(This text is a part of the View From India publication curated by The Hindu’s overseas affairs specialists. To get the publication in your inbox each Monday, subscribe right here.)
It has been over a fortnight for the reason that U.S. and Israel attacked Iran and killed the nation’s ‘Supreme Chief’, upsetting a wider struggle in West Asia. Along with the scores of human lives being misplaced to this deepening battle within the area, the influence is already being felt world wide, amid gas and fuel shortages, cancelled flights, and uncertainty.
What are the stakes for the U.S., Israel, and Iran? How is the remainder of the world responding because the “guidelines primarily based world order” additional crumbles? What are the choices earlier than India and the way is New Delhi responding? — These are solely a number of the many questions which have arisen at the moment of grave concern and precarity for all of us.
The Hindu’s group has been protecting all key developments on this regard. Final Sunday, Iran’s Meeting of Consultants, an 88-member clerical physique, introduced that it had chosen Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, son of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the previous Supreme Chief who was assassinated by a joint American-Israeli strike on February 28, because the nation’s new chief.
Iran’s new supreme chief, Mojtaba Khamenei (centre), the second son of late Iran’s Supreme Chief Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, attends a gathering in Tehran, Iran, July 18, 2016. File.
| Picture Credit score:
Reuters
Who’s Mojtaba Khamenei? Learn this profile by our Overseas Affairs Editor Stanly Johny of a wounded man who misplaced his mother and father and spouse, and later elected the ‘Supreme Chief’ of a nation beneath assault from the world’s strongest nation and its closest ally. He now faces a uncommon disaster his predecessors by no means confronted — to outlive the storm and protect the republic. Quickly after his appointment, Mojtaba vowed revenge, saying the struggle wouldn’t be over until sufficient enemy blood was shed. On Wednesday, the twelfth day of the struggle, Iran set three situations for ending the battle. President Masoud Pezeshkian stated: “The one method to finish this struggle — ignited by the Zionist regime and U.S. — is recognising Iran’s respectable rights, cost of reparations, and agency worldwide ensures in opposition to future aggression.”
Why President Trump chooses to stick with this struggle, with none of his expectations met, is baffling. He sought regime change in Iran and demanded talks and unconditional give up—none of which materialised. As an alternative, Iran selected a pacesetter Mr. Trump rejected and moved to shut the Strait of Hormuz, sending power markets right into a tizzy. President Trump seems trapped within the escalation he fuelled.
“The U.S. and Israel miscalculated massive time,” Mohammad Marandi, professor of English literature and orientalism at Tehran College, instructed Stanly Johny in an interview. Arab international locations within the Gulf will not be impartial gamers as they’re internet hosting American bases, he stated, including: “As time goes on, the worth of oil goes to go up. And the world is aware of that this isn’t Iran’s fault. That is the fault of the Trump regime and Netanyahu.” Learn the total interview right here.
“If Mr. Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu proceed this struggle, the worldwide financial system will come beneath even higher stress. Whether or not they realise their grave miscalculation or not, the best way ahead isn’t extra bombing. This struggle have to be dropped at an finish instantly,” our current editorial famous.
India’s response
Exterior Affairs Minister S Jaishankar meets Iran Overseas Minister, Seyed Abbas Araghchi, in Muscat. File
| Picture Credit score:
ANI
Our Diplomatic Affairs Editor Suhasini Haidar has been intently monitoring Iran’s outreach to India and India’s responses. Iran has urged India, the BRICS Chair, to make sure the grouping of developed international locations performs a job in supporting “international stability and safety”, as Iranian Overseas Minister Abbas Araghchi spoke to Exterior Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar late on Thursday night time.
This was a day after India co-sponsored a Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) decision on the United Nations Safety Council (UNSC) together with 134 international locations that demanded the “instant cessation of all assaults by the Islamic Republic of Iran”. This drew consideration since India has not condemned the assaults by the U.S. and Israel on Iran, during which an estimated 1,255 individuals have been killed, together with Iran’s Supreme Chief Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, his household and advisors; the sinking of Iranian ship IRIS Dena within the Indian Ocean that had been hosted for workout routines by India; or the bombing of a college in Mubin during which 150 schoolgirls are believed to have been killed.
New Delhi maintains that efforts to construct a consensus inside the BRICS on the continuing battle within the Gulf have been sluggish as a number of members of the grouping—together with Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates—are concerned within the disaster.
WATCH: Gulf Conflict 3.0 | What do India’s blended alerts indicate? | Worldview with Suhasini Haida
Prime 5 tales we’re studying this week:
1. West Asia disaster: The Indians caught within the crossfire. On this Floor Zero characteristic, Kallol Bhattacherjee writes on how the missile and drone strikes, hovering costs, and communication blackouts consequent to the battle have left civilians susceptible
2. Oil costs replicate geopolitical dangers, not solely provide, writes Pankaj Sharma
3. Sri Lanka switches to QR code-based system to ration gas gross sales amid disaster in West Asi
4. The destiny of the Washington Consensus, as soon as talisman – Shashi Tharoor argues that the Washington Consensus now not matches a multipolar, digital and fragile world
5. DNA of authoritarianism | Suhasini Haidar speaks to Anne Applebaum on her guide Autocracy, Inc
Printed – March 16, 2026 01:30 pm IST