Not so Strait

The current catastrophe in West Asia and the surrounding Arab world is not an accident of history, but a direct consequence of Washington's relentless pursuit of hegemony

- Mohammad Sajjad

THE architecture of modern geopolitics is often framed as a triumph of the secular nation-state, yet a deeper look into the past 150 years reveals a far more paradoxical evolution. The very “nationalism” that emerged in Western Europe as a tool to dismantle the hegemony of the Church has, through centuries of imperial engineering, been weaponised to create its polar opposite: the modern religious state. From the dismantling of the Ottoman Caliphate to the 2026 missile sirens echoing across the Persian Gulf, the “boil” of West Asia and South Asia is the result of a deliberate, centuries-long transition from imperial unity to fractured, religiously defined entities.

The US often pretends to install Enlightenment principles such as democracy and women's rights. However, in the current unfolding crisis, this pretension has fallen like a pack of cards. The killing of over 150 girls in a school in Minab town of southern Iran, and prior to that, instigating a civil uprising against the Iranian regime with the help of the pro-Shah monarchic faction, and, most importantly, the allegation of Iran possessing nuclear power—even while extending fullest support to sectarian monarchies across Arabia—exposes the USA's malicious narratives. US President Donald Trump is now reported to have declared this war against Iran a biblical war—or Armageddon, which, in the New Testament, is the final battle between good and evil forces before the Day of Judgement.

This is nothing but stoking a regressive global religious-extremist frenzy!