Reshaping West Asia's Strategic Map

While other stakeholders are caught in a bind, US's imprint is unmistakable in Israel's war on Iran. India must avoid the appearance of passive neutrality and pursue quiet diplomacy

- LT GEN SYED ATA HASNAIN (RETD)

The roots of the Iran-Israel standoff lie in the seismic shift of 1979, when the Iranian Revolution overthrew the Shah and birthed a Shia regime with ambitions that aimed to claim a leadership position in the Islamic world. This ideological transformation triggered a sectarian rivalry that rallied other Sunni states to counterbalance Iran's regional influence, the primary one being Saudi Arabia. It was also a time when Arab states were seen to be retreating from their once-strident anti-Zionist positions after repeated military defeats.

The new clergy-led Iranian regime stepped in with a fierce anti-Israel posture. Israel was cast as a symbol of Western-backed oppression—an ideological anathema. Support, over time, for militant groups like Hezbollah (Shia), Hamas, and Islamic Jihad—despite the sectarian diversity—underscores how Iran's strategic opposition to Israel could bridge even Shia-Sunni divides. Iran today is probably more anti-Israel than all the Arab nations put together. For Iran, confrontation with Israel serves three purposes—regime consolidation, assertion of regional influence, and provision of a strategic and ideological counterweight to the Western-aligned Sunni monarchies of the Persian Gulf.

The nuclear dimension complicates this further. Iran's nuclear programme, long a subject of global anxiety, is more than just a shield against regime change. It represents a bid to strategically balance Israel, the region's undeclared nuclear power. While Israel remains the most prominent target in Tehran's rhetoric, the implications of an Iranian bomb go well beyond.

The latest Israeli strikes on Iranian nuclear and military infrastructure must be seen in this context, with the idea that Israeli intelligence suspected a few weeks or even days to Iran's overt declaration of nuclear weapon status. However, to be fair, we have had such reports earlier too, including in the context of Iraq two decades ago.