War in the Gulf

THE war that the US and Israel imposed on Iran this year has failed to achieve any of the objectives that the two countries had intended. The declared purpose was to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon.

A fact-check indicates that Iran had kept its civil nuclear programme under IAEA safeguards. It had also willingly agreed to a nuclear deal in 2015. It was President Donald Trump who pulled the US out of the deal in 2018 and re-engaged with Iran in his second term under a “maximum pressure” campaign.

While talks were still underway, Israel attacked Iran in June 2025, resulting in a 12-day war. Having failed to subdue Iran, the US and Israel launched joint strikes on Iran on Feb 28, this year, killing much of the Iranian leadership and relentlessly bombing Iranian facilities and installations for 40 days.

All this while Iran remained in the NPT and maintained that it was not building a nuclear bomb, thanks in large measure to a directive from Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to not pursue a nuclear weapon programme.

This means that Tehran’s nuclear programme was only a pretext to attack Iran this year. Arguably, the real objective of the February strike was to change the ruling regime in Iran.

It would be recalled that by 2020, many Arab countries had joined the Abraham Accords and normalised relations with Israel. Lest the Palestinian cause be forgotten, Hamas mounted a resistance attack on Israel in October 2023, which was used by the Benjamin Netanyahu government to bomb Gaza to rubble, committing horrific genocide.

Having weakened Hamas and Hezbollah, Israel began to entertain the idea of establishing a ‘Greater Israel’ and found the Iranian regime to be a major roadblock to its ambitions.

Since his efforts to dislodge Iran’s government had failed in June 2025, Netanyahu persuaded Trump to undertake a joint attack against Iran on Feb 28. Two factors seem to have encouraged Trump to accept this gamble. He had successfully dislodged the government of president Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela in January, and Iran had witnessed massive protests against the government on account of inflation. The US and Israeli leadership wrongly assessed that they would be able to wipe out the Iranian regime within days.

They also failed to destroy Iran’s long-range missile programme, though they did succeed in weakening Iran’s Axis of Resistance.

The conflict has been nothing short of a disaster for the US itself.

While Iran has survived the American and Israeli onslaught, the war has been nothing less than a disaster for the US itself. For the first time, there is a fracture in America’s relations with the Jewish state. The Gulf states are increasingly becoming disillusioned with America’s capacity or will to provide them with security. The US bases in the region have been practically destroyed. The myth of invincibility of the US military machine has been shattered.

The Strait of Hormuz, which was open before the war, is now being contested. The war is expanding horizontally, with Iraqi militias targeting Saudi Arabia’s east-west pipeline and Yemen’s Houthis attacking Saudi cities and oil installations. Bab al-Mandeb also runs the risk of closure as the Houthis have captured all key positions and islands along the Red Sea. With oil prices soaring, most countries have run into serious economic difficulties. The Gulf countries, whose economies largely depended on energy flows, tourism, and services, have been shaken to the core.

Meanwhile, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkiye have entered into a regional arrangement for joint defence, predicated on the principle of collective security.

With Israeli pa­­rliamentary elections due on Oct 27 and mid-term Congressional elections in Ame­rica on Nov 3, the US is contemplating how best to handle the war with Iran.

One way is to revert to the MoU that was mediated by Pakistan and signed in June by the presidents of the US and Iran. However, the MoU had received severe criticism within the US and was largely interpreted as capitulation by the US. Ever since, Trump has pulled back from any peace attempts.

The other option being considered is to resort to another large-scale military attack. Given what had happened in the earlier military campaigns, it can be safely assumed that another confrontation is unlikely to yield a different result.

The only feasible solution is diplomacy. Pakistan, Qatar, and others must continue their efforts for peace. Secondly, it is time for China to step in as a mediator as it depends heavily on oil flows from the Gulf and had successfully brokered normalisation between Iran and Saudi Arabia in 2023. China should also impress upon the US leadership the futility of finding a military solution to the crisis in the Gulf region.

The writer is chairman Sanober Institute and a former foreign secretary of Pakistan.

Published in Dawn, September 27th, 2026