Will the Enslaved Persian Gulf States Regain Their Freedom?

Kevin Barrett

Safar 18, 1448 2026-08-01

Main Stories

by Kevin Barrett (Main Stories, Crescent International Vol. 56, No. 6, Safar, 1448)

When Musa [Moses] (عليه السلام) led his people out of slavery, some of the liberated captives were not quite ready for freedom. The Qur’an recounts an episode that is also found, with slightly different details,* in the Torah:

And [remember] when you said: “O Moses, indeed we cannot endure but one kind of food; pray, then, to thy Sustainer that He bring forth for us aught of what grows from the earth - of its herbs, its cucumbers, its garlic, its lentils, its onions.” Said [Moses]: “Would you take a lesser thing in exchange for what is [so much] better? Go back in shame to Egypt, and then you can have what you are asking for!” And so, ignominy and humiliation overshadowed them, and they earned the burden of God’s condemnation: all this, because they persisted in denying the truth of God’s messages and in slaying the prophets against all right: all this, because they rebelled [against God], and persisted in transgressing the bounds of what is right. (2:61, Muhammad Asad English interpretation).

The verse is addressed to Bani Israel, that is, the tribe that ascribes its descent to the common ancestor Israel, or Jacob, known to Muslims as Yaqub ibn Ishaq. Bani Israel is still a reasonably accurate description of today’s tribe whose members self-identify as “Jews.”

But though both the Qur’anic and Torah versions of this story address the Jews, the episode’s significance transcends tribal identities. The story of Musa’s liberation of his recalcitrant people is humanity’s best known slavery-to-freedom narrative. It has inspired countless generations of people from different cultures, notably including enslaved Blacks in the Americas, to embrace the dangers, hardships, and sufferings that moving out of slavery and into freedom always entails.

Today, as the world undergoes tectonic geopolitical shifts, the story of Musa’s flight to freedom is especially relevant to the Arabian rulers of the US-occupied Persian Gulf states. After generations of enslavement to the west in general and the zio-American empire in particular, a new “Musa” has arisen—the Islamic Republic of Iran—to lead regional nations out of the slavery that they have grown so accustomed to, and become so comfortable with.

But regional rulers are balking at the prospect of freedom. Like the stubborn people of Bani Israel who rebelled against Musa, the ruling elites of the Persian Gulf family dictatorships are habituated to eating their usual dishes—which are usually more elaborate and sinful than simple herbs, cucumbers, garlic, lentils, and onions—and reluctant to endure the risks, unknowns, and potential hardships of charting a new course, a course towards freedom and autonomy and sovereignty under the all-embracing sovereignty of Allah swt.

Like the Israelites in the story of Musa’s flight to freedom, the Persian Gulf’s Arabian dictators could, if they used their reason, see the long-term benefits of freedom over slavery. Their current status as vassals of the United States, itself a vassal to Israel and the global zionist oligarchy, is supposed to offer them protection as well as exploitation. Their masters, the zio-Americans, are supposed to “defend” them by planting military bases on their territory. In exchange, the masters extract the lion’s share of the oil wealth.

But since the US and Israel attacked Iran on February 28, murdering the Leader and his family members as well as 168 schoolchildren at Minab among other martyrs, the Islamic Republic of Iran has conclusively demonstrated that US military bases in the Persian Gulf region are security liabilities, not assets. The US cannot protect those bases, much less the countries that house them. It cannot keep the Persian Gulf open for business. It cannot keep the Red Sea open for business. It cannot protect pipelines, refineries, refueling stations, electrical infrastructure, or desalinization plants. All it can do is offer Iran targets for drones and missiles, which are raining down on the Persian Gulf monarchies because those bases are there, not in spite of them.

What are all those US bases doing, then, if they can neither protect themselves nor the countries that house them? As the current war drags on, the answer has become clear. They are there for one reason and one reason only: to protect the Genocidal Zionist Entity.

Just one week after the Empire’s initial murderous strikes on Iran, which the Gulf Arab regimes were not warned about and didn’t want, the Associated Press reported: “There is a belief in the region that the operation has focused on defending Israel... while leaving Gulf countries to protect themselves.” That perception has only deepened as the US has shipped most of its interceptors to Israel, leaving its bases and Arab allies totally exposed to incoming Iranian fire.

The reality is simple and ugly: “Israel” hijacked the United States and its blackmailed president to wage war on Iran, and the Arab regimes are collateral damage. Allowing themselves to be occupied and enslaved by the Empire, such that the US would use its Gulf bases in the war, put those Arabian regimes in harm’s way.

Now they are suffering ever-worsening damage because they refuse to eject the Americans. And if the Americans continue to escalate attacks against Iranian infrastructure, Iran will retaliate against Gulf Arab infrastructure, potentially leading to the elimination of electricity and drinking water and the forced evacuation of the American vassal states of the Persian Gulf.

Enslavement to the Empire is leading the Gulf states toward complete ruination. But because the rulers are fat and happy and comfortable with their status as well-fed slaves of the zio-Americans, they are finding it difficult to summon up the critical reasoning skills that would allow them to understand that the only way out of their predicament is the complete ejection of the Americans from the region, and the establishment of a new security arrangement led by regional states with the participation of honest near-outsiders like Turkiye, Pakistan and Egypt, and honest far-outsiders like Russia and China.

This new security arrangement would recognize the obvious truth that there is only one serious threat to stability in the region: the genocidal zionist entity and its western zio-oligarch mafia backers. The Zionists openly boast that they are planning to invade, occupy, and genocidally lay waste to all or parts of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Turkiye, as part of their campaign to create “Greater Israel.” Obviously all of those countries need to unite against the zionists. In this, Iran is their ally, not their enemy.

What’s more, Iran is reliable, while the US is not. Iran keeps its promises. It carries through on its commitments, as evidenced by its adherence to the JCPOA and MOU among other documents that the grossly unreliable USA has torn up and used for toilet paper.

The US is no more reliable in its relations with its supposed “allies” (in reality vassals) than with its enemies. As I write this, Trump promised Saudi Arabia a nuclear program complete with enrichment, then the next day withdrew the enrichment offer and made the whole thing contingent on the Saudis surrendering to Israel and its Shaitan Accords. Who knows what Trump will say or do tomorrow. This kind of grossly unreliable behavior by American rulers is one reason why Henry Kissinger famously said: “To be America’s enemy is dangerous, but to be its friend is fatal.”

Given the above realities, and the fact that US bases in the region are now mostly smoking ruins, it doesn’t require any special strategic genius to see that the Arab leaders of the Persian Gulf region need to eject the Americans and unite against the zionists. So why haven’t they yet?

Besides inertia—their preference for the habitual foods of enslavement—there is also another factor: fear. The family dictatorships of the Gulf countries are terrified by the zionists’ propensity for murdering leaders who stand in their way.

This fear is not unrealistic. Ronan Bergman, the official Mossad stenographer, reports in his book Rise and Kill First enough Israeli assassinations to award the zionists first place in the international dastardly deed contest. And Bergman leaves out the most sensitive Mossad assassinations, including those of the Kennedys and, more recently, Charlie Kirk. Clearly “Israel” has conducted more assassinations than all other state on Earth put together.

Part of the discomfort of leaving slavery behind is the risk that freedom entails. By ejecting the US and uniting against “Israel,” the Gulf rulers would indeed be courting a degree of risk.

But the prophets, including Musa (عليه السلام) knew that sometimes we need to risk our livelihoods and lives in order to follow a Godly path. The reward, if it doesn’t come in this life, is guaranteed in the next. That is what great spiritual heroes and rightly-guided men, like the martyred Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatullah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, have always known.

The luxury-loving Gulf despots cling to the good things of the dunya almost as desperately as do the Jews, “the most greedy of people for (this) life” (2:96). It would be too much to expect them to walk the path of the righteous martyrs. But despite their obvious limitations, they need not descend into the lowest depths of the foulest shayateen. They can still be men—even statesmen.

To become free human beings, rather than abject slaves, the leaders of the Arab Gulf countries must avail themselves of the current God-given opportunity to liberate themselves and their people from an evil, ungodly, genocidal empire.

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*A comparison of the Qur’anic and Biblical accounts supports the Qur’an’s claim that the Torah has been distorted while the Qur’an corrects it. Most obviously, the Torah claims that over two million Israelites followed Moses, while the Qur’an says the Israelites were a small band. Archeologists agree that the “two million” figure is absurd, and that any such incident would have involved a small band, so the Qur’an appears right and the Torah wrong. Additionally, in the Torah version, the Jews’ conflict with God is all about rote obedience, while the Qur’anic version portrays a deeper, more spiritual test of shukr (gratitude).