A potentially devastating circumstance may have just been averted. A nuclear holocaust. A catastrophic World War III. Maybe. Maybe only because US President Donald Trump is not a normal human being; the inveterate narcissist suffers from some deep-rooted complexes; he is a unique amalgamation of a sociopath and a psychopath merged in the body of a 80-year-old man whose fingers possess the power to incinerate the world with just a gentle nudge of a few nuclear buttons. He is aware of it. He is aware of his insuperable powers. Hence the rants. Hence the genocidal manifestations. Hence the shamelessness. After the 14-day cease fire hiatus ends between the US and Iran, it could still be back to some more cowboy misadventures for the trigger-happy sexual predator playing havoc with the world. But we live in the moment. And for the moment there is putative peace. A day earlier, Trump had threatened a civilisational end, and Iran had promised a compelling comeuppance. The world shivered. Did Nostradamus get it wrong after all?? Was 2026 the year for mutually assured destruction? One thing though is for sure that no one expected that the trouble-shooter, a diplomatic go-between in the most fractious moment post-World War II, would be a beleaguered country called Pakistan. Economically bankrupt, internally politically fractured, at war with Afghanistan itself, and a country that promised to “bleed India with a thousand cuts” has emerged as a significant intermediary between two sides unrelenting in their military bellicosity. Pakistan’s global credibility just received a Red Bull energy booster. So, what went wrong for India, which was expected to be the default leader of the Global South not long ago, and which commanded the presidency of BRICS? Everything. Everything from the very beginning when PM Narendra Modi made a visit to Tel Aviv with local TV channels hyperventilating on steroids. The Iran war began within 36 hours. We played favorites, despite the usual jargonized mumbo-jumbo of “ strategic autonomy”. India publicly tilted towards the USA-Isreal axis. It spelled disaster. Truth is ever since the illegal, unauthorised, brazenly unilateral war against Iran began on February 28, 2026, words like apocalyptic and Armageddon became part of our daily vocabulary. US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu indulged in wanton destruction of even Iranian civil infrastructure and the oil industry, prompting the latter to attack neighbouring Gulf countries. The Strait of Hormuz would become Iran’s trump card: Americans understand business and oil prices better than civilisational attributes and medieval history. It took us days to even condemn the cold-blooded slaughter of 165 schoolgirls aged between 7-12 years. Or to condole the political assassination of Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei. This was not moral ambivalence or diplomatic pusillanimity; it was an abject surrender to the discredited Washington-Tel Aviv axis. We were not non-aligned or multi-aligned; we behaved as if we were an obligatory vassal state. It was bizarre. We had abandoned our core principles on human rights violations, civilian casualties, territorial independence and hegemonic conquests by powerful bullies. That’s how Pakistan found itself in an advantageous position to offer its soil for a breakthrough. That is how PM Shehbaz Sharif and Field Marshal Asim Munir will be the cynosure of global attention beginning this Friday in Islamabad. India’s loss is Pakistan’s gain. There are foreign policy lessons for India. One too many, honestly. Theatrics have serious limitations beyond a silly headline fast forgotten. Playing to the domestic gallery using the grandiosity of foreign trips and opulent photo-ops cannot camouflage structural flaws in international relations. Strategic self-interest cannot justify ethical cowardice. Leadership comes with moral authority, not a hallucinatory state of mind as reflected in the hubris of a Vishwa Guru. The Modi government has through its disastrous diplomacy and wretched stance favouring an illegal war and its discredited perpetrators has strategically isolated itself even as arch adversary Pakistan is now on the global high table of negotiations as an arbitrator of peace. India’s failed foreign minister rubbished Pakistan as a “dalal” – a vulgar, disparaging term. He has egg on his face today. It will stay there. Trump has lost to Iran because of his pathological animus against President Barack Obama who cut the Iran nuclear deal. Modi has checkmated himself to defeat because of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. But then that’s another story. Inferiority complex makes us insecure. The ego kicks in. And then everything goes downhill. Sanjay Jha is an author and a former national spokesperson of the Congress.