We can call it a new chapter in the long history of organised violence or another grim novella scripted by Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu with the ink of blood. Iran today stands once again at the epicentre of a geopolitical storm. The conflict triggered by the attacks of the United States and Israel on the Islamic Republic is not an isolated eruption. It is the culmination of decades of mistrust, miscalculation, covert warfare and ideological rigidity. What makes this moment particularly dangerous is not merely the exchange of firepower, but the collapse of guardrails that once restrained escalation: diplomatic frameworks have been dismantled, backchannels are frayed, and the principle of sovereign immunity appears increasingly negotiable.The story of US-Iran estrangement did not begin with clerics or centrifuges. In the 1940s and early 1950s, Washington and Tehran maintained a cautious but workable relationship. In 1951, Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh nationalised the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, asserting Iran’s sovereign control over its resources. In 1953, a CIA- and MI6-backed coup, Operation Ajax, overthrew Mossadegh and restored the Shah. The intervention ensured short-term Western access to oil but implanted a lasting grievance in Iran’s political consciousness. The Shah’s rule, fortified by American support and arms, modernised parts of Iran’s economy, yet suppressed political dissent through the SAVAK security apparatus. The resentment brewed for decades before erupting in the 1979 Islamic Revolution led by Khomeini. When 52 American diplomats were taken hostage at the US Embassy in Tehran for 444 days, diplomatic ties were severed. They have never been restored.Ironically, the United States had earlier assisted Iran’s civilian nuclear programme under President Dwight Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace initiative. By the early 2000s, however, suspicions mounted around Iran’s expanding nuclear infrastructure. Tehran consistently maintained that its programme was peaceful and within its rights under the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Years of sanctions followed, targeting Iran’s banking, shipping and oil exports, constricting its economy and isolating it from global finance. Diplomacy returned in earnest under President Barack Obama. In 2015, Iran and the P5+1 powers signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), imposing stringent limits on uranium enrichment, reducing centrifuge numbers and establishing intrusive International Atomic Energy Agency inspections in exchange for sanctions relief. The deal lengthened Iran’s “breakout time” for a bomb to over a year and was verified repeatedly by international inspectors.Israel, however, remained sceptical. Under Netanyahu, Jerusalem argued that the JCPOA merely deferred, rather than dismantled, Iran’s nuclear capacity while failing to curb its regional influence through allies such as Hezbollah and Hamas. When Trump assumed office, the Israeli government found a receptive ear. In 2018, Trump unilaterally withdrew the United States from the JCPOA, branding it “the worst deal ever negotiated,” and reinstated sweeping sanctions under a “maximum pressure” campaign. The move fractured transatlantic consensus and weakened moderate voices within Iran. In response, Tehran gradually expanded enrichment levels beyond JCPOA limits, accumulating higher stocks of uranium and reducing cooperation with inspectors. The nuclear file returned to the brink.Parallel to the nuclear dispute was a shadow war. Israel has long pursued covert operations aimed at delaying Iran’s nuclear progress, including cyberattacks such as the Stuxnet virus and targeted assassinations of nuclear scientists. Iran, for its part, cultivated proxy networks across Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen, projecting influence while maintaining plausible deniability. The killing of General Qassem Soleimani by a US drone strike in January 2020 marked an unprecedented escalation, bringing the two states to the edge of confrontation. Though open war was averted, deterrence became more brittle.The US and Israel’s current aggression reflects a qualitative shift. Any targeted assassination of a sitting head of state or supreme leader with or without a formal declaration of war would challenge the bedrock principle of sovereignty embedded in the UN Charter. It would signal that unilateral force has supplanted collective security framework painstakingly built after the Second World War. Even when framed in the elastic language of “preemption,” the absence of a demonstrable and imminent threat weakens both the moral and legal foundations of such action.This shift must also be understood in the longer arc of American engagement in West Asia. For decades, Washington has alternated between security guarantees, military interventions and regime-change experiments that have reshaped the region’s political landscape, often with destabilising consequences that continue to reverberate. These precedents complicate any claim that external force can reliably engineer stability or political transformation. Rather than acting as a neutral guarantor of order, the United States has frequently been a decisive geopolitical actor whose interventions have produced deeply disruptive outcomes.Netanyahu’s own political survival has often intersected with