Editorial: The dangers of isolating Iran

Israel’s ongoing aerial bombardment of Iran is being described as unprecedented. It may well be so in terms of scale, but as an act of aggression against its enemies, it is par for the course for the government in Jerusalem. In recent years, using the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, 2023, as a pretext, it set out to complete its capture of Palestinian territories, eliminate hostile non-state actors in the region, and reshape geopolitics in West Asia. The all-out bombing of Iran this weekend is part of that design, following up on its genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, and assassination of the Iran-backed leaders of Hezbollah and Hamas.

America and the Western European powers have abetted this design by supplying arms, ammunition and intelligence to the Benjamin Netanyahu regime while feigning sympathy with the children and women in Gaza. Israel has always held a gun to the head of Tehran and cocked it when the West installed a former al-Qaida operative in Syria, thus cutting off land links between Iran and its proxies in Lebanon. With the Trump administration in the US striking secret deals with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council emirates, Iran stood isolated and vulnerable to Israel's aerial superiority.

Netanyahu says the objective of the bombing is to destroy Iran’s nuclear weapons programme. Western media are trying to paint this act by his government as a move to scuttle Donald Trump’s dialogue with Tehran to drop its uranium enrichment plans. It’s true that the Israeli Defence Forces commenced their bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities two days ahead of talks in Oman between Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff and top Iranian military officials. Those very officials were targeted in the air raids, which killed three top generals, including the chief of army staff, the head of the Revolutionary Guard Corps and at least six nuclear scientists. The talks are dead in the water now, and it is anybody’s guess whether Tehran will be in the mood for diplomacy anytime soon.

Isolated Iran may be, and the holes in its defences stand exposed to an enemy that it cannot invade because it is 1,200 km away. But the regime in Tehran does have options, and they ought to worry everyone, including the former colonial powers who created Israel, the world’s only superpower that is struggling to make up its mind whether it wants to be isolationist or a hegemon, and indeed India, which is in a dilemma whether its foreign policy should be independent or opportunistic. Iran can close down the Strait of Hormuz through which 30% of the world’s oil shipping takes place. Or it can strike at the regional bases of Israel’s sponsors, chiefly the US. Either action will inevitably draw the Western powers into the conflict, with frightening consequences to the whole world.

For India, the war between Israel and Iran has accelerated the drift away from its supposedly independent foreign policy. It has now voted, ignoring a moral catastrophe, against a ceasefire in Gaza and distanced itself from the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation’s condemnation of Israel. With Narendra Modi going to the G7 summit, a gathering of Israel’s sponsors, India’s abandonment of BRICs and other multipolar fora is now nearly complete. The Prime Minister and his foreign minister need to explain what India stands to gain from this.