As the crisis in West Asia continues, it is difficult to confidently assess its direction, let alone its end point. As conflicts go, no two military conflicts are ever alike.
US and Israeli hostility toward Iran certainly has a long history; Their strategic convergence on the latter’s nuclear and missile programs has strengthened following the tilt of the regional balance of power in Iran’s favor following the collapse of America’s Iraq project, but up to a point. The US President and the Israeli Prime Minister (PM) had described it as a low-cost operation, given Iran’s internal economic difficulties and widespread public discontent against the decades-old rule of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and significant military capability degradation from joint Israeli and US strikes last year.
The current phase began with joint strikes by Israel and the US on 28 February, following the Prime Minister’s visit to Washington (11 February). The apparent reason was the failure of the last round of indirect talks (27 February) between the US and Iran, the outcome of which caused the President’s “unhappiness”, but which was described as highly productive by his mediator, the Omani Foreign Minister: he rushed to Washington to brief US leaders, including the Vice President, and the media and later, in frustration, described the impending military operations as “not America’s war”.
In the first strikes, Israel killed Ali Khamenei and other top leaders – including those considered qualified to negotiate – in an intelligence-based operation, while the US strikes were reportedly aimed at Iranian nuclear and military installations. The purpose of successive tours was to extend military installations and leadership goals to civilian infrastructure. Iranian retaliatory strikes (drones and missiles) were aimed at Israeli positions, US military bases in the Gulf region, followed by drone attacks on Israel by the reactivated Hezbollah leadership, and another attack on a British base in Cyprus. These escalating attacks in turn have extended to Lebanon (including Hezbollah targets and Israeli ground incursions into Lebanon), attacks by Shia military groups on US bases in Iraq, and Iranian attacks on Gulf countries, including attacks on their civilian and military targets and on ships in the Persian Gulf that are not authorized by Iran, forcing countries to negotiate their passage with it.
Further serious escalation has taken the form of reciprocal attacks on oil facilities (Israel on Iran’s South Pars reserves and Iran on Qatar’s LNG facilities), which has led to tensions with the US leading to higher global and domestic oil/gas prices. The US is “rejecting” the sale of Iranian oil and Russian oil to global markets because its Gulf operations are not popular with the American public and the administration is caught up in extremely heated politics in its midterm election year. The administration is also approaching Congress for $200 billion in additional aid funding and a troop increase. Employing his typical soft-and-tough approach, the US President has called on Iran to “end” military operations by warning it to open the Strait of Hormuz by midnight on February 23 or face the devastation of its power generation infrastructure. In response, Iran’s leadership has threatened to shut down its intermediate ballistic missile capability by firing at Diego Garcia; It demonstrated similar capabilities by attacking the Israeli cities of Dimona (near its nuclear reactor “in retaliation” for the attack on the Natanz reactor) and Arad in Israel, causing significant damage to property and injuries.
Keeping the Strait of Hormuz open is a serious US military dilemma (concerns about the stability of the Gulf) and an irreversible decline in Iran’s military capability as essentially simultaneous activities are hypothetical with respect to their finality and the inherent costs in men and material; Thus, following the Venezuela model (finding an obedient leader within the existing regime) runs the risk of slipping into the Gaza model (destruction of the target regime’s leadership). In the former there was no Israel factor and in the latter the American factor was not that strong. In any case the effects on regional stability were not so severe.
The more material aspect is the importance of the smaller Gulf states in the global strategic balance where myriad stakeholders including China, Russia, Europe, India and Japan have invested immensely; Even though Russia and China have momentarily benefited from the relaxation of their immediate strategic environment, their larger concerns about global political-economic and energy stability are not far from their minds as the Gulf conflict assumes an aggressive character parallel to the situation in Gaza, where the territory is divided into two parts, with no predictable, immediate political solution – but because of too many external elements it has been transformed into a protracted conflict. The US-Israeli joint bombing of Iran’s Bandar Anzali port on the Caspian Sea on February 28 points to the former’s concern about Russian – and possibly Chinese – supply lines and to undisputed reports of Russian intelligence targeting against US regional military dispositions (tit-for-tat for Ukraine). Other stakeholders, who are deeply concerned about related domestic impacts in the energy sector and the broader economy, are reacting to this rapidly growing possibility, but are also concerned about aligning their forces with US-Israeli objectives for actions for navigation safety; The Iranian leadership sees an opportunity in this dilemma by offering “security” on a country-by-country basis. Given their inadequate air defense capabilities despite defense ties with the US, Gulf states’ concerns about their own economic and political stability are heightened by Iranian attacks, where their threats of retaliatory attacks on Iran risk leading to the very consequences they are naturally desperate to avoid; As the Arab Spring demonstrated, these countries have significant Shia communities that are likely to lead to domestic turmoil if the conflict prolongs; Closer to the subcontinent, Baluchi communities are spread along the Iran–Pakistan border.
Despite the Mossad’s heavy penetration, the post-Ali Khamenei Iranian leadership feels it can prolong the conflict by exploiting the strategic fault lines between the US and other stakeholders, including Israel and the Gulf states. The choice of the Revolutionary Guards, the choice of his son, reflects this; Similarly, statements by the Iranian Foreign Minister that Iran does not favor a ceasefire but an inter-state agreement, including a “protocol” for the Strait of Hormuz.
A messy outcome to this conflict will make a bad outcome even worse. The Israeli assassination of Ali Larijani, an important Iranian negotiator with foreign countries, including the US, and a bridge between the regime’s hardliners and moderates, who had attempted to bring in a moderate to succeed the deceased leader, is indicative of a significant divergence of objectives with the US and parallels the previous assassination of Ismail Haniyeh (July 2024), who was an indirect negotiator of Hamas and represented the US’s view of Hamas as ensuring its complete destruction. Had set a target to do. Impossibility of any form of governance. Another possible outcome of the unfolding Gulf conflict is that Israel would become the only country with WMD and missile capabilities in the region; Its potential impact was somewhat evident when Saudi Arabia and Pakistan signed a broad spectrum defense agreement (September 17, 2025) just after the Israeli attack on Qatar (September 9, 2025). Perhaps early speculation but worth considering whether such an intervention could set a new global trend – does the Pakistani offensive in Kabul and Kandahar represent its green shoots when the conflict between the Pakistani armed forces and the TTP is so asymmetric?
India faces a delicate, but increasingly challenging situation, which requires communication channels with all regional adversaries to handle a highly volatile situation. It is trying to take advantage of the relative equity in all these relationships while testing the limits of interdependence for the safety of its large migrant communities and navigational safety for its shipping.
This article has been written by Yogendra Kumar, former Ambassador of New Delhi.
