By Osman Softic || 23 June 2025

India’s sinister alliance

In order to preserve the control of the Middle East, maintain western unipolarity and prevent geopolitical and geo-economic influence and reach of China, it was viewed as “necessary” for Israel to remove the Palestinians from Gaza as they were perceived as a demographic obstacle for the implementation of IMEC. This may have been a reason why a large number of Indian citizens are reported to have been fighting as foot soldiers in the Israeli armed forces in Gaza. It goes without saying that IMEC cemented an extraordinarily good relations between India and Israel in recent years, as well as India and the GCC monarchies and Greece.

This is also an additional argument to believe that India and Israel may well have deliberately colluded and staged the recent tragic Pahalgam terrorist attack in Kashmir, as a pretext for India to attack Pakistan, in order to change its hitherto restrained military doctrine into a more belligerent posture. It is also plausible that at least some countries working together on the implementation of IMEC corridor, may have deliberately duped Hamas in Gaza to undertake such a bold miscalculated move on the October 7, 2023, (the biggest prison break from Gaza concentration camp), in order to produce sufficient reason for Israeli unrestrained retaliation against Gaza, as a pretext to expel the entire Palestinian population from Gaza.

This is to make room for Israel and the United states, and its IMEC partners, to be able to move ahead with their IMEC plans, unhindered by the Palestinian resistance in Gaza. These conclusions are purely based on logical reasoning based on the available information from the public domain as the author is only a humble analyst and is not privy to any classified information.

Netanyahu’s extremist agenda

It is shortsightedness to view Benjamin Netanyahu as a lone rogue actor who escaped American control. On the contrary, as much as he has personal and legal reasons to continue his wars of aggression to escape trial, his such position makes him perfectly malleable material for the masters of the empire to blackmail and use him as their spearhead to achieve their goals.

Meanwhile they afforded him a chance to impose himself on Israeli extremist Jews in his camp, and those more extreme than him, such as Bezalel Smotrich, Itamar Ben Gvir or Daniella Weiss, as the messiah of Israeli people by offering his service in the quest to establish a greater Israel, between the two rivers, and to create a new order in the Middle East, a sort of Pax Judaica which will rule the Middle East unchallenged by “inferior” Arab or Muslim peoples.

It is not only geographical space “from the river to the sea” that we are often led to believe that Israel wants to maintain its sovereignty over while expelling the Palestinians from their ancestral land. Rather it is the entire space from the river Euphrates to the Nile River in the west, which is symbolized on the Israeli flag, the Star of David placed between the two blue bold lines (symbolizing two rivers).

Therefore, it is more appropriate to view Benyamin Netanyahu as an enforcer of a larger and wider, more sinister, western plans, for the Middle East rather than merely an embattled leader facing corruption charges trying to escape the prosecution, as we are often simplistically led to believe by the mainstream media in the west. Surely, Netanyahu’s personal fate plays a role but it is only a minor part of the larger puzzle rather the sole reason for his genocidal wars and aggression, aggression against Iran being the latest.

A double standard on nuclear weapons

In a modern world where international law is increasingly applied selectively, few things demonstrate the double standards of global politics and international system more blatantly than the issue of nuclear weapons. While Iran faced sanctions, threats, and now illegal Israeli airstrikes over its nuclear program; Israel, a country with a sizable nuclear arsenal remains beyond the reach of international accountability.

At the core of this injustice is the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of nuclear weapons (NPT), signed in 1968 and recognized by 191 countries. The treaty’s primary objectives are to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, promote nuclear disarmament and enable the claims. Of the signatories, only five countries, the United States, Russia, China, the United Kingdom, and France, are recognized as nuclear powers because they developed such weapons before the NPT came into force. All others, including Iran, have pledged not to develop nuclear weapons and have agreed to be monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Iran has been the most inspected country on earth by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). This nuclear watchdog allegedly abused its prerogatives and passed sensitive information to Israel secretly of Iran’s peaceful nuclear facilities, so Israel can target it by its missiles. India and Pakistan managed to acquire nuclear weapons in secrecy. Pakistan’s role as an indispensable ally of the US in its cold war confrontation with the Soviet Union enabled it to avoid US scrutiny, given Washington’s priorities at the time.

