[LINK] "The Arab World is at war with itself"

[rfmcdonald]

At Al Jazeera, Lamis Andoni describes from her perspective how the Arab world is splintering into fragments defined by sect, geography and the like, how it is disintegrating.

[A] sectarian anti-Shia language was not dominant in the Arab collective psyche which was more shaped by the legacy of the anti-colonialist struggle and commitment to the Palestinian cause.

Therefore, a majority of Arabs, unlike the pro-Western Arab governments, openly supported and celebrated the Iranian revolution in 1979 that overthrew Reza Pahlavi's regime, seen as the region's "gendarmerie" protecting US and Israeli interests.

It was the pro-Western Arab regimes, who feared and incited against post-revolution Iran, not on a sectarian basis, but out of fierce rivalry over influence and control.

It was not until more than a decade later that fear of exaggerated Iranian influence over Shia Muslims in the Gulf states became an overwhelming concern for these regimes - a claim that was also used as pretext to suppress domestic opposition.

The rallying against "the Shia threat" that started in full swing in 2004, was part of the US-backed formation of an axis of so-called "moderate" Arab states versus the Iranian-led Shia axis, aimed at undermining support for Hezbollah and Hamas, as resisters against Israel.