The Iran war intensifies India’s strategic challenge Premium

Iran is seen as the great disrupter of West Asia and srael wants to end Iran’s proxy war which it sees as an existential threat

The Iran war is not a war to eliminate the “imminent threat” to the United States. Neither is it a pre-emptive strike to stop Iran from striking Israel or American assets. Nor is it a war to stop the rebuilding of Iran’s nuclear programme. It is not even a war to destroy Iranian ballistic missiles.

It is a war to destroy the ideology which drives the Iranian government. And as Israel and the U.S. claim, regime change is the path to achieve it. The U.S. has joined Israel to actively prosecute the war by owning this idea.

Iran is seen as the great disrupter of West Asia. Israel wants to end Iran’s proxy war which it sees as an existential threat. This means asphyxiating Iranian support to non-state actors in the region that are inimical to Israel. This again means eliminating the ideology (as opposed to the religion) — effectively a regime change.

Iran has consistently nurtured and used non-state actors to wage a proxy war against Israel. In fact, some non-state actors have quite literally become a state within a state and destabilised them. The Iranian-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon occupies parts of Lebanon and has even held up the formation of governments. The Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen have carved out a large chunk of Yemen. Houthi missiles hit Saudi Aramco installations in 2021 serving as a catalyst for Saudi Arabia and Iran to restore diplomatic relations in 2023. Iraqi Shia non-state militia are also supported by Iran.

It was Iran’s support for Hamas’ brutal attacks of October 7, 2023, which exposed Iran’s proxies to fierce Israeli retaliation and eventual degradation. Ironically, Hamas itself was initially propped up by Israel (later by Qatar) to weaken Yasser Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organization, split the Palestinians and discredit the Palestinian Authority. When this writer lived in Gaza, the co-founder and spiritual guru of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, was released in 1997 and sent to Gaza by Israel precisely for this.

Iran’s ideology of exporting instability unnerved the region, especially the Gulf monarchies where public opinion is controlled. Consequently, under American prodding, the Gulf states began signing the Abraham Accords to normalise relations with Israel to stabilise the region at the cost of even the Palestinian issue.