By Syed Khalique Ahmed
Several thousand people have been killed in Iran and properties worth billions destroyed when the US and Israel mounted a joint attack on Iran on February 28, 2026, in the midst of the Oman-mediated negotiations with the US in Geneva. Omani foreign minister told media persons on February 27 that both parties – US and Iran – were moving in the right direction and a positive outcome was likely to emerge in a few hours. But, all of a sudden, the US, in collaboration with its proxy Israel attacked Iran, killing its Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, his family members and several senior military and administrative officials. They also targeted a school, killing about 200 female students. As a natural reaction to protect itself from foreign aggression and defend its sovereignty, Iran retaliated, hitting Israel by using drones, ballistic and cruise missiles, and causing huge damage to the US military bases in Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, the UAE and other countries, besides targeting other US interests in the region. Iran had to strike the US military bases in the Gulf countries because the US used them to attack Iran, though the Gulf countries were not directly involved in aggression against Iran. International experts say that the US had no reason to attack Iran because Iran did not pose any threat to the US, thousands of kilometres away, and separated by the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, besides several major seas. Yet, why did the US attack Iran? This is a fundamental question whose answer will help understand the US-Israel-Iran conflict that has led to weakening of the US as a superpower and emergence of Iran as a regional power. We discussed the issue in detail in an in-depth interview with Prof Anuradha Mitra Chenoy. She is a retired Dean and Professor of the School of International Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University. She is currently an adjunct professor at the Jindal School of International Affairs. Prof. Anuradha is also associated with several national and international institutes, including the renowned Transnational Institute in the Netherlands. Excerpts:
Question: What was the reason for the US pre-emptive strike against Iran? Did the US face any threat from Iran, with both countries separated by a long distance, with the Atlantic Ocean and several seas coming between the two?
Prof Anuradha Mitra Chenoy: In my opinion, there are two basic reasons for the US getting into the current war with Iran.
The first reason was the 1979 Iranian Revolution in which the Shah Reza Pahlavi, a highly pro-Iranian, pro-Israeli, bending completely to American and Israeli dictates, was overthrown by a popular revolution led by Ayatollahs. American companies lost control over Iran’s oil wealth which was needed for America’s hegemony over the world. Iranian students took over the American embassy, capturing diplomats. The American attempt to rescue them failed. The US never reconciled to this and since then, America has been seeing Iran as an enemy. To punish the new government and isolate it, the US imposed sanctions. So, the loss of control over Iranian oil was the one reason for the US to attack Iran. Through this war, the US wanted to change the current regime and bring a friendly regime in Iran to again secure control over the Iranian oil to continue America’s domination.
The second reason is, of course, Israel. Israel has been a proxy for the US in many ways. And the US has always supported it. It has given Israel so much aid. And in the last few years, your readers and viewers would have seen Israel has always had an ambition for a ‘Greater Israel Project’, meaning it is one country which does not define its borders, even in its constitution. They don’t have a permanent map. Why? Because they see this as a Zionist state based not just on Jewishness but also on the idea that only the Jews can control this land. This land is an ancient land of the Jews. It has nothing to do with real history. It is all based on the Jewish myth.
But I’m not criticising Jews overall. What I’m saying is this ideology of Zionism, which sees itself as a supreme ideology, that only those who adhere to this faith, this land belongs to them. Everyone else can be second class, third class, or even an animal; they treat them like that.
So they have a Greater Israel Project, where they don’t see the current borders as they are now. They want to expand it.
Now, part of this project was the ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza. They started it taking Hamas action in Israel on October 7, 2023, as an excuse. And, they started a proper planned genocide of the Palestinian people, the Gazan citizens. Very systematic murdering, destroying their villages, destroying their memory, and I think everyone saw it on their phones. It was the first live cast social media genocide. The US was complicit in it, because it continued supplying them arms, saying Hamas is a terror organisation, whereas Israel is a terror-sponsoring state. It’s a terrorist state, essentially. Israel bypasses every law, international law, it bypasses humanitarian conventions, it bypasses the genocide laws, or worse, the most important laws in international law and international history. America has been complicit, the Europeans have been silent, and they’ve been supporting Israel. I think even many of the Global South countries, including, let’s say, India, Indonesia, and Türkiye, continue to have trade with Israel, which we should not have.
Question: Any country or group that tries to stop Israel’s expansionist agenda?
Prof Anuradha: The only groups and countries that are actually physically trying to stop Israel’s expansionist agenda are two: One is Iran, and the other is what is called the Axis of Resistance.
