West Asia: US is now in Confrontation with Iran; Serious Consequences for India
STORIES, ANALYSES, EXPERT VIEWS
On October 1, Iran launched its third missile strike on several targets in Israel, including on the capital city of Tel Aviv. According to an Israeli Defense Forces statement, nearly 300 ballistic missiles were involved in the attack but most were reportedly intercepted and neutralised by Israel and US forces based in Qatar, working together.
While in April, US President Biden had urged restraint on Israel, this time there was no such advice from Washington. This change in US stand, writes Shyam Saran (former foreign secretary) “has not been fully appreciated. This is no longer just an Iran-Israel conflict. It is now a US-Iran conflict and that changes the nature of the confrontation unfolding in the region with serious consequences…..
“One should now jettison the view of the US acting as a restraint on Israel, in favour of avoiding escalation and a wider regional war. We will now increasingly see the US acting in tandem with Israel to carry out devastating aerial and missile attacks against Iran….The longstanding effort of Benyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli leader, to drag the US into a war against Iran, has finally succeeded.”
A wider war will impact India
Saran notes “that a wider war in the region will have relatively less impact on the US since it is no longer dependent on energy supplies from the region….But it would be prudent to plan for another era of very high oil prices. India will be seriously impacted.”
Iran may be seriously weakened, but “even a weakened Iran may finally cross the nuclear threshold and acquire a nuclear arsenal despite the immense sacrifices this may entail. It will be convinced that it is only as a nuclear weapon state that it could ensure its survival. This could have a cascading effect in the region, with Saudi Arabia and Egypt choosing to embrace the nuclear option. None of the countries of the region can escape a negative fallout from a war against Iran…”
Saran concludes “we may be on the threshold of another major war and one on our western flank where nine or more million Indians live and work. Our energy supplies may be significantly disrupted. That India has so few levers to influence events in its strategically critical neighbourhood is a sobering thought.”
India’s muted response
What India must also think about is the criticism of its muted response so far to Israel’s relentless bombing of the Gaza Strip killing nearly 42,000 people. The war and the killings, writes Zoya Hasan (Professor Emerita, Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University) “have hardly provoked any reaction in India. ….” Even more disturbing is the “public silence in India over the brutal retaliation in Gaza, flattening the territory to rubble, and displacing the entire population several times, is deeply disturbing. This should be unacceptable, especially in a country which led the largest anti-colonial struggle in the world, stood shoulder-to-shoulder with scores of countries in their struggle for independence, and once was a true friend of Palestine. One of the first non-Arab countries to recognise the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), India today seems closer to Israel and its biggest benefactor, the U.S.”
Hindutva subordination of the Palestine cause: The Hindutva right’s subordination of the Palestine cause and supporting the Zionists in Israel "is the most important reason for the lack of concern. India has moved from backing the Palestinians to more or less unqualified support for Israel. ……The register of Hindu nationalism deliberately sees Palestine as a Muslim issue, which means any support for it can be condemned as appeasement of a community. Individual Opposition leaders have, nonetheless, spoken up in support of Palestine but hardly any Opposition party has taken an unequivocal stand on it…..”
Subdued civil society response: But not just parties, Raghavan notes “even civil society response in India has been muted. This subdued response is largely attributable to the waning influence of anti-imperialism in India and the declining interest in the developing world and the periphery…..”
