A War Based On Ideology Aims For Annihilation Not Mediation

Is the world heading for a third world war? This question needs serious investigation and understanding in the context of the unprovoked attack unleashed by Israel on Iran. Israel concocted a false pretext that Iran’s insistence on getting a nuclear weapon is a serious threat to its existence. And its attack is to execute its right to self-defence. Israel’s argument is as ridiculous as the USA’s stand that it has nothing to do with Israel’s air attack on Tehran and other places.

It can’t be a sheer coincidence that the day the International Atomic Energy Agency declared that Iran is not agreeing to a deal for not going in for nuclear arsenals, the very next day, the Israel attack started. Its attack was so precise that on day one it killed six of the top military commanders and nuclear scientists. This pattern is similar to the annihilation of top leadership of Hamas and Hezbollah (Lebanon-based terror organisations). Killing like this can’t be done in a flash of seconds; it requires long-term planning and years of intelligence gathering. This shows that Israel had its plan ready and was looking for an excuse and the US knew about it. And although president Trump told the world that the USA had no role in this strike, he knew in advance. In fact, Israel’s plan was more dangerous and precise—it wanted to kill Ayatollah Al Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, but America did not give the go-ahead for that.

The relationship of Israel and the US is not a secret to the world. Since its inception in 1948, Israel has been strongly supported by the US in every which way; else, Israel would not have survived and would not have emerged as such a ferocious power in the Middle East, surrounded as it is by hostile Arab countries. Trump’s threat is indicative of a larger design. He said that ‘if Iran did not agree to the nuclear deal, then Iran should forget that it ever was an empire’. Similarly, the Israeli defence minister has also threatened that ‘Tehran would burn if Iran continued with strikes on Israel’.

Israel should know that Iran is not Gaza, which is not even a regular state. On the contrary, the present Iranian regime is a product of a revolution, impacted in 1979, against the US-backed Reza Pahlavi regime. Unlike Gaza, it is a big and fully developed state and a major power in the region. It is an ideological state run strictly on Islamic laws, and the population is fed anti-Americanism. Regular elections are held; a facade of democracy is operated, but in reality, it is a theocratic state. Ayatollah Al Khamenei is a religious leader advised by a council of clerics, which ensures that the government is run according to the Islamic laws. An ideological state, which is messianic by nature and at times defies logic, is driven by a cosmic conviction that, in the end, victory will be theirs.

Paradoxically, Israel under Netanyahu is also led by a messianic zeal under the influence of Zionism. Ultra-Zionist forces are convinced that it is the right time to reclaim the larger ISRAEL of their dream, which has eluded them for more than two thousand years. Jews were a ‘nation’ for a long time without a ‘state’, and now when they have a state of their own, why not fulfil their dream? In a way, Israel is also an ideological state. And it is this praxis which makes the Israel-Iran war very dangerous.

Let’s not confuse ideological states with normal states; these states are not normal by any imagination. They run on a different logic. Such states suffer from a deep persecution complex and see conspiracy everywhere. For them, those who don’t subscribe to their ideology or are enemies of the ideology, and if they are in government, then, inevitably, are enemies of the state too, and such persons or states should be annihilated or the enemy will annihilate them.

It’s not an accident of history that Israel and Iran don’t recognise each other as a state and feel an existential threat from the other. Within the ideological thinking of Zionism, Israel can’t feel safe till Iran is liquidated. Iran also has the same feeling. There is a great debate in the US and Israel that a regime change in Iran is the only way forward if the Middle East wants to live in peace. And a regime change means killing the Islamic revolution and having a government in Iran that believes in Western liberal values, one that does not call the US the great Satan or the evil empire. Senior journalist Atul Aneja, who had reported from the Middle East for many years, believes that the Iran and Israel war should be viewed in this context, and every effort should be made to broker a ceasefire between the two; otherwise, this has the seeds of a bigger escalation.

This war has also reinvented the contemporary fault lines of global politics. If the USA is strongly supporting Israel, then China has issued a statement during the United Nations Security Council meeting that Israel has crossed all the red lines. Russia has been supporting Iran for a long time. And Russia and China both believe that if Iran crumbles, then Russia and China both will be facing enemies at the borders, and the USA will have a strategic advantage in the region.

Russia is busy in Ukraine. It will be difficult for it to open another front, but China has global ambitions; it can’t afford to let its perceived friend in the Middle East go down on its knees. To protect its strategic interest, China, sooner or later, has to intervene in the war, and if that happens, then the third world war will be knocking on the door. It is in the interest of modern civilisation that global powers should put all their resources to stop this war; otherwise, the apocalypse is not far.

The writer is Co-Founder, SatyaHindi.com, and author of Hindu Rashtra. He tweets at @ashutosh83B

Published on: Tuesday, June 17, 2025, 07:07 AM IST