The energy crisis across the world doesn’t emanate from the blockade of Strait of Hormuz. The crisis was caused by the blockade of the Strait of Conscience. It’s not the sea; the remedy lies in the crooked mind. Heads of state so desperately seeking oil and gas should first explain why seas and deserts are splattered with blood; why the air is filled with the stench of burnt bodies, why reason and are rationale strewn on the ground with dust and debris. Oil and gas are scarce because conscience and morality have vanished.Who are the prima ballerinas of this danse macabre? The same people who rejoiced over the Gaza massacre; those who killed, maimed and left the survivors to starve to death on the false pretext of fighting terrorism. They reached Iran with frightening credentials of butchery and brutality; they came with astonishing experience of deception and lies. They boast of sinking ships for fun; they threaten showering death and destruction from the skies and celebrate victim’s suffering. The dead and the alive in Gaza bear testimony to their cruelty. Threads from the same saga tied another set of people in grief. This time Iran before some other nation is hounded. One irrational man seduced by another into this carnival of destruction that triggered a global turmoil. While millions grieved and mourned, they gloated in a contrived sense of victory. As the Israeli minister Zeev Elkin confessed: “War against Iran is an enormous blessing for Israel.” The “blessing” for Israel, however, hasn’t delighted most of the people in the United States whose president enabled this catastrophic crisis. While American Intelligence chief Tulsi Gabbard struck down the logic of going to war, denying Trump’s claim that Iran was barely weeks away from making a nuclear bomb, top security officer Joe Kent resigned saying Israel forced America into this illegal war. Former US ambassador to Iran Chas Freeman said, “There are a lot of things wrong with this war from the beginning. There was no strategy. There was tactical hubris. This illegitimate war was not authorized by the Congress. It was authorized by Benjamin Netanyahu. It is supported by the Zionist lobby, not the American people. It’s being conducted with brutal savagery without any regard for constitutional law or international norms.”While many American politicians cutting across party lines have condemned this “illegal war”, scholars, foreign policy and security experts and celebrities have emphatically said that Trump was tricked by Netanyahu into this disaster. Many senators insisted that Trump did this only to escape the consequences of Epstein files. Top political scientist John Mearsheimer argued that Israel was addicted to war as it didn’t believe in political settlements and dialogue. He pointed out that Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff were Trump’s main advisers on Iran and both are considered to be part of the Zionist lobby and Israeli assets. Kushner, a businessman and Trump’s son-in-law, and Witkoff, a real estate developer, both Jews, were advising the American President on an issue that had the potential to shake and cripple the world. Is this acceptable to Americans and the global political leadership?Global response to the US-Israeli warThe world, fortunately, understood the absurdity of this war and spurned Trump’s threats and appeals to join the military operations. While Russia and China were not expected to support Trump’s madness, even traditional US allies like Britain, Canada, Italy, France, Germany, Japan took the conscientious decision of not falling into the Israeli trap. Countries like Spain, Norway and Turkey mustered the courage to censure the US and Israel’s audacity. Many leaders lamented bombing on over 50 hospitals, attacks on civilians and the horrendous murder of over 150 schoolgirls. Targeted assassinations of Iranian political leaders, religious clerics, scientists and professors also caused anguish across the world.The irrationality of the Trump-Netanyahu nexus has reminded the world of the threat posed to humanity by the Nazi Germany. Though Trump and Netanyahu hawked lies about the freedom of Iranian people from an oppressive regime, there is nothing moral or ethical in their ruthless operations. The inability of the Narendra Modi Government to explicitly dissociate India from the Trump-Netanyahu gang and condemn their illegal and immoral acts is a political tragedy that may have severe long and short-term consequences. What’s worse, this will erode India’s moral authority and trustworthiness.Keen observers will notice that India, which should have played a critical role in this explosive situation, has played its cards so badly that the majority of people now see us as a US-Israel lackey. After taking an inexplicable decision of not condemning Khamanei’s assassination, Modi has been talking to other Gulf nations and conveying Eid greetings instead of directly talking to the key players – Trump, Netanyahu and Iran – to persuade them to stop the war. If Modi tweets about Oman’s sovereignty, questions will arise why he did not talk about violation of Iran’s sovereignty. Russia exposed the hypocrisy of nations which condemned Iran for targeting oil and gas facilities by asking whether they questioned Israel for bombing Iranian oil depots. The Israeli attack on Iran’s energy resources was so outrageously unacceptable that even Trump felt compelled to dissociate himself from it. But India restricted itself to condemning the attacks by Iran. Modi looks like a miserable case of political dysfunction, having neither any clout, nor foresight. Sycophantic TV anchors’ desperate attempts to resurrect his Vishwaguru pretensions when a couple of ships passed through Strait of Hormuz sounded like a cheap joke. Modi and his advisers failed to see that this war had the potential of throwing up a new world order, triggering the decline of America as the sole superpower. Trump, from tariff tantrums to this foolish military misadventure, created an imagery of a monkey tearing up the silky fabric of American hegemony. Iran’s courageous resistance invented opportunities for China and Russia to refurbish their credentials as reliable global partners and both of them grabbed it with both hands. Modi was happy flagging off trains and addressing election rallies in this transformative phase of geopolitical dynamics.Whose losses? What harm has Kenya, one of the poorest countries in the world, done to the US? None! It was quietly struggling for survival with a per capita income of mere $2100 as against the US’s $93,000. Kenya is suffering a huge loss as tea worth $13 million is shipped through the Strait of Hormuz every week. Closure of the passage has left them in dire straits. Iran hasn’t created hurdles in the route out of choice. An irrational war imposed by the Trump-Netanyahu nexus forced Iran to retaliate in whatever way it could. Iran obviously doesn’t have missiles to hit America and hence it chose to force them to stop the war as soon as possible by targeting their assets nearby. Kenya is just one example; a large number of countries are going to suffer huge losses in addition to the soaring price of oil and gas. The crisis of cooking gas cylinders has already begun to torment citizens across India. Hotels and street vendors have started shutting down. Ceramic industries in Gujarat’s Morbi closed in the second week of war itself. Scarcity of fertilizer is looming large; agriculture will be hit hard. The less said about exports the better. Over 4 lakh tonnes of Basmati rice are stuck. Transportation costs have multiplied. Supply of helium from Qatar will hit Europe’s semiconductor and EV battery manufacturing. Mayhem in stock markets has already wiped out crores. Qatar will suffer a loss of $20 billion every year because of a cut in LPG production. West Asia has suffered losses worth $12 billion in aviation and tourism alone in the last 15 days. This is apart from the huge losses caused by destruction of infrastructure in Iran and other Gulf countries and Israel. All this could have been avoided if two men acted wisely. Yes, two men – Trump and Netanyahu – put the entire world in peril because of their own insanity and lust. All because they chose to close the Strait of Conscience in their small minds.Sanjay K. Jha is a political commentator.