Lessons for the Global South

Iran's resilience and America's gamble could reshape geopolitics and revive debates about modernity beyond the West.

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What did U.S. President Donald Trump get wrong after deciding to attack Iran? And what did he get right? What made him attack Iran? And what are the implications for the "rest", especially the "Global South"?

Donald Trump's foundational and fundamental "error" lay in the conceptual, emotional and spiritual (or mystical) premises of modern-day Iran. These do not lie in historical Persia but in the foundational and seminal currents of Shia Islam: the day of Karbala (Ashura).

Owing to the schism in Islam on account of "succession issues" after the death of the Prophet of Islam (PBUH), political permutations and combinations led, among other things, to the murder of the Prophet's grandson, Imam Hussein (AS), at Karbala.

Besieged by the forces of his opponent Yazid, and overwhelmed by superior military capabilities and numbers, Imam Hussein (AS) and his small band of followers chose to fight and resist Yazid.

While the outcome of the battle at Karbala, where hunger and thirst were weaponized against Imam Hussein (AS), his family and followers, was almost foreordained, Imam Hussein (AS) fought. Culminating in his martyrdom, the most poignant moment of the battle may have been when Imam Hussein (RA) asked to pause the battle for a moment to quench the thirst of his six-month-old son, Hazrat Ali Asghar (AS).

Inhumanely and cruelly, instead of giving the infant water, an arrow was shot into his throat by the notorious Shimr. Framed and viewed as a battle between oppression and tyranny, and reenacted every year through a "passion play" on Ashura, Karbala, its premises and lessons are central to Shia Islam's ethos. It is the dominant paradigm, in fact.