The US-Iran war, has currently entered its 54th day, with peace talks still to start in Islamabad. There is an uneasy ceasefire between the US and Iran, though the Israeli attacks on southern Lebanon still continue, in complete violation of the ceasefire. In other words, we have a ceasefire in which the US believes it has the right to interdict Iran-bound ships in the high seas—the Persian Gulf—and these acts somehow should not be counted as acts of war. Even if international law defines them as acts of war. Iran has pointed out that imposing a blockade on Hormuz, as the US has done, is a violation of the ceasefire, and it will not negotiate under such threats. It has also reimposed its earlier blockade of Hormuz, which it had lifted with the ceasefire declaration.

This war has also highlighted the nature of asymmetric war. I had written a piece in Peoples Democracy (September 01, 2019) on how drones have changed the nature of war and enabled countries or groups to fight asymmetrically against superior forces. The key to such drone warfare is the ability to add the intelligence available in a simple mobile phone to essentially a model aeroplane widely used by hobbyists. Iran’s missiles have also been highly effective, and along with their drones have taken out four THAAD AN/TPY-2 radar systems costing half to one billion dollars, and an AN/FPS-132 early warning radar at Al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar, valued at $1.1 billion dollars.

The Yemenis/Houthis demonstrated the importance of drone warfare when they took on the Saudis, and attacked not only their military installations but also their refineries and airports. The Houthis not only have withstood the US attempts to lift the Houthis’ Red Sea blockade against ships headed for Israel, but have also shot down a number of expensive MQ-9 Reapers—anything between 15-22 Reapers—and attacked the US Navy’s Harry S Truman, an aircraft carrier. The Houthis' blockade of the Red Sea, a choke point like Hormuz, has meant that very few vessels ventured to reach Israel via the Red Sea, leading to the shutdown of Eilat, its major port on the Red Sea. Currently, the US aircraft carrier George HW Bush is taking the long route around the Cape of Good Hope, Africa and avoiding the much shorter Red Sea route to the Persian Gulf, presumably not to challenge the Houthis in their backyard.

To understand the current war, a war with Iran that Israel and the US have prepared for a long time, we have to look at three sets of issues. One is the politics of West Asia, and how it was set up after World War 2 to continue Western control over the region via Israel. The second is how the so-called oil states were carved out in the region—Bahrain, Qatar, and the UAE—essentially out of Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait out of Iraq and Saudi Arabia. This was the cartographic colonialism that the British particularly did, in which they sought to control West Asia’s oil. Saudi Arabia was, in turn, given Mecca and Medina, with the sons of the Sharif of Mecca being “awarded” Jordan and Iraq. The third is the US replacing the British and the French as the region's colonial powers. The Saudis, still the largest producer of oil in West Asia, also agreed to link their oil prices to the US dollar, making the US dollar the world’s reserve currency.

Post-World War 2, Iran was virtually a British colony, and its oil was “owned” by British Petroleum. Mohammad Mossaddegh, the first democratically elected Prime Minister in Iran, nationalised British Petroleum in 1951, leading to the US and the UK joining together to overthrow Iran’s first democratically elected Government. They replaced it with their stooge, the Reza Shah Pahlavi, who, backed by the US, ran a completely brutal dictatorship. The Shah was overthrown by the Islamic Revolution in 1979, which also led to the 444 days of siege of the US Embassy, which the US has neither forgotten nor forgiven!

For us in India, it is important to note that British power in West Asia rested on the British Indian Army, and even the maps that carved out the boundaries of the newly created oil states were drawn by Indian cartographers! This is the other story of British colonialism, which built its empire with Indian soldiers, with the support of the feudal lords of India. It was the various nawabs and rajas who sold their country to the British East India Company. India has deep roots in the region, and its expatriates still send significant remittances back home, helping cover our trade deficit.