Iran, a member of the NPT, has for decades maintained that its nuclear program is exclusively for civilian purposes. It is subjected to strict IAEA inspections and has signed additional protocols, including the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which further limits its uranium enrichment. Israel apparently persuaded Trump to tear this deal apart in 2018.

Israel, on the other hand, has never signed the NPT, has never allowed international inspections, and has never officially admitted to possessing nuclear weapons, although numerous analyses and reports, including confessions by former Israeli officials, suggest that Tel Aviv possesses up to 400 nuclear warheads. The location and capacity of Israel’s nuclear facility in Dimona in the Negev Desert have been a matter of secrecy for years, with no international inspection except occasional reference and media reports.

Yet Israel has never been the target of sanctions, inspections, or military threats over its nuclear potential. Moreover, it has close cooperation with nuclear powers such as the United States and Great Britain, and its nuclear weapons are simply ignored in international forums. This apparent hypocrisy and disproportion points not only to a structural injustice but to a moral dissonance in global nuclear regulatory policies.

Four countries that are not members of the NPT (Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea) all possess nuclear weapons. But of all of them, only Iran, which is actually a member of the NPT and is subject to frequent and rigorous inspections and reporting, is the only target of constant accusations, threats and attacks. The answer lies in geopolitics, alliances and interests of the great powers.

Iran is politically and militarily opposed to American and Israeli hegemonic control and supremacy in the Middle East region, while Israel is a key America’s “attack dog” in West Asia, as colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, a former chief of staff of US Secretary of State Colin Powel, likes to describe Israel, the key ally of the US and the West. This means that the rules of the international order are not applied equally, but rather selectively, in accordance with the interests of the most powerful states in the system.

This exposes the nuclear hypocrisy at the heart of the international system. Those who follow the rules are punished while those who ignore them are protected. If the international community wants to preserve the credibility of norms like the NPT, it must stop practicing double standards. For as long as there is tolerance for the nuclear arsenals of some countries while punishing others for even peaceful activities, global security and trust in international institutions will continue to deteriorate.

Will there be peace in the Middle East?

Only the military defeat of the Zionist regime and the overthrow of Benjamin Netanyahu can bring peace to the Middle East and force Israel to resolve its existential issues through the world institutions of the UN. It is truly a miracle of God how the Islamic Republic defended itself at all and held on for more than half a century.

It can simply be called a miracle of history because in the last century, the Zionists managed to tame or mercilessly kill, suppress and destroy everything that appeared on the political scene throughout the Islamic world (leader, intellectual, movement, revolution). One Bosnian analyst has recently lamented that “Israel has the most powerful allies in the world who directly support it militarily while Iran has almost no sincere allies. Pakistan being an exception. Its principled stance in this war by the Anglo-Zionist coalition against Iran is even more impressive”.

Indeed, despite Pakistan being a close American ally in the past and by default a foe of Iran, it has recently reversed its position towards Iran, which is one of the most important political developments. It would be wise if the Arab monarchies would do the same. This would be a powerful message to the Zionist regime and Netanyahu’s genocidal cabal that the Arabs cannot be blackmailed into submission by Israeli nuclear arsenal, America’s threat of abandonment or technological Israeli superiority. One would expect these Arab monarchies to have generated at least some leverage with Trump by offering 4 trillion dollars of investments to the American president during Trump’s recent visit to the Gulf region, but it is very unlikely they were able to make this strategic shift.

Andreas Kreig, one of the most astute British young analysts of the Middle East also raised this question recently lamenting that it would be a high time for Arab countries in the Gulf to “stop being mere spectators”, I would add obedient slaves “and financiers” of regional order, imposed on them by Israeli Zionist entity, and become its strategic architects of what Kreig called “non hegemonic order based on interdependence”.

However, such an outcome has now been blown up by Netanyahu’s aggression on Iran. Krieg described the Israeli genocidal leader and a war criminal as “metastasized version of a “lawn mower” to a “chain operator”. It is now very clear that the Israeli genocidal leader was encouraged by his tactical earlier victories aided by western intelligence and weaponry against the Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria which emboldened him to dare to attack Iran, thus killing the Iranian-American deal before it could even materialize.

