Dr. Qusai Al-Dmeissi: Former Jordanian Member of Parliament
Prepared by: Ahmed Al-Romoh
Iran has never been a sincere ally of the Arabs. From the very beginnings of its regional project, it has practiced a great deception, using Arab blood as fuel for its international bargaining and turning Arab geography into mere pressure cards on negotiating tables with the West.
Wherever crises have erupted, Iran has appeared as a hidden player cloaked in the slogans of “resistance,” while the essence of its project has gone no further than cold pragmatism.
In Yemen, Iran pushed the Houthis to the forefront, then left the Yemeni people mired in an endless war of hunger, destruction, and displacement—simply to secure for itself a bargaining chip in confronting the Gulf. In Lebanon, Hezbollah was transformed from a national resistance movement into an Iranian arm that shackled the state, stripped it of its sovereignty, and plunged the Land of Cedars into a spiral of political and economic crises that made it hostage to external powers.
As for Syria, Iran raised the slogan of protecting the regime, but in reality it sacrificed Syrians themselves, turning their land into an arena for settling international and regional scores. The country became a torn map divided among major powers. In Iraq, Iran seized the opportunity to reengineer the social and political fabric to serve its influence, exploiting internal fragility to keep Baghdad hostage to its equations with Washington.
Yet the most dangerous downfall was embodied in Gaza. Hamas found refuge in Iran; although its options were not limited to Tehran, it nevertheless slipped into the trap of the great deception and became part of a regional game far larger than the boundaries of Palestine.
The events of October 7 and the subsequent reports speaking of Israel’s prior knowledge of the attack revealed that what occurred was nothing more than a tightly laid trap. Whether this resulted from bad faith or good faith on the part of Hamas’s leadership, the catastrophic outcome was the same: the destruction of Gaza, the killing of its people, and the displacement and starvation of its population.
Hamas had represented the last bastion of rejection of the occupation’s schemes, yet it fell into the clutches of the mullahs’ regime—a regime that claims piety while, in essence, being a pragmatic project that exploits religion to entrench influence. Here, the final curtain of the great deception fell.
What has happened and continues to happen in the region provides conclusive proof that every arena Iran has entered has ended in ruin and division, while Tehran has continued to negotiate and bargain atop Arab ruins. Yemen has not stabilized, Lebanon has not recovered, Syria has not regained its health, Iraq has not restored its dignity and sovereignty, and Gaza has not remained as it was. The sole common denominator is that Iran has emerged a winner from the blood of others, playing the role of a political contractor draped in slogans and selling illusions in the name of principles.
The truth that can no longer be denied is that Iran is neither a champion of resistance nor an ally of the Arabs, but rather an implicit partner in the perpetuation of occupation through sustaining chaos and keeping the region captive to sectarian and bloody conflicts that grant it an advanced negotiating position. Its project was not built on the values of faith as it claims, but on the rules of bargaining, blackmail, and deals.
The most important lesson of the great deception is that any force or faction that ties its fate to Iran is, sooner or later, signing its own demise. What is required today is not merely exposing this deception, but formulating a unified, independent Arab project—one that blocks the path of all who trade in Arab blood under the false banners of “resistance.” Only then can the nation emerge from the vortex of proxy wars toward the horizon of free decision-making, and liberate its causes from the hands of those who have turned them into disposable bargaining chips in fleeting negotiations.
