In our region, “state legitimacy” isn’t a tidy stamp—it’s a messy argument about power, self-determination, colonial paperwork, coups, and who actually got to say “yes” (or “no”) when borders and regimes were invented.
Every few months, someone tells you a country is “legitimate” because it has a flag and a seat somewhere important. Meanwhile, half the people living under that flag are thinking: Cool. When did we vote on any of this?
So let’s talk legitimacy—not as a vibe, but as a political concept.
In political philosophy, legitimacy is the claim a state makes that it has the right to rule. In international law, legitimacy often collapses into recognition: if enough states recognize you, you’re “real.” But morally and democratically, legitimacy is more demanding: it asks whether people had self-determination—the right to decide their political status and shape their future. The UN Charter literally bakes this into its purpose: respect for “equal rights and self-determination of peoples.”[1]
That’s the benchmark. Now let’s walk through the modern Middle East: who got referendums, who got mandates, who got dynasties protected by empires, and who got permanently denied self-determination.
A working scale: three kinds of legitimacy
Here’s a practical way to read the region’s political DNA:
- Legitimacy through explicit popular endorsement (even if imperfect): people voted on the state’s foundational identity.
- Illegitimacy through settler-colonial imposition and displacement: a state built through colonization and maintained through occupation and systematic denial of another people’s rights.
- Questionable legitimacy: states formed through imperial design (mandates/protectorates) or consolidated through coups and inherited rule—often without a clear, founding act of popular consent.
No country is pure. But patterns matter.
Legitimate country: Iran and the 1979 referendum
Iran is one of the rare cases in the region where the post-revolutionary order was ratified through a nationwide vote.
In March 1979, Iran held a referendum on whether the country should become an “Islamic Republic.” Reported turnout was extremely high, and the “yes” vote overwhelmingly carried.[2] Iranian Islamic Republic Day is tied to the announcement of the referendum results.[3]
Let’s not romanticize it. The referendum was a binary question, in a revolutionary moment, with boycotts by some political forces.[2] That’s not the same thing as a modern constitution-making process with multiple options, free media, and neutral institutions.
But it is an example of a state claiming legitimacy through a foundational act of public endorsement rather than a colonial blueprint.
Legitimacy test:
Did the people get to collectively say “this is the new political order,” in a recognized democratic mechanism—plebiscite, referendum, constitutional convention, or a truly free election?
Illegitimate country: Israel as settler-colonial imposition—and why this isn’t just “rhetoric”
Israel’s defenders point to international recognition, UN processes, and its declaration of independence referencing UN Resolution 181.[4][5] They also point out Israel was admitted to the UN in 1949.[6]
Those are real facts. But legitimacy is not just a paperwork contest.
Israel’s establishment happened inside a colonial transition engineered through the British Mandate system. The Mandate for Palestine incorporated Britain’s commitment to facilitate a “national home for the Jewish people” in a land whose population was overwhelmingly Arab at the time—without a matching act of consent by the indigenous majority.[7]
Then came the 1947 UN partition recommendation (Resolution 181), which proposed two states.[4] Israel’s Declaration of Independence framed Jewish statehood as a “natural right” to national self-determination.[5] Palestinians experienced the same period as catastrophe and dispossession (the Nakba), with mass displacement during the 1947–49 war—documented across a wide historical literature (with debates about causes, responsibility, and intent).
And the story didn’t end in 1948. Since 1967, Israel has maintained a military occupation over Palestinian territories. The UN Security Council has repeatedly treated Israeli settlements as illegal; Resolution 2334 states settlements have “no legal validity” and constitute a “flagrant violation” under international law.[8]
This is why many scholars, human rights voices, and UN officials describe the situation not as a resolved founding moment but as an ongoing structure: occupation, settlement expansion, unequal legal regimes, and denial of Palestinian self-determination.
“Terrorism,” historical record, and how it intersects with legitimacy
One reason the legitimacy debate doesn’t die is that violence and coercion weren’t side notes—they were part of the landscape. For example, Britannica’s entry on the King David Hotel bombing notes that an Irgun attack in 1946 killed 91 people, including British, Arab, and Jewish victims.[9] That doesn’t reduce the entire Zionist movement to “terrorism,” but it does matter historically when discussing state formation through armed underground campaigns during a colonial withdrawal.