security crises. Facing internal dissent and legal challenges, a unifying external threat can recalibrate public opinion. Trump, meanwhile, has oscillated between bellicose rhetoric and transactional diplomacy, but his withdrawal from multilateral agreements dismantled the most concrete instrument restraining Iran’s nuclear trajectory. What is striking is the absence of a coherent post-conflict strategy. There is little evidence of a roadmap for Iranian political reconstruction, civic empowerment or economic integration. The crisis gets severe with casualties and deepened intergenerational animosity. Sanctions compound suffering by constraining access to essentials. The collapse of a rules-based order translates into lives uprooted, children orphaned, and societies militarised. Decapitation strategies rarely produce stable democracies. Iraq and Libya stand as cautionary tales of how dismantling a state’s leadership and security architecture without institutional scaffolding breeds prolonged instability.For India, the crisis is not a distant theatre. Nearly 90% of India’s crude oil imports traverse the Strait of Hormuz, a chokepoint linking the Persian Gulf to global markets. Any disruption, whether through Iranian closure, naval skirmishes or insurance surcharges, immediately inflates energy costs. Even rumours of a blockade can spike Brent crude prices, fuelling domestic inflation and widening the current account deficit. Amid this volatility, India’s reported move to re-engage Russia for discounted crude supplies could complicate an already complicated India–US trade understanding, particularly as Trump signals tougher tariffs and strategic alignment benchmarks, potentially placing energy security at the heart of trade talks.New Delhi’s diplomatic posture has been cautious to the point where it is now being decried for its silence. It has deepened defence cooperation with Israel, importing advanced systems ranging from air defence platforms to drones, while also historically engaging Iran through projects such as the Chabahar Port to access Afghanistan and Central Asia. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent outreach to Jerusalem underscores strategic convergence with Israel, and India has several times abstained on global calls for ceasefires in Gaza. Now that an Iranian ship has been attacked on international waters after it set sail after an invite from India, New Delhi is cornered in its silence. An overt tilt risks alienating Gulf partners and undermining India’s image as a voice of the Global South advocating multipolar stability.China’s calculus adds another layer. Beijing views Iran as a long-term strategic partner within its Belt and Road Initiative, securing energy supplies and maritime routes while counterbalancing US influence. A destabilised Iran complicates Chinese energy security but also diverts American attention and resources. Beijing is unlikely to endorse regime change; it prefers predictable, transactional stability. Russia, constrained by its war in Ukraine, nonetheless shares an interest in challenging US dominance and may exploit the crisis diplomatically.Inside Iran, the political landscape is complex. The recently assassinated Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei presided over a system blending theocratic oversight with republican institutions. Despite Western caricatures, Iranian society is heterogeneous, with vibrant artistic and intellectual traditions. Generational shifts and economic strain have fuelled periodic protests. External aggression often consolidates nationalist sentiment, even among critics of clerical rule. Assassination or forced decapitation would not automatically yield liberal democracy; it could instead unleash factional power struggles within the Revolutionary Guard and political elite.The broader international order appears frayed. If preventive strikes become routine instruments of policy, the normative prohibition against aggression weakens. War, in this theatre, offers no decisive victory. Israel cannot permanently eliminate Iran’s technological knowledge through airstrikes alone. The United States cannot re-engineer Iranian politics without sustained occupation, a prospect neither feasible nor desirable after Iraq and Afghanistan.For India and the wider Global South, the imperative is to revive diplomatic space. This does not imply naïveté about Iran’s regional conduct or Israel’s security concerns. It means recognising that durable stability cannot be bombed into existence. Multilateral forums, whether through the UN or ad hoc coalitions, must reassert the centrality of negotiated restraint. Energy diversification, strategic petroleum reserves and calibrated neutrality are prudent hedges, but they are insufficient substitutes for peace.The world stands at a precipice shaped by choices rather than destiny. Escalation may gratify immediate political interests, but it mortgages the future to perpetual insecurity. The ink of blood writes no stable treaties.Amal Chandra is an author, political analyst and columnist. His debut book, The Essential (2023), was launched by Dr Shashi Tharoor and features a foreword by former External Affairs Minister of India, Adv. Salman Khurshid. His research and commentary appear in leading academic and popular publications. He posts on ‘X’ at @ens_socialis. Gopikrishnan V. is a writer and geopolitical analyst who graduated from the Hindu College, Delhi University.