June 19, 2025
Betraying Gaza: On Arab comprador regimes
What are Arab comprador regimes, and why do they serve the interests of Israel and the United States in a region where mass support exists for the Palestinian struggle?
Comprador is a term that describes actors that formulate their domestic and foreign policy in service to imperialism at the expense of their own nation and people. These actors are a useful instrument of the West because they give the appearance of native sovereignty — having leadership coming from the native population of their country — despite serving the interests of foreign powers.
This month, as the March on Gaza and Sumud Convoy sought to reach Gaza, comprador regimes acted swiftly to block attempts to create a humanitarian corridor at a time of acute famine and genocide. The masses of people who sought to break the siege were prevented from reaching Gaza not by Israel, but by Arab regimes themselves.
These Arab comprador regimes have not only upheld Israel’s siege — they have conspired with the United States and Israel. From assisting Israel in its attempts to bypass Yemen’s blockade of the Red Sea, to blocking activists from delivering lifesaving aid to starving Gazans, to aiding Israel in its war of aggression against Iran, comprador regimes in the region have betrayed the will and consensus of their own people, and betrayed the Palestinian people.
Why do these actors continue to aid Israel, especially in this moment of genocide and mass popular support for Gaza?
Imperialist states allow Arab comprador regimes to remain in power on the condition that these regimes act as extensions of imperialists and serve their agenda. But enacting imperialists’ agenda necessarily requires that these regimes repress their own people and deny them self-determination. This is because giving power to a country’s population to enact their own demands would lead to a domestic agenda that serves the people of that nation first and foremost. This conflicts with the agenda of imperialism, which requires that comprador regimes put their nation’s natural resources and wealth primarily in service of imperialist powers.
Imperialist states provide comprador regimes with the military and law enforcement technology and weapons, intelligence, and training to enable them to maintain limited control over the state and population. To ensure compradors remain in line, imperialist states employ leverage through economic dependency, foreign aid and sanctions, with the implied threat of destabilization and regime change. Ultimately, this process cements the fate of so many states in the region to remain underdeveloped and exploited.
When nations in the region challenge imperialism's grasp on the region through alternative institution building and popular resistance, they face sanctions, political assassinations, regime change operations, invasion and occupation. In this way, U.S. foreign policy works closely with Zionist intelligence to subvert and overthrow both state and non-state actors that fight for regional sovereignty, and to instead replace them with compliant comprador regimes that will do imperialism’s bidding.
While comprador regimes have historically been able to maintain control over their populations for extended periods of time, their seat of power remains perpetually threatened by the capacity of the masses to organize themselves and rise up in defiance of the buying and selling of their nation to imperialist powers. Today, as Arab comprador regimes continue to collaborate with the U.S. and Israel to make the genocide on Gaza possible, the Arab masses retain the popular consensus and collective capacity to unseat them.
The reality that we see before us today of Arab nations coordinating with Zionism and imperialism is the byproduct of decades of Western sanctions and regime change, designed to produce a Middle East that complies with U.S. interests, and suppresses the fight for sovereignty, anti-imperialism, and national liberation — including the liberation of Palestine.