Vision 2030 was reshaping the Middle East until Biden administration conspired with Netanyahu’s Likud to undo its progress
(RAHNUMA) RIYADH: In 2018, MBS announced to a cheering crowd at Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh, “The new Europe is the Middle East,” “The coming renaissance in the next 30 years will be in the Middle East.” Since then, Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030, spearheaded by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, has been nothing short of revolutionary. It set out to modernize the kingdom, reduce its dependency on oil, and diversify its economy. But beyond economics, Vision 2030 represented a cultural and societal transformation that was reshaping the Middle East. It challenged deep-seated stereotypes about Arabs and Muslims, fostering a new image of a peaceful, progressive, and globally integrated region.
At the heart of this transformation was Saudi Arabia’s break from the extremism and violence often falsely associated with Islam. MBS championed modernization, cultural reforms, and the empowerment of a new generation of Arabs, defying the outdated and destructive views that had previously held the region back. Vision 2030 was not just about economic progress; it was about disproving figures like Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose narrative has long painted the Arab world as inherently violent and incompatible with peace. This narrative was being dismantled as Saudi Arabia, through its reforms, showed the world that the Middle East could thrive in peace, prosperity, and global cooperation.
However, this progress now faces a grave threat. The Biden administration, in collaboration with the racist Likud party, led by Netanyahu and backed by Europe, appears complicit in a conspiracy – driven by competition – to destabilize the region. The ongoing war in Gaza is not merely a conflict—it is a deliberate effort to destroy the entire Middle East by undermining everything Vision 2030 has achieved. The blatant disregard for international law, the UN’s countless condemnations, and the war crimes documented by the International Criminal Court (ICC) are met with silence from the West. While examining the ‘legitimacy’ hypothesis American Law professor John Pfaff has argued that violent crime is the product of anger at authority forces that kill far too many people as well as at the remarkably violent, riotous way the authorities respond. Thomas Abt, a senior fellow at the Council on Criminal Justice, has explicitly argued that reduced trust makes violence more common. The Biden administration’s refusal to act in the face of these atrocities suggests more than just indifference; it signals an unholy alliance with Israel’s hardline regime to keep the region mired in conflict to destroy the West’s competition.
This alliance between the West and Israel is designed to prevent the Middle East from realizing its full potential. By allowing the violence in Gaza to continue, they seek to provoke not only Palestinians but the entire Arab and Muslim world, pushing moderates toward radicalism. The goal is clear: to reverse the progress made by Vision 2030, to return the region to a state of instability where it remains dependent on Western arms sales and economic aid so the West can maintain a global competitive advantage. This is a conscious effort to ensure that the Arab world remains divided and at odds with the West, thereby perpetuating the false narrative that Muslims, who make up over a quarter of the world’s population, are incapable of peace and prosperity.
The West’s refusal to hold Netanyahu accountable for his government’s blatant repeated violations of international law is not a coincidence. It serves a strategic purpose: to ensure the Middle East remains unstable and unattractive to tourists, investors, and businesses that Vision 2030 has been working to draw in. By not holding Netanyahu accountable for his past financial support of Hamas, arming him to murder tens of thousands of innocent women and children in Gaza, and allowing him to act with impunity, the Biden administration and its European partners are clearly competing actively against the region’s economic transformation, seeking to sabotage Saudi Arabia’s vision of a peaceful and prosperous future for the region.
Their actions are not just about ignoring international law; they are about undermining an entire region’s future. The West, through its inaction, is ensuring that moderate Muslims and Arabs are left feeling powerless as they witness the destruction of Gaza and the suffering of Palestinians. This helplessness plays directly into the hands of radicals, providing fertile ground for extremism to grow—a situation the West seems all too willing to exploit. By pushing moderate Muslims to the brink, they are attempting to revive Netanyahu’s false narrative he sold starting with America’s Trump hating neoconservatives to his far right, “Israel first”, Islamophobia peddling proxies with tentacles throughout the world, in virtually every democracy, that Islam and Muslims are uniquely inherently violent, reversing all the progress made under Vision 2030.
Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 was setting a new standard for the Middle East, showing that the region could embrace peace, modernity, and global integration. But the West’s actions, led by Joe Biden’s counter vision for the region and its subsequent willful inaction, threaten to undo this progress. The Biden administration, alongside Netanyahu, is using the conflict in Gaza as a tool to provoke the Muslim world, ensuring that the region remains trapped in conflict and instability, away from the benefits of global tourism, investment, and intellectual integration.
Vision 2030, the greatest cultural, economic, and technological renaissance of the Arab and Islamic world since the Golden Age, now faces a coordinated effort to sabotage its success. The Biden administration, Europe, and Netanyahu are working together to ensure that the Middle East does not stabilize, that Netanyahu’s false narrative of Arab and Islamic violence continues, and that the region remains dependent on Western economic and military dominance. In 2019, Biden himself vowed to make Saudi Arabia “pay the price, and make them, in fact, the pariah that they are.” His current policies, which support Israel’s blatant violations of international law wantonly, are designed to radicalize the entire region as seen in two incidents in Jordan, and set back the progress made under Vision 2030, effectively attempting to fulfill that very promise. This unholy alliance between the West and Israel seeks to undo the region’s transformation and keep it trapped in conflict and extremism. It’s time for this conspiracy to be exposed, pushed back, and stopped before it undoes the strides toward peace and prosperity that Vision 2030 has worked so hard to achieve. The future of the Middle East and its rightful place in the global community depend on its ability to stop not just Netanyahu but his supplier and enablers.
