dearly.
Economically, the Muslim world should have been a powerhouse. With oil, gas, rare minerals, and one of the youngest populations on Earth, there is no reason why Muslim countries should not lead in innovation, infrastructure, education, and technology. Instead, they import weapons to kill each other, sign billion-dollar contracts with those who orchestrate their demise, and build towers that pierce the sky but never feed the hungry or heal the sick.
Politically, the Muslim bloc is more fragmented than ever. The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) is a corpse dressed in diplomatic clothes—a body that meets and issues statements while blood soaks the soil of Palestine, Kashmir, Sudan, and elsewhere. What is the worth of unity that exists only in declarations, not in deeds?
Culturally, the betrayal is deeper still. Muslim nations have imported Western ideals of nationalism, sectarianism, and elitism to such a degree that the idea of the Ummah—a unified community of believers—is mocked as outdated fantasy. Yet it was this very concept that allowed the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) to transform warring Arab tribes into a civilisation that led the world in science, medicine, philosophy, and governance for centuries. “The believers are but brothers,” says the Qur’an (49:10), but today, that brotherhood has been sold for palaces, pipelines, and photo-ops with Zionist leaders.
The West knows the power that Muslim unity could wield. It is precisely why they work so relentlessly to ensure it never happens. Divide and conquer is not just an old strategy—it is a living, breathing reality in every policy they enact toward the Muslim world.
Yet the blame lies not only with them. It lies with us.
When Muslims cheer for coups in other Muslim lands, when they mock the suffering of fellow believers due to sectarian difference, when they allow language, race, or border to determine their loyalty, they become complicit in their own oppression.
This moment demands clarity: the time for cosmetic unity is over. The time for conferences, handshakes, and hashtags is done. What is needed is concrete, unapologetic, and strategic solidarity.
Muslim nations must stop buying weapons from those who kill their brothers. They must invest in their own defence, education, media, and medicine. They must support the oppressed not just with words, but with aid, asylum, and arms if necessary. And they must begin by confronting the internalised colonial mindset that says Islam must be private, politics must be secular, and power must serve the West.
There is no neutral ground anymore. In Palestine, children are being buried in mass graves dug by bulldozers. In Yemen, famine walks hand in hand with foreign bombs. In Afghanistan, the victims of decades-long war are now blamed for their own misery. In Iran, decades of sanctions have not brought freedom—they’ve brought suffering.
Unity is not a luxury. It is an existential necessity.
As the great Algerian revolutionary Frantz Fanon wrote, “Each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfil it, or betray it.” The Muslim world stands at such a threshold. Either it chooses to rise, united, for its people, its faith, and its future—or it chooses to remain chained by its own cowardice and collaboration.
The stakes could not be higher. The hour is late. The betrayal is deep. But so too is the potential for redemption.
It begins not with governments, but with people. With rejecting sectarian hate, with holding leaders accountable, with boycotting injustice, with demanding more than survival—we must demand dignity. Dignity rooted not in oil reserves or glittering cities, but in values, in courage, and in unity.
Because if we do not rise together, we will continue to fall—alone.
