The Arab League is an international, supranational and intergovernmental organization (very similar in its form to the European Council) that concerns exclusively the Arab world and countries of North Africa, and of the Middle and Near East, more simply said, it is an organization which brings together all the Arabic-speaking countries (except Iran).
On March 22, 1945, one month before the start of the San Francisco conference (which would have given birth to the UN) , was born from the will of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Transjordan (which became Jordan after 1946) , Iraq, Lebanon and Syria , to form an international institute interested in the Arab world, what we know today as the League of Arab States , better known as the Arab League , an organization that includes all Arabic-speaking countries.
Today the Arab League has 22 member countries, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kwait, Iraq, Oman etc. that is all the countries bordering the Persian Gulf, except Iran.
Iran is not in fact part of the Arab League and in the past, on several occasions, it has taken, because of its Shiite faith, positions in open contrast to those assumed by the Arab league.To be clear, when between 1980 and 1988 Iraq and Iran were at war with each other, the Iraq received a lot of funding from Arab league countries, loans and loans that Iraq should have repaid after the conflict, but this is another story that mainly concerns Iraq, Kwait and the UN (the world knows the story as first gulf war).
The history of the Arab League is long and complex, and starts from afar, its birth took place in 45, but the idea of an organization (at the time similar to the League of Nations) that could protect the independent status of those countries once ruled by the Ottoman Empire and which had recently obtained independence or had fallen under the "protectorate" of some European powers, precedes 1945.
Already in 1926, Egypt was held in Cairo, what is known as the first Islamic Congress, a congress that would have led to the growth of a strong pan-Arab sentiment and which, many years later, would have been celebrated in some way, with the settlement. , right in Cairo, of the headquarters of the Arab League whose origins lie precisely in that congress.
Egypt, which in the twenties was officially an independent monarchy, but formally under British control, in the years to come would play a leading role in the evolution of what would become the Arab league, producing, in 1944 the Alexandria Protocol , which encountered not a few mistrust and resistance, in particular from Lebanon, a Christian country wedged in a predominantly Muslim world, however, with not a few difficulties, the differences were overcome and the protocol was signed.
We are in 1944 when the seed of the Arab league was officially planted, that is, in a historical moment of great international tension, in which the Second World War was not yet over, it seemed not to end and the countries involved were more or less committed directly, on several fronts, in particular Egypt was officially at war alongside the British, and in the Middle East, thanks also to the role of the nomadic tribes, they fought, especially in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq, against those political currents close to Fascism and Nazism.
When the Arab League was born, there was only one other international organization in the world, the Society of Nations, whose failure was well known and for all to see in 1944, and the Arab League had a different inclination and purpose, which we could associate to what today are the values and purposes of the European community rather than those of the UN.
First of all, this new organization was the first international organization characterized by the exclusive presence of countries that, in the eyes of Westerners, appeared poor and underdeveloped, anticipating by almost a quarter of a century the movement of non-aligned countries from which the term "third world" was born.
Secondly, but not least, the Arab League set itself as a primary objective, Decolonization, or the restitution of the Middle Eastern and North African lands, occupied by Westerners, to the indigenous peoples, so that they could freely choose their own path from to follow, in a world that was not necessarily pro-Western or pro-Soviet (anticipating, also in this case, what would have been the main theme of the movement of non-aligned countries).
For the founders of the Arab League, the struggle for decolonization, in line with what would later be the principles of the United Nations organization, in particular the principle of self-determination of peoples, already present in the statute of the society of nations (and betrayed by the society of nations with French and British colonialism) . The theme of decolonization and the struggle for independence and autonomy was projected in the years to come in the debate within the United Nations, inserting, in the eyes of the Arab league and the UN, this principle among the fundamental values of the theory of the "just war " (where, quoting Norberto Bobbio," at least from Aristotle onwards Righteous is understood in the sense of Conform to the Law, and not in moral terms) .
The UN, however, when the Arab League was established did not yet exist, however, the Arab League, in Article 3 of its founding charter, refers to the possible future creation of international bodies that have as their ultimate goal the maintenance of peace, security and the pursuit of socio-economic relations between states, prefiguring and hoping for a mutual collaboration with them. Put simply, the founders of the Arab League, assuming the birth of future organizations on the model of the society of nations, left the door open so that they could collaborate with each other and become part of it.
All the countries of the Arab League are now members of the UN and the League itself has been an observer member of the UN since 1 November 1950 and since 1954 has its own headquarters that guarantees a permanent presence at the UN in the New York office (since 56 also at the Geneva office) .
As mentioned at the beginning, of the Arab world and the countries bordering the Persian Gulf, Iran is the only country that is not a member of the Arab League. Contrary to what many believe, the reason is not of a religious nature, the Arab League is not the league of Sunni countries, many countries of Sunni confession are not members of the League, and in the same organization there are countries such as Lebanon, a Christian majority or Iraq which, during the 1980s and early 1990s (79 to 2003) , had as the second post of the state after Saddam Hussein, Tareq Aziz, of Christian faith, de facto the most powerful man in Iraq after Saddam Hussein was a Christian.
The reason why Iran is not part of the league is linked to the very origins of the Arab league and the positions taken by the then Prime Minister of Iran.
The Arab League, as previously written, was born from the Egyptian action, which formally engaged in the fight against colonial policies to favor the decolonization of Arabic-speaking countries, however, that country and that head of state were, in the eyes of Mohammad Mossadeq, of the puppets of the British crown, the British crown with which Iran had excellent relations of friendship and collaboration, friendship that would have brought, in 1943 "the leaders of the world" Churchill, Roosvelet and Stalin , to meet for the first time, precisely in Iran, during the Tehran conference, to discuss and agree on the common strategy to be adopted against the Axis forces.
After the war and until the mid-1950s, British influence in the country was gradually replaced by the US, which accompanied the country (at least until 1953) in a process of reconstruction and modernization. Huge investments by the US were used to increase American influence in the country, which, thanks to friendships and ties built in those years, eventually tried to stimulate a "political transition" aimed at deposing Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq, who is committed to reforming the country to make it a constitutional monarchy. Without too many words, the Ajax operation operation, signed by the CIA and SIS, was an attempted coup d'état to bring a more "accommodating" prime minister to the head of the country and inclined to support and favor Western interests in the Gulf area. . The operation failed and Iran, which in those years was observing the action of the Arab League, fell back on a progressive isolation, which would lead not too long after to the Islamic Revolution, but that's another story.
The failed coup in Iran pushed the country into increasingly isolationist positions, fueling a growing mistrust in the Western world, which promised democracy with one hand and supported coups d'etat with the other, and in the Arab league, perceived more and more , like a rib of the Western world implanted in the Arab world.
The USA in the 1950s had focused on Iran, as its flagship ally in the Middle East, but once the cards on the table changed and, with the advent of the Islamic revolution, they were forced to fall back on the less reliable, if equally strategic Iraq, but that's another story too.
To date, Iran is not a member of the Arab League and claims its status as the only Arabic-speaking country, totally free from Western influences and interference, de facto, recognizing itself as the only Arab country to have accomplished what was the original mission of the League of Arab Countries.