Iran understood long ago that it would not be able to meet Israel and the US in conventional warfare. They had virtually no air force or navy. Trump’s claims of destroying Iran’s air force and navy are just a part of his vainglorious “victories”, each “bigger” than the preceding ones. Iran, isolated from global trade and beset by a variety of technology sanctions, built a very different defence infrastructure. It focused instead on drones and missiles. For the last few decades, Iran has focused on cheap drones, which it has repurposed for war. The Shahed drones are essentially propeller-driven small airframes, with either a combustion engine—Shahed 136 for longer distances — or an electric motor— Shahed 131 for shorter distances. They can be truck-mounted and fired within 10-15 minutes. Being small and manoeuvrable, they are difficult to detect and shoot down by even advanced missile defence systems. Almost all major drone use, by either Russia or even the US has been based on Shahed 136. Russia modified certain elements of the drone and called it Geran 1 and Geran 2. Even the US, has now introduced a modified Iran Shahed calling it Lucas in March, 2026. The blockade of Straits of Hormuz is not only based on Iran’s drones and artillery, but also its use of unmanned boats and underwater vessels, the sea counterpart of drones used for aerial warfare.

The missile strikes on Israel have taken a heavy toll in Israel and has successfully navigated past the Israel’s “impenetrable” missile shield. According to Haaretz, “...at the start of the Iran war, only 5 per cent of missiles hit Israel. By war's last days, the number spiked to 27 per cent.” To add to Israel’s defence woes, the latest missiles Iran is firing have multiple warheads, needing many more missiles to be fired to shoot them down. Iran seems to have kept back their more advanced missiles for a later stage of the war so that Israel’s stock of anti-missiles dwindle when its advanced drones or missiles are fired. With fewer anti-missiles, Israel’s ability to defend its cities and critical installations has weakened, as we are currently observing.

The US and Israel had also not planned a longer war with such an adversary. Iran has built its response based on asymmetric war and has dug deep underground for both its manufacturing and storage of such equipment. Yes, Israel and the US can bomb its civilian population: girls' schools, power plants and bridges, all of which are war crimes, but will still not change the course of this war. With Hezbollah joining in, Israel has suffered heavy losses in eastern Lebanon to Hezbollah. For the first time, Israel is facing a war with a near-peer adversary which can fight back, even when Israel is backed by the military might of the US.

We had written in these columns a few weeks back on the perilous state of the inventory of Israel’s weapons, particularly anti-missile stocks that Israel is firing to stop Iran’s missiles and drones. These are the Arrow 3 and THAAD interceptors whose stocks are running extremely low, not only for Israel but also for the US. Defence Security Asia wrote a month back: Interceptor Crisis: Israel Days From Running Out of Arrow-3 as US THAAD Stocks Drain in Iran War. RUSI, the UK military think tank warned of losing the command of the reload due firing of 11,000 interceptors in first 16 days of the war. In a war of attrition, with Iran’s low-cost manufacturing of cheap drones, it is in a much better position to wage a longer war than Israel is, even though it is backed by the full might of the US.

Are China and Russia providing help to the Iranians? They would be foolish if they did not, as the US has made clear that it means to dominate the world’s trade, backed by its military power, and to extract surpluses from all countries, even their allies. The US, from the rule-based order it touted as a global hegemon, is now transforming itself into the world’s global predator, particularly as it is no longer able to compete with China, India, and East and South-East Asia in either manufacturing or agriculture. In such a scenario, the world’s interest lies in seeing Iran survive this war and stop the predatory US-Israel coalition that seeks to dominate West Asia. West Asia’s strategic value lies in its underpinning of the US dollar, as all Gulf oil is priced in dollars, and in its role as a land bridge between East, South, and Southeast Asia and Europe.

Yes, the petrodollar is important for the US, but so is dominating West Asia for geostrategic reasons. That is why India’s bet, with its PM landing up in Israel to get a medal from the Knesset two days before the war started, has been an international relations blunder, geo-strategically and in terms of timing. Clearly, both the Prime Minister and the External Affairs Minister have lost touch with the world outside: the past perception that the world is dominated by the US as its sole hegemon and that West Asia remains dominated by Israel, the regional hegemon. Asymmetric war, the industrial developments of Asia, Latin America and Africa are changing the world. We have to decide whether to inhabit the past or move forward into the new world we can help create. And maybe India will also remember that it is the Chair of BRICS, and that BRICS has a big role to play in the new world emerging from the ashes of West Asia.