Krieg rightly concludes that the Gulf states prefer transactional statecraft, showering Trump with investment deals and luxury aircrafts while Israel uses coercive diplomacy and military brinkmanship. Israel, by contrast, has maximized the tools at its disposal (military and technological superiority, intelligence edge) to set the terms of Washington’s Middle East policy.

Israel now dictates a regional transformation according to the centrality of Israeli interests and interpretation of who the friends and who the enemies are. Hence his plans for a “regime change” in Iran, many regarded as fiction and lunacy, may well become reality. The Gulf states, however, may come to realization, that if Iran falls and becomes a dysfunctional state, this will have catastrophic consequences for the entire GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) region itself. The Shia Islamist networks are much older than the Islamic Republic of Iran, Krieg asserts. They operated in the Lebanese Civil War before the Iranian Revolution.

Without a central authority, these networks may become less accountable and less deterrable. In such a scenario, the emerging regional order would be one without balance. Israel, is a destructive would-be hegemon while the Gulf region will remain surrounded by hostile non-state actors, Hezbollah, the Houthis and various Iranian paramilitary groups decoupled from Tehran, should the Islamic Republic order fall.

The nuclear Iran

It is now much clearer as to why one of the most famous American theorists of realism in international relations late Kenneth Waltz argued in his latest piece, before his death, in Foreign Affairs Journal, when he wrote that Iran should be allowed to have a nuclear weapon, as according to Waltz this was the only proper solution for the Middle East to become stable region.

Allowing Israel to maintain nuclear monopoly is the greatest disaster for the region. Professor Walts was right. Iran should have a nuclear weapon. This would be the only deterrent against the irrational, supremacist and crazy regime of genocidal killers in Israel who are bent on upending the entire order of the Middle East to achieve theory supremacist domination and hegemony, while wealthy Arabs are blackmailed into silence and servitude being promised lollypops of Abrahamic peace agreements to enslave them and keep them under the Israeli spell od Lies and deceptions.

Israel in turn is heading towards the most extreme form of Jewish fundamentalism which has already isolated Israel in the eyes of many, except its American and European protectors blindfolded with their hubris of Israeli invincibility.  Such a state cannot be a healthy building block for a new regional order. The Gulf states must recognize that they are indispensable not just financially or diplomatically, but also strategically. They sit at the center of energy, trade, and the geo-strategic buffer zone between the Global East and West, as well as North and South. Their ability to mediate, to finance peace, to engage adversaries, and to balance great powers is unique. But they need to develop the confidence to use this power. The Gulf has a choice. It can rise to shape the future of the Middle East, or be left cleaning up its ruins.

And regardless of the outcome of this war, few can predict its end, Iran has already scored a great Islamic victory by daring to fire missiles at the ‘evil empire’ that has been shaking the Middle East for several decades. At least with this act, the Iranians have cleared their conscience for the helplessness of the Islamic rulers who have been looking into the bulging eyes of children in Gaza for almost two years while they are being killed helplessly and terrified by Zionist bloodthirsty thugs.

The fact that there is no public jubilation and cheering for Iran throughout the Arab-Islamic world is only an indication of how much fear of the Zionists has “got under the skin” of these nations. Perhaps they can be understood because they have lost all their wars with the Israelis. But surely the hearts of the disenfranchised Muslim masses, who have been groaning under the Zionist restraint of those regimes for a century, beat in silence with delight and bless the Iranians.

Unrestrained and illegal aggression against Iran by Israel while it is being applauded by duplicitous political west, whose interests Tel Aviv claims to serve, may be an attempt by the supremacist Netanyahu regime at establishing the so-called pax Judaica in the Middle East but it could result in a regional and global catastrophe.

Israel therefore must be stopped before it is too late.

Osman Softić is a Research Fellow at the Islamic Renaissance Front. He holds a BA degree in Islamic Studies from the Faculty of Islamic Studies of the University of Sarajevo and has a Master degree in International Relations from the University of New South Wales (UNSW). He contributed commentaