Residents look on and take photos as flames and smoke rise from an oil storage facility struck as assaults hit town in the course of the U.S.–Israeli navy marketing campaign in Tehran on March 7, 2026. Photograph: Alireza Sotakbar/ISNA through AP
Iran’s clerical regime has been brutal. But, regardless of the causes for the joint Israel and U.S. assault on Iran — and a number of other causes have been proffered by Washington — the strikes on Iran will not be about serving to the Iranian folks overthrow a repressive regime; they’re not about preventing for ladies’s rights; and they’re in all probability not even about Iran’s nuclear programme. There was no readability about why the U.S. allowed Israel to push it right into a conflict with Iran. For its half, Iran has responded with a fury that was not anticipated, widening the arc of its response to engulf the entire area. That area extends to India’s borders; and so this regional conflict is now New Delhi’s drawback as properly.
Saying “main fight operations in Iran”, U.S. President Donald Trump turned to the “nice proud folks of Iran” and mentioned, “[w]hen we’re completed, take over your authorities.” Per week later, it’s clear that when Israel and the U.S. are completed with focusing on the regime, there is not going to be a lot of Iran left.
Classes from historical past
Historical past demonstrates that democracy, human rights and the rule of legislation haven’t but been launched right into a area by the enterprise finish of a cruise missile. There’s little motive to imagine that Iran will show to be the primary. Afghanistan and Iraq are testimony to the fallacy of believing that nation-building could be tagged on to different targets. In Afghanistan, the invasion by the U.S.-led Worldwide Safety Help Drive (ISAF) was supplied authorized cowl by way of strongly worded UN Safety Council Resolutions (1368 and 1373) that condemned the terrorist assaults of September 11, 2001. The invasion was introduced as self-defence, and for rooting out al-Qaeda from Afghanistan and overthrowing the Taliban regime. The choices that subsequently dedicated ISAF to nation-building in that rubble represented a basic case of mission-creep: democracy and ladies’s rights have been added on as fascinating extras, not as the main target of the unique intervention. Unsurprisingly, when the People and the British pulled out 20 years later, the Taliban have been in a position to renew their deeply fundamentalist and patriarchal maintain on society. This isn’t nation-building, it’s betrayal.
Arguably extra Iraqis have been killed within the operation to avoid wasting Iraq from Saddam Hussein than those he murdered throughout his brutal reign. A precarious stability prevails in Iraq, one that may not stand up to regional upheaval, thereby belying claims of nation-building that have been put ahead to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq after no weapons of mass destruction have been discovered. Iraq is a part of an arc of instability that spreads from Sudan by way of Lebanon to Syria and Afghanistan. The opposite states within the area obtain stability by way of iron-fisted management.
U.S.-Israel pursuits
President Trump betrayed younger Iranians rising up in opposition to a brutal regime by urging them to proceed protesting for “assistance is on its means.” They took bullets for his or her bravery, and no assist got here. Now the U.S. and Israel are pounding Iran with large munitions, together with 2,000lb penetrator bombs, for a kaleidoscope of shifting conflict goals together with regime change. Nevertheless, Mr. Trump additionally declared on March 5 that he needed to decide on the subsequent chief, maybe from the regime. The reversal is breath-taking: expediency now dictates that Mr. Trump contemplate maintaining the very regime in energy whose brutality he had used as an excuse to bomb Iran.
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The U.S. and Israel say their aerial bombardment of Iran (and Lebanon) will improve. President Trump had earlier declared that each hint of the regime could be eliminated, together with Iran’s nuclear programme (surprisingly resurrected after Mr. Trump’s June 2025 claims to have ‘obliterated’ it), ballistic missile functionality and its navy. Israel’s conflict goals are barely completely different: regardless of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s requires regime change, it’s obvious that his most well-liked consequence is a mortally weakened Iran that needn’t perform as a state. Israel is greater than able to suppressing sub-state actors that can’t fall again on a robust regime. Tel Aviv has completed nothing to assist obtain stability in Syria, and its remedy of Gaza tells its personal story.
Iran’s stance
The Iranian regime seems to have calculated that if it should go down, it should accomplish that preventing, widening the battle and drawing in neighbours who harbour U.S. bases. In doing so, they’re hacking on the faultline between Shia Iran and the Sunni Gulf States, turning this battle into one other chapter of the combat for the soul of Islam. This could fear South Asia, as a result of the tinderbox for Sunni-Shia tensions is Pakistan, which is already distracted by quickly escalating clashes with Afghanistan. A Pakistan stricken by instability at two borders, together with a secessionist motion in Balochistan, just isn’t in India’s pursuits. There must be no illusions about instability’s propensity to unfold.
The stakes are excessive for India: 9 million Indians reside within the Gulf states, their remittances accounting for nearly 1.2% of GDP. The battle can also be imperilling vitality provides. Whereas this isn’t a battle of India’s making or selecting, it has a stake on this being settled in a way that leaves a steady Iran. The query now’s whether or not that stability could be achieved according to the aspirations of the Iranian folks.
Priyanjali Malik writes on nuclear politics and safety.
Revealed – March 10, 2026 12:55 am IST