Now, Iran did not physically stop the Gaza genocide, but what it did was a strategy of partnership of alliances developed by one of Iran’s Generals, General Suleimani, who was assassinated by the US. These groups were victims of Israel and had sympathy for the Palestinian cause. These are Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Kataib Hezbollah of Iraq, Houthis or Ansar Allah of Yemen, and Syria under Bashar al-Assad.
Question: So, you mean to say that the US and Israel’s attack on Iran is to have control over Iran’s oil wealth and a part of Israel’s Greater Israel project by militarily weakening Iran, which has some level of military power to challenge Israel. Earlier, the US destroyed Iraq, Libya and Syria primarily to ensure that none of Israel’s neighbours, near or distant, have enough military power to challenge Israel, or to resist Israeli aggression. Do you think Israel has succeeded in its dream for Greater Israel, or will it remain a dream only because of Iran’s fierce resistance and pulverising and destroying Israel’s infrastructure in Tel Aviv and other cities?
Prof Anuradha: Iran is a very powerful country. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, IRGC, which is a core of the Iranian state, is very powerful. It has been prepared for this war for decades. They knew it was coming. First, the US and Israel thought that with the killing and murdering of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and 29 high officials, there would be regime change. But that did not happen. But Israel and the US had a definite strategic defeat. I think since the Vietnam War, it was the first major defeat for the US. I mean, even in Afghanistan, it was not this bad. Americans destroyed prosperous and viable states like Libya, Iraq and Syria and made them into failed states because that helps Israel and also the American oil interests.
However, Israel is not bothered about its losses in the war because it believes it will get aid from the US and Europe to rebuild its infrastructure destroyed by Iran. So, it will continue its agenda of Greater Israel. The US used its military bases in Arab countries, in fact, to help Israel, not to protect the interests of Arab countries.
Question: Now, the Arab countries have begun realising that the American bases were used to protect Israel, not to protect the interests of Arab countries. So, do you think, there will be trust deficit now between the US and Arab countries, and relations between the US and the Arab countries, particularly Saudi Arabia and others, will never be the same again?
Prof Anuradha: Yes, the trust has broken. The Arab countries realise that the US would first help Israel and in this war, this is what happened, though the Arab countries paid billions of dollars to the US for setting up military bases in their territories. At the same time, Trump uses unparliamentary language. He said all kinds of derogatory things about Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Trump is abusive, and racist, as is Israel. He is racist, imperialistic, and Islamophobic, all interconnected. I think Saudis have realised that they have to balance. They cannot go completely with the Americans, and Saudi Arabia is a very important state.
Question: Do you expect the emergence of a new military alliance in the Arab world, with Saudi Arabia entering into a security pact with Pakistan, as there are reports of Egypt, Türkiye and Qatar trying to join this Saudi-Pakistan security alliance?
Prof Anuradha: Definitely. I will give two reasons. One, Pakistan is a nuclear state. Second, it has a very strong army. It’s a battle-hardened army. They have good strategic analysts. They understand the region, they are part of the OIC, Organisation of Islamic States. Pakistan has strong links with OIC countries. There are a lot of Pakistani labours in all the Gulf countries, just like India does. There is a need and a possibility of a new, security architecture in the region.
And they (Pakistan) have very often played a role between America and China. So, Gulf countries would be interested that Pakistan give them a security umbrella. So, Pakistan is a big factor, and then you just notice one thing. The International Monetary Fund, IMF, on which all the countries are dependent for aid, earlier used to call this region MENA (Middle East, North Africa). But a few weeks ago, IMF called it MENAP, meaning Middle East, North Africa, and Pakistan. So they’ve distanced Pakistan for IMF purposes from South Asia and made it part of MINAP. So, this is how the US is looking also at Pakistan. Pakistan is very useful for the US, so it can play these games very well. Pakistanis are adept at it, and they’ve been quite good at mediating, also. Iran and the US were not talking. But Pakistan made them talk to each other.
Question: Do you think that Iran has emerged stronger after this war despite 50 years of sanctions on it by America and European countries, and the US becoming weaker by not being able to achieve its objectives in the Iran war? And, America is no longer able to impose its policies in the region as is clear from Saudi Arabia and some other countries drifting away from American influence.
Prof Anuradha: You see, the US is overstretched. They gave so much arms to Ukraine. They want to build up… China is their main theatre and main enemy in the Indo-Pacific. They’re giving arms all the time to Israel, so they have run short of arms, and their military also doesn’t like to have any body bags, any US soldiers killed. A few were killed, they kept quiet about it, they hid it.
So, US is on a decline, but I want to warn one thing. It’s a comparative decline. US still remains a very big superpower, and they’re trying to regain that hegemony. So on the one hand, other powers are rising like China and Russia, there is a multi-polarity, and on the other side, the US is trying to regain its dominance, which is not possible. The US cannot regain its dominance as the war with Iran has shown. They’ve lost to a country like Iran, who was sanctioned for 47 years. So, it shows that inherent weakness. Their naval power is on the decline. Two of their major ships, one had a laundry fire and has left. The second has some other technical difficulties, and it’s left from the region. They had got six big Aircraft carriers in the region, out of which two have to return. So, I think everyone is watching, and we can see the US decline, but the US is desperately changing its policies to regain control.
But the other side is also resisting. They have more autonomy. You can remember what happened with Houthis (Ansar Allah) in Yemen, when the US tried to bomb it, and do carpet bombing on Houthis who were wearing slippers and using missiles. I saw the videos of how they targeted a ship, which overturned when it was turning.
And the US left the region, they left Yemen, that coastline, near the Red Sea, from the Mediterranean to the Arabian Sea, that is the only route through the Suez Canal. And, Babel Mandap, the Houthis have control of that.
Two days ago, there was an Axis of Resistance meeting in Moscow. This was possible because they think that America can do nothing about it. So, you can see how everyone is playing. Russia is actively getting engaged in the war between Iran and the US.
Question: Iran was considered a government of mullahs, alright? This is a contemptuous term, used in political discussions for backward, rigid, or conservative Muslims. Do you think that this war has demolished this stereotype perception of Iran?
Prof Anuradha: I don’t like this terminology, and I condemn it. It demonises another culture. Of course, the Americans and the British and even their academics keep using it, Mullah regime and all that, it’s shameful. This is shameful.
So, if you cannot understand another culture, you cannot have a war with them. And if you understand another culture, you don’t want to have a war with them. So, there’s a paradox.
But Iranian regime is very, very complex. I think it has democratic elections. Of course it has a supreme leader, but so does the British monarchy. What was King Charles doing in America? Taking the American message. They have a monarchy, the Saudis have a monarchy, so if they have a supreme leader who was part of the revolutionary revolution in which this state has been besieged for 47 years. So, it’s their culture, and it is their right to have it, and this is what Russian, Chinese, and a lot of Indians and other scholars who are really scholars believe this. They have a right to this.
Second, the IRGC is a core of that system, not the Ayatollahs and the clergy. The better word to use is the clergy. So, there is an alliance of at least three major groups. Iran has democratically elected parliament and Executive. Larijani, Ahmedinijad were democratically elected. Pezeshkian is also democratically elected. Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi is also democratically elected, and within Iranian parliament, there are the reformists.
And how much America and Israel have tried to imbalance Iranian society, supporting protesters. Elon Musk had provided more than 7,000 direct Starlink terminals in January for the protests.
Iran clamped down, may be a thousand were killed in that? Who were they? A lot of them Mossad agents. But American Press, New York Times, exaggerated that 20,000 were killed.
I’m not saying that it’s the most democratic regime, and there’s no grievances, and everyone is happy. No, of course, there are grievances. There would be if a country is sanctioned for 47 years.
And there are issues. There can be women’s issues, there can be minority issues, etc. But everyone is for the Iranian state. They love the Persian culture, civilization, and they don’t want to see it destroyed. So they’ve come together, and every day, or every weekend there are hundreds of thousands who demonstrate on behalf of the state publicly, even if the bombs are falling.
So, this is the Iranian state. Of course, there would be complaints of corruption, of centralisation. Don’t we all see it in all our countries?
Question: As you said that Iranian Revolution was, in fact, a democratic movement that brought an elected government in Iran by replacing a dynastic rule. So, after, 1979 Iranian revolution, there was a major shift in American diplomacy towards Muslims and Islam because the US felt threat from all Islamic movements all over the globe. American academician John L Esposito came out with a book like “Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality”. That became a very popular book at that time. So, it was all focused on, how Islamic thought, or Islamic movements, which, Esposito believed, posed threat to America and the rest of the democratic world. So, do you think that the current US-Iran war, could again shift the global focus on Islam and Islamic movements in Muslim countries?
Prof Anuradha: You know, there’s always been a focus, even before this book, this particular book, there were many, Bernard Lewis and others, and they never give the real picture of what’s happening in the Gulf, in the Arab world, in the Muslim world, in Islamic countries. It is a form of racism and colonialism, neocolonialism.
That they see it in terms of a racism, which is Islamophobia. So even there, they distinguish. There’s a racism towards the African blacks, there’s a racism towards South Asians, but above that, more than that, there is a racism towards Islamic People. And a lot is dominated by the English language world because of America and the British colonialism. British colonialism and American neocolonialism. It is all over Europe, the Western World, or the political West, which includes Australia and New Zealand. So the political West has this major trend, and it has increased when they have right-wing governments and right-wing ideology, their support to Israel, their anti-immigration policies.
And their cultural gaze, about showing themselves as superior. There’s supremacy, that Western culture is superior, it’s supremacist. It is like Israel shows itself to be the chosen people, Americans show themselves as people of exception, a state of exception.
Europeans stock up their own very advanced civilization, that they have to civilize the others, and this goes on. It hasn’t ended with the end of colonialism. Even in the last NATO meeting, Marco Rubio said, you join us to recolonise. He told Europe. Before that, the head of the European Union said: Europe is a garden and the rest is a jungle, so we have to guard it with a fence. Every now and then, these racial and neocolonial slurs come out, so we have to keep a watch on them and keep writing.
And the only way to do it is through education and engagement. We have to constantly challenge it, and Iran has challenged it by showing how their academics and how they have presented themselves.
You see, the whole battle is that of ideas, and now with AI, it’s going to be even more difficult. That those who have the AI, they are going to brainwash people, like the Israeli citizens have been brainwashed. It’s a militarised people, they see themselves as God’s people, special, as if, you know, God discriminates. So they’re making God into a discriminatory feature.
So we have to constantly look at new ideas to challenge this dominant ideology. And the only way to do it is through education and engagement. We have to constantly challenge it.
Question: Do you think US President Donald Trump tried to give religious colour to the US-Iran war by inviting Christian priests to the White House, where the priests blessed Trump and egged him to continue the war with Iran?
Prof Anuradha: This trend has increased with all right-wing governments, especially Trump. He sees himself as the hand of God. In a poster, he showed himself looking like Christ. American Christians can violate their own secularism and their democracy. But they continue pointing fingers at others. They’ll call others theocratic, Islamic, this and that.
But themselves, they will never say that it’s a Christian state. They’ll always say liberal, democratic, secular. They can say anything but we have to expose their hypocrisy. I thin alternate media, etc. is doing it. They’re trying to curb it.
It is for the first that European powers have refused to join US war against Iran.
Question: As European powers have refused to support the US war against Iran, does this indicate a rupture in NATO?
Prof Anuradha: There are many reasons for the rupture between the Americans and their NATO allies in Europe. It is mainly due to Donald Trump’s controversial statements about taking Greenland and making Canada the “51st state,” which Europeans viewed as disrespectful to sovereignty. European countries were unhappy that the US acted militarily without proper consultation. The US strategic focus is shifting toward containing China in the Indo-Pacific region, including the South China Sea and Malacca Strait. Europe does not want to automatically support every American conflict, especially regarding Iran. European powers such as the United Kingdom, France, and Germany are concerned about their energy supplies from the Middle East, economic interests, and possible new waves of migrants if regional states collapse.
Question: America and the Europeans, they always projected Iran as a threat to Arab countries and other countries in the region, but Iran never attacked any of these countries. It is the Israel which has attacked Lebanon, Syria, and recently, Qatar. Europeans and Americans don’t see Israel as a threat to the region. So, what’s your comment on that?
Prof Anuradha: Because this is a hypocrisy and paradox, so we have to get people to see it, right? Arab regime’s interest is to have a status quo, to demonise Iran. They have not taken a position against America attacking Iran. But they have not supported Gaza, Palestine, and that’s used as an excuse by others. So other countries, whether India, Indonesia, they’re saying if Arabs didn’t support it, why should we? We continue our trade with them? Let the Arabs first condemn it. They are the closest. So this kind of politics continues.
Yeah, Arabs did not support, Palestine, did not support this.
But the US-Iran war has changed the political situation in Arab world. It has, in fact, united both the Shias and Sunnis. The Arab dynastic rulers are under pressure of their local population to change their political alliances. So, the US conflict with Iran, which was so far projected as an enemy to all the Arab countries, has brought Iran and the Arab countries come together, at least politically, if not militarily.
The pressure from the people will impact these regimes, but it will take some time. States don’t change immediately.
Question: Do you think that Iran has become a regional superpower after 40-day war with the US?
Prof Anuradha: Yes. Definitely. The balance of power in the region has shifted. Iran has been recognised world over, especially in the Global South, as a country who can stand up for their sovereignty, for their rights, for their right to exist.
Israel, on the other hand, has become a pariah state. Everyone hates Netanyahu. They see him as a genocidal creep.
[Syed Khalique Ahmed is Editor of India Tomorrow]
