Residents look on and take pictures as flames and smoke rise from an oil storage facility struck as attacks hit the city during the U.S.–Israeli military campaign in Tehran on March 7, 2026. Photo: Alireza Sotakbar/ISNA via AP
Iran’s clerical regime has been brutal. Yet, whatever the reasons for the joint Israel and U.S. attack on Iran — and several reasons have been proffered by Washington — the strikes on Iran are not about helping the Iranian people overthrow a repressive regime; they are not about fighting for women’s rights; and they are probably not even about Iran’s nuclear programme. There has been no clarity about why the U.S. allowed Israel to push it into a war with Iran. For its part, Iran has responded with a fury that was not anticipated, widening the arc of its response to engulf the whole region. That region extends to India’s borders; and so this regional war is now New Delhi’s problem as well.
Announcing “major combat operations in Iran”, U.S. President Donald Trump turned to the “great proud people of Iran” and said, “[w]hen we are finished, take over your government.” A week later, it is clear that when Israel and the U.S. are done with targeting the regime, there will not be much of Iran left.
Lessons from history
History demonstrates that democracy, human rights and the rule of law have not yet been introduced into a region by the business end of a cruise missile. There is little reason to believe that Iran will prove to be the first. Afghanistan and Iraq are testimony to the fallacy of believing that nation-building can be tagged on to other goals. In Afghanistan, the invasion by the U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) was provided legal cover through strongly worded UN Security Council Resolutions (1368 and 1373) that condemned the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The invasion was presented as self-defence, and for rooting out al-Qaeda from Afghanistan and overthrowing the Taliban regime. The decisions that subsequently committed ISAF to nation-building in that rubble represented a classic case of mission-creep: democracy and women’s rights were added on as desirable extras, not as the focus of the original intervention. Unsurprisingly, when the Americans and the British pulled out 20 years later, the Taliban were able to renew their deeply fundamentalist and patriarchal hold on society. This is not nation-building, it is betrayal.
Arguably more Iraqis were killed in the operation to save Iraq from Saddam Hussein than the ones he murdered during his brutal reign. A precarious stability prevails in Iraq, one that might not withstand regional upheaval, thereby belying claims of nation-building that were put forward to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq after no weapons of mass destruction were found. Iraq is part of an arc of instability that spreads from Sudan through Lebanon to Syria and Afghanistan. The other states in the region achieve stability through iron-fisted control.
U.S.-Israel interests
President Trump betrayed young Iranians rising up against a brutal regime by urging them to continue protesting for “help is on its way.” They took bullets for their bravery, and no help came. Now the U.S. and Israel are pounding Iran with huge munitions, including 2,000lb penetrator bombs, for a kaleidoscope of shifting war aims including regime change. However, Mr. Trump also declared on March 5 that he wanted to choose the next leader, perhaps from the regime. The reversal is breath-taking: expediency now dictates that Mr. Trump consider keeping the very regime in power whose brutality he had used as an excuse to bomb Iran.
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The U.S. and Israel say their aerial bombardment of Iran (and Lebanon) will increase. President Trump had earlier declared that every trace of the regime would be removed, along with Iran’s nuclear programme (strangely resurrected after Mr. Trump’s June 2025 claims to have ‘obliterated’ it), ballistic missile capability and its navy. Israel’s war aims are slightly different: despite Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s calls for regime change, it is apparent that his preferred outcome is a mortally weakened Iran that need not function as a state. Israel is more than capable of suppressing sub-state actors that cannot fall back on a strong regime. Tel Aviv has done nothing to help achieve stability in Syria, and its treatment of Gaza tells its own story.
Iran’s stance
The Iranian regime appears to have calculated that if it must go down, it will do so fighting, widening the conflict and drawing in neighbours who harbour U.S. bases. In doing so, they are hacking at the faultline between Shia Iran and the Sunni Gulf States, turning this conflict into another chapter of the fight for the soul of Islam. This should worry South Asia, because the tinderbox for Sunni-Shia tensions is Pakistan, which is already distracted by rapidly escalating clashes with Afghanistan. A Pakistan plagued by instability at two borders, including a secessionist movement in Balochistan, is not in India’s interests. There should be no illusions about instability’s propensity to spread.
The stakes are high for India: nine million Indians reside in the Gulf states, their remittances accounting for almost 1.2% of GDP. The conflict is also imperilling energy supplies. While this is not a conflict of India’s making or choosing, it has a stake in this being settled in a manner that leaves a stable Iran. The question now is whether that stability can be achieved in line with the aspirations of the Iranian people.
Priyanjali Malik writes on nuclear politics and security.
Published – March 10, 2026 12:55 am IST
