Are Arab States Obama's Political Cover?

President Barack Obama has hammered home his message that attacks on Islamic State were "not America's fight alone".

Desperate to avoid the portrayal of a "crusade" into Muslim lands, he wants this action to be seen as coming from within the region itself.

He hopes the involvement of Jordan, Bahrain, UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar will be seen as the Sunni Muslim world roundly rejecting Islamic State.

This framing may serve Mr Obama's interests more than anything else, but it is not entirely divorced from reality.

All those states have acknowledged actively taking part in airstrikes, with the exception of Qatar who claim they played a "supportive role".

These were previously countries that preferred to operate in the background - relying on shady funding and the use of proxies.

Though deployment of their military forces beyond their borders is not unprecedented (Saudi sent troops to Bahrain and Yemen in the last few years, while the UAE and Qatar were involved in action in Libya) there is something different about this.

It's a change in tactics underpinned by the growing realisation of the threat IS may come to pose to their own power.

In August, Arab foreign ministers meeting in Jeddah agreed on the need to "deal with the crises and challenges to preserve the security and stability in the region … notably the growing presence in Iraq and Syria of extremists".

The statements made following the airstrikes echoed the sentiment of the Jeddah meeting.

Jordan's government spokesman Mohammed Momani, said: "What we do today, is to establish and ensure the security of our borders and the security of our country and the security of the Jordanian people."

The official Saudi news agency said "air forces took part in military operations against the Islamic State and in support of the moderate Syrian opposition".

But the question remains whether the true significance of Arab states' involvement is more about political cover than military support.

Dr Labib Kamhawi, a Jordanian political analyst and critic of the country's government, said he did not believe military action boded well.

"The Americans don't need the military support ... Their contribution, in military terms, will be next to nothing.

"But their political added value is significant, the fact that the US can say 'the coalition is attacking Da'esh' (IS), is different from saying 'America is attacking Da'esh'."

But he says, for Jordan, and for other states involved, this action comes with a significant risk of backlash.

"The jihadists and the extremists might think that Jordan took that extra step without any reason ... it doesn't take an army to wreck the peace in Jordan, it takes just one or two people committing some serious acts to cause havoc."

No Arab state will have ignored this threat - but perhaps the US commitment to "build and strengthen" its regional partners means that, for now at least, they have calculated that the potential risk of internal backlash is outweighed by the benefit of US funding, support and, of course, stemming the tide of IS.