The Iran war intensifies India’s strategic challenge

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.

Eliminating an ideology

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.

If Israel and the U.S. are going after Iran again, when their June 2025 bombing campaign effectively buried the Iranian nuclear enrichment process, then it can only be for a much bigger goal – elimination of Iranian radical ideology and regime change. The attacks on Iran have caused unprecedented devastation on military and security apparatus as well as oil and other infrastructure, hoping to break the cohesion of governance structure and provoke the people to overthrow the government. U.S. President Donald Trump even promised to Make Iran Great Again. Can regime change be effected by mere air bombings on military and civilian targets? This has not happened so far and Israelis and Americans are reluctant to put boots on the ground.

The Iranians, having borne the brunt of the June 2025 war, are prepared for the worst. Since Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei never tried to hide and, in fact, welcomed martyrdom, it did not require special intelligence information to kill him. Anticipating such assassinations, Iran has decentralised authority across multiple arms of government and decided that the period of strategic restraint, as in 2025, is over. Facing an asymmetry in firepower, Iran has widened the war to include regional targets beyond U.S. bases in the Gulf, making this conflict as much political as it is military. It has exposed the U.S. security umbrella over the Gulf states, shown the Gulf states as vulnerable and put the energy security of many countries at serious risk. The pressure is clearly on the U.S. to end the war early.

Israel’s view of the endgame differs from that of the U.S.: Israel has no compunctions about pursuing a purely military campaign regardless of the internal, regional, or political fallout, whereas America cannot afford to leave behind an Iran in turmoil without a political settlement for the region. This raises the hope that the Iran campaign will be shorter.

America’s mixed messaging

Mr. Trump dislikes getting bogged down in long conflicts. He stabilised the situation in Venezuela by working with the same but more pliable regime, after abducting its President, and in Syria by sanctifying a former ISIS terrorist leader as President. He is eyeing a quick regime change in Cuba now. Last year, he reached a deal with the Houthis to prevent attacks on American ships. With Iran threatening to attack ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz, Mr. Trump is discovering that West Asia is not Latin America, and Iran is not Venezuela. The war is not ending as quickly as Mr. Trump would like. Hence, the mixed messaging from the U.S. — whether to stop and declare victory or to prolong the conflict, risking global economic disruption, regional and American casualties, and political resistance both in Congress and among the public. The U.S. has just requested India to buy more Russian oil to stabilise prices.

The Americans getting bogged down in West Asia can only gladden China and Russia since the U.S. will have less bandwidth to focus on them. With each day of relentless attacks, China’s case for taking over Taiwan grows stronger, while Russia’s logic in the Ukraine war is reinforced. Rising oil prices are good for Russia but not China. But a distracted U.S. is not good news for India, which is hoping to attract greater U.S. attention after the trade deal and find a place in the world view of Mr. Trump.

India and regional policy

India’s role as an observer at Mr. Trump’s first Board of Peace meeting in Washington DC., indicated a welcome willingness to take a more proactive role in the region. While India immediately reached out to meet the needs of the Indian community in the Gulf, it slipped back to default mode when Khamenei was assassinated and when an Iranian navy vessel leaving Indian shores was torpedoed by a U.S. submarine in the high seas. Yes, India has excellent bilateral relations with the Gulf, Israel and many regional countries. But with India’s stakes in the region, including in Iran, a more balanced regional policy is essential, at the very least to manage contradictions between friends, such as the recent schism between Saudi Arabia and the Emiratis. Regional policy is much more than an aggregation of many bilateral relations, whether in tackling West Asia, Europe, Central Asia or South-East Asia.

The Iran war is the American way of attempting to reorder West Asia, though it has only exposed the inability of the U.S. to protect the Gulf states. Mr. Trump has reordered the transatlantic alliance amicably when the Europeans caved in to everything that he asked. The U.S. attempt to reorder its relations with Russia met with Russian President Putin’s resistance. The world will soon witness a reordering of U.S.-China relations when Mr. Trump and Xi Jinping meet soon — an event being watched anxiously by Japan, South Korea, India, and, of course, Taiwan, to see whether Mr. Trump will end up making not MAGA, but MCGA: Make China Great Again.

The strategic and security architecture of the region will now have to be rewritten. Ironically, Iran has effectively pushed the region even deeper into America’s arms. Whether China or Russia can offer counter-security arrangements is debatable. Israel will continue to be a predominant force in the region. But others will also benefit such as Türkiye, Saudi Arabia and even Pakistan. With a strong Iran out of the way, their ambitions and stock will rise to fill the regional space.

This is not good news for India. With its strategic space constricted by both the U.S. and China, the Iran war is having a much greater impact on India than it anticipated. India’s neighbourhood has just become that much tougher to negotiate.

T.S. Tirumurti was Ambassador/Permanent Representative of India to the United Nations, New York, and is currently Chair, Steering Committee, Deccan Centre for International Relations, Chennai

Published – March 10, 2026 12:16 am IST