Genocide: claim, counterclaim, and what the world’s top court actually did
On Gaza, many people (including UN officials) have used the word genocide; Israel rejects the allegation. The International Court of Justice, in January 2024, issued provisional measures ordering Israel to prevent acts that could fall under the Genocide Convention and to allow humanitarian relief—while not ruling on the final merits at that stage.[10] Separately, UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese has argued that Israel’s actions amount to genocide in reports to UN bodies.[11]
So when I call Israel an illegitimate state in the moral and democratic sense, I’m not claiming “Israel doesn’t exist.” It exists. The point is: a state built and sustained through colonization and permanent denial of another people’s self-determination is not democratically legitimate—no matter how many embassies it has.
Questionable legitimacy: “States without a founding ‘yes’”
Now the uncomfortable part: much of the Arab world’s modern state map was drawn by empires, midwifed through mandates, and then “stabilized” by coups, security states, or monarchies tied to external power.
That doesn’t mean these countries are fake. It means their legitimacy is historically compromised—and often never repaired through real popular sovereignty.
Palestine: real people, denied self-determination, trapped inside mandate logic
Palestine’s claim to statehood is morally straightforward: Palestinians are a people with the right to self-determination.[1] Politically, it’s been historically obstructed.
The “State of Palestine” emerges in modern diplomacy partly through the wreckage of the British Mandate and the post-1947 UN partition track. Palestinians declared independence in 1988.[12] The UN General Assembly later upgraded Palestine to “non-member observer State” status in 2012.[13] And in 2024, the General Assembly backed Palestine’s bid for fuller UN membership (though membership itself still depends on the Security Council).[14]
So Palestine’s legitimacy isn’t the problem. The problem is that Palestinians were—and remain—systematically prevented from exercising it.
The most radical demand in Palestine is also the most basic: let a people decide their political future, like everyone else.
Jordan: Transjordan as a British-managed construction
Transjordan was shaped under British administration linked to the Palestine Mandate framework (including special arrangements excluding key provisions on Jewish settlement east of the Jordan River).[15] Jordan’s independence was formalized through treaty processes with Britain in 1946, but even then Britain maintained military presence and influence for years.[16] Britain’s long involvement in Jordan’s security architecture is exemplified by the British officer Glubb Pasha’s command of the Arab Legion for a long period.[17]
Lebanon: “Greater Lebanon” declared under French authority
Greater Lebanon was proclaimed in 1920 under French administration.[18] It then developed under the French Mandate for Syria and Lebanon.[19] Lebanon is a real society with deep historical roots—but the modern state’s borders and constitutional scaffolding were not born from a unified popular referendum. That foundational ambiguity has haunted Lebanon’s sectarian power-sharing ever since.
Syria: mandate, then coups
Syria also passed through the French mandate structure.[19] Post-independence Syria saw repeated coups beginning in 1949.[20] This isn’t a moral indictment of Syrians; it’s a structural explanation of why legitimacy became tied to coercive power rather than consent.
Iraq: British framework, coups, then American occupation
Modern Iraq formed through British occupation-era state-building and treaty arrangements that substituted for a clean mandate process.[21] Iraq later experienced the 1958 coup overthrowing the monarchy and declaring a republic.[22] And in 2003, Iraq fell under U.S.-led occupation with a transitional authority exercising sweeping powers.[23] If legitimacy is continuity of consent, Iraq has been repeatedly yanked off the road.
Egypt: long British dominance, then the 1952 coup—and the “stability” bargain
Egypt lived through long British domination and deep strategic control tied to the Suez Canal era; then the Free Officers coup in 1952 toppled the monarchy and remade the state.[24] Egypt’s later political economy and security orientation became deeply entangled with U.S.-backed regional order—another form of “soft sovereignty” that erodes democratic legitimacy over time.
Turkey: Lausanne-era republic, shadowed by coups
The modern Turkish republic is linked to the post-World War I settlement architecture (Treaty of Lausanne, 1923).[25] Turkey’s political order then faced repeated military interventions, leaving legitimacy contested between popular politics and guardianship-by-force.[26]
Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE: protectorates and treaties that outsourced sovereignty
Kuwait’s modern sovereignty was constrained through the Anglo-Kuwaiti agreement era and British protection, with Britain recognizing independence in 1961.[27]
Bahrain’s ruling arrangement was tied to British treaties and protectorate logic (including the 1861 “Perpetual Truce”).[28]
Qatar’s 1916 treaty relationship explicitly restricted foreign relations without British consent.[29]
The UAE’s predecessor structure (Trucial States) was bound to British protective treaties, and the federation formed as Britain withdrew in 1971.[30]
None of this means these societies lack identity or agency. It means the state form was historically wired for stability-for-empire, not sovereignty-for-people.
Oman: a palace coup with British involvement
Oman’s 1970 transition—Qaboos deposing his father—has been widely discussed as involving British support and foreknowledge in historical accounts.[31]
Saudi Arabia: conquest, then British treaty support and subsidy
Saudi Arabia unified internally through Ibn Saud’s conquests, but Britain played a strategic role through treaties and material support. Britannica notes Ibn Saud accepted British protectorate status during World War I and received British arms and a subsidy.[32] The modern kingdom was proclaimed in 1932.
Yemen: proxy fragmentation as the anti-legitimacy machine
Yemen today is the nightmare endpoint of stolen sovereignty: a country fractured by internal conflict and external sponsorship. The Saudi-led intervention launched in 2015 is widely documented, and analysts routinely describe Yemen as a battlefield shaped by competing regional backers.[33] Recent reporting also highlights how rival Gulf sponsors have supported different Yemeni factions, deepening internal fractures.[34]
So what now? Legitimacy isn’t a museum label—it’s a project
Here’s the hard truth: legitimacy can be rebuilt. It’s not only about origins; it’s also about present-day reality.
A state becomes more legitimate when it:
- respects political freedoms,
- allows real electoral competition,
- limits foreign control over national decision-making,
- and treats all people under its authority equally.
And a state becomes less legitimate when it survives by:
- occupation,
- settlement expansion,
- apartheid-like legal separation,
- censorship,
- torture,
- coups,
- and indefinite emergency rule.
For Dearborn—and for any community that cares about justice—this matters because foreign policy isn’t abstract. It shapes migration, policing, surveillance, propaganda, war spending, and which lives are treated as disposable.
If we want a region of legitimate states, we need one non-negotiable baseline: self-determination for everyone, especially Palestinians—because the entire regional order has been built around denying it.
Sources (numbered for footnotes)
- UN Charter, Chapter I (Purposes and Principles), Article 1(2): self-determination language.
- Iran Data Portal (Syracuse University), “Referendum on the Islamic Republic” (turnout/outcome data).
- “Iranian Islamic Republic Day” summary of referendum result announcement.
- UN General Assembly Resolution 181 (II) text (Partition Plan recommendation).
- Israeli Declaration of Independence text (self-determination framing).
- UN Digital Library record: GA Resolution 273 (III), admission of Israel to UN membership (1949).
- Mandate for Palestine text (League of Nations / Yale Avalon).
- UNSC Resolution 2334 (2016) text (“no legal validity,” “flagrant violation”).
- Britannica: Irgun bombing of King David Hotel (fatalities and context).
- International Court of Justice page: Order of 26 January 2024 (South Africa v. Israel), provisional measures.
- OHCHR/UN documents: Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese genocide framing (report PDF + UN-hosted summary page).
- UNISPAL document transmitting the 1988 Palestinian Declaration of Independence.
- UN Docs: General Assembly Resolution 67/19 (2012) (Palestine observer State).
- Reuters: UN General Assembly backing of Palestinian membership bid (May 10, 2024).
- UNISPAL document on Article 25 / Transjordan memorandum implementation.
- Treaty of London (1946) summary (Transjordan independence framework and continued British influence).
- Glubb Pasha background (British command role in Arab Legion).
- AUB exhibit on proclamation of Greater Lebanon (1920).
- League of Nations Mandate for Syria and Lebanon (PDF text).
- Britannica timeline noting Syria’s 1949 coup sequence.
- Encyclopedia 1914–1918 Online: British Mandate/formation of modern Iraq and LoN membership (1932).
- Britannica: 1958 overthrow of Iraqi monarchy and proclamation of republic.
- Coalition Provisional Authority summary (occupation/authority structure after 2003 invasion).
- Egypt 1952 coup (Free Officers) summary context.
- Treaty of Lausanne background (1923 settlement).
- Al Jazeera timeline on Turkish coups (1960 onward).
- Britannica: Kuwait independence recognition (1961) + British protectorate context.
- Hansard archive referencing Bahrain treaty framework (Perpetual Truce excerpt context).
- Qatar Amiri Diwan: 1916 treaty restriction on foreign relations without British consent.
- Trucial States summary and UAE formation timeline.
- U.S. State Department historical document noting UK foreknowledge/disclaimer in Oman 1970 coup reporting.
- Britannica: Ibn Saud treaty with Britain, protectorate status, subsidy and arms.
- CFR Global Conflict Tracker: Yemen war description and external support dynamics.
- Reuters: Yemen STC/Saudi/UAE factional rifts and proxy dynamics (Jan 2026 reporting).
Disclaimer
This article is for informational and commentary purposes and does not constitute legal advice or a definitive ruling on international law. Historical and political interpretations are contested, and readers may disagree on framing and conclusions. Dearborn Blog welcomes corrections, clarifications, and sourced updates—email info@dearbornblog.com.
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