Any rudimentary assessment of the US and Israel’s Iranian misadventure immediately brings to mind the US and the UK’s 2003 invasion of Iraq.But a more pertinent point in the timeline, at least more relevant today, may be the US invasion of Afghanistan, as retaliation for the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York.But it is not as if the US-Israel Iran attack parallels Afghanistan. In fact, 25 years on, it appears that the circle that started to be drawn in the 9/11 moment may be closing.The events that followed the 9/11 tragedy and the response of the US in Afghanistan went on to shape the world and dominate political and cultural global narratives for over two decades. The US and Israel’s war on Iran is having consequences, mostly unintended, which are taking the world in a completely different direction.1) The audacious terror attacks that destroyed the two World Trade Centers in New York stunned the world and quickly made Islamophobia mainstream. Samuel Huntington’s “clash of civilisations” was the go-to text and phrase.The US’s sympathetic view of Islamic militancy, driven by a utilitarian view, took a beating. It may have helped the US bring down the USSR, but after 9/11, it was a different story, and the tables had turned. It was a while before Mahmood Mamdani’s Good Muslim, Bad Muslim could breathe on bookshelves.Many reports have documented how crude, anti-Muslim sentiment got a big fillip. A 15-country report from Europe spoke of it as a phenomenon in as early as 2002. Lines around this got hardened globally. Contrast that with the US now attacking Iran, and Trump and his Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, using every metaphor in the book to make it sound like a crude Crusade redux. This is not cutting any ice. No leaf has been left unturned to make it blatantly about Christianity and Christian Zionism (recall Mike Huckabee’s interview with Tucker Carlson?).Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty.As most allies of the US in the region are also Islamic countries, the US administration has tried to make the attack’s purpose ‘Judeo-Christian’, but has been constrained in not making it ‘anti-Islam’. Trump called Iranians “animals”, but global opinion has never been so anti-war in a long time, and the polling bears testimony to that. Support for the war on Afghanistan in 2001 (termed “barbarians”) was 92% in the US. The numbers, at 41%, are at the lowest ever for a war waged by the US. The MAGA base, otherwise proudly racist, has been stridently unsupportive on this.Globally, most parts of the world, even India (which was an outlier to global support on the Gaza question and it became entangled with anti-Muslim sentiment in the country) have shown visible support for an Iran, which has surprised with its sophistication, resilience and ability to say boo to a bully. Shahed drones along with extremely effective and on point messaging, communication and diplomacy in the face of Trumpian Truth Social posts threatening doomsday, have struck a chord globally.2) A ‘western alliance’ was something the global map had assumed as a given, ever since the end of World War II. But as Shyam Saran has pointed out, this is the first time since, that the US was unable to get either NATO or Europe onboard. “This confirms the perception of there not being a West with a coherent identity and shared values,” Saran writes.The attack on Afghanistan in 2001 drew each one of its allies to the US’s side. Something has fundamentally broken on that. This is not a temporary ‘out to lunch’ rupture. The presence of China, with an overwhelming transformation as not just a factory of the world, but as the technological powerhouse, the builder of bridges globally, literally and metaphorically with a new push to BRI, makes consequences of that break look far more serious. The US’s dependability, even for its closest allies, is no longer a given for them. If MAGA’s resentment towards Trump for threatening the end of a “whole civilisation” is refreshing, so is Italian far-right PM Meloni and even France’s far-right Marie Le Pen’s assertion that the war must end, and that attacks on Lebanon by Israel are unacceptable.3) A corollary to the deep fracture in the ‘West’ is the loss of the West’s status as the standard dispenser of ‘values’ and consequently soft-power that the West was able to deploy. Countries so far content to treat ‘sanctioned’ Iran like a pariah state, are rushing envoys there. Even Iran’s neighbours, not its friends, are taking it seriously, studying not just its gumption, but its low-cost drones, its science and its deep manufacturing base that made its resilience possible.This is a different world from what was ushered in the face of the 9/11 tragedy. The West as a know-all, whether on how to organise the economy, finances (even currency), its films or even agit-prop is no longer the default position. Soft Iranian power is unintentionally on display even when you re-read the assassinated Ali Larijani’s CV with his two serious papers on Immanuel Kant – or hear from Iranian interlocutors on social media, articulating firm and coherent points of view and their goals. As Bobby Ghosh wrote on his Substack, the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Aragchi, has “even written a book called The Power of Negotiation outlining his philosophy of the craft”.So Chinese EV vehicles, Iranian drones or degrees possessed by their leaders, have suddenly put many more dishes on the global table. There are many that want to be seated there. There is no automatic deference to the US or Western supremacy that the West can take for granted any more.4) 25 years ago, as the planes crashed into the twin towers, Pakistan, by virtue of its mistaken pursuit of ‘strategic depth’ with the Taliban, immediately took the hit and got hyphenated, away from India, with Afghanistan as one of the two ‘Af-Pak’ countries. This pushed Pakistan down diplomatically and detracted from its stature.More so as neighbouring, but plural, diverse India was to emerge as a true showpiece of South Asia at the time and gain economic heft and prestige all the way till at least the middle of the 2010s. Pakistan has broken free of ‘AfPak’, as political scientist Niloufer Siddique argued in Chalkboard Politics. The way the war on Iran has unfolded, that is no longer where Pakistan sits. Following Pakistan and India’s four-day war in 2025, the then unpopular Pakistan military establishment has emerged on the right side of the Trump administration and slowly boosted itself domestically and internationally. But as the Iran war unfolded, Pakistan has seen an exponential leap in its stature.Analysts like Sushant Singh have written in Foreign Policy that this may also result in a formidable new regional block consisting of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkiye and Egypt. Pakistan would be central to that new architecture. Also, Kaiser Kuo in a new series, Missing Voices: Critical Thinking in the Time of a Polycrisis, says, “any talk of post-Western plurality has to be tempered by the reality of Chinese centrality” to what will emerge. There is no doubt about that.All this is happening in India’s backyard. The reconfiguring of its immediate universe has serious implications for India today and there are many lessons lying there to be learnt. What is not clear is if they will be. Already, apologists for the Modi government trying to shield vishwaguru from the obvious marginalisation, are saying that this is “not our war”. But India has not been ‘neutral’. Modi’s sudden visit to the reviled and controversial prime minister of Israel, Bibi Netanyahu, just 48 hours before Tehran was attacked by Israel and the US has made it clear that India had actually picked a side, even if it meant embracing a war criminal and getting a fake medal.‘New’ India’s own politics makes its acceptance of this nascent new world difficult. As that would mean the Modi government saying goodbye to its own ideologically driven agenda to use Zionist principles to fundamentally recast plural India.Contrary to what Indians close to the establishment would like to project as ‘strategic autonomy’, this has been about the Modi government choosing not autonomy, but the wrong side of history. Strategic ‘silent embarrassment’ was the only outcome possible from its choices. This war has many losers. But India must course-correct and now not lose the peace.This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire – and has been updated and republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.