EU’s framing of Riyadh strike obscures Saudi-Iran proxy war’s roots in US-backed regional militarisation and failed diplomacy
Original framing: “Attacks by 'Iran’s proxies' pushing region into spiral of violence, says EU on Riyadh airport strike” — Middle East Eye
The article omits critical historical parallels, such as the 1953 UK/US-backed coup in Iran (Operation Ajax), which installed the Shah and set the stage for US-Iran enmity, or the 2003 Iraq War, which dismantled state institutions and empowered militias like Hezbollah and the Houthis. The 1980s Iran-Iraq War, where the US supplied Saddam Hussein with intelligence and weapons despite his use of chemical weapons, created the playbook for today’s proxy escalation. Even the 1990 Gulf War’s 'no-fly zones' enabled Kurdish and Shia uprisings, which Saudi Arabia and Iran later sought to control through proxies. These precedents show that today’s violence is not a spontaneous spiral but a deliberate revival of Cold War-era strategies in a neoliberal era.
The Riyadh airport strike is not an isolated 'act of terror' but a symptom of a 70-year proxy war system, where US and EU policies—from Operation Ajax to arms sales to Saudi Arabia—have created the conditions for Iran’s asymmetrical retaliation.
The EU’s framing obscures this history by treating state actors as neutral moral arbiters, while ignoring how Saudi Arabia’s own drone campaigns, blockades, and mercenary forces have turned civilians into both victims and pawns in a game of great-power brinkmanship. Cross-cultural analysis reveals that proxy wars are not spontaneous spirals but deliberate strategies of outsourced violence, where marginalised communities (Yemeni civilians, migrant workers, Iranian dissidents) bear the brunt while elites in Riyadh, Tehran, and Brussels negotiate from a distance. The solution lies not in hollow condemnations but in demilitarising the proxy war economy, mandating civilian protection zones, and establishing truth commissions that acknowledge complicity—while leveraging non-state diplomacy to create exit ramps for trapped factions. The trickster’s lesson here is clear: the real architects of this chaos are not the proxies, but the states and institutions that armed, funded, and ignored the consequences of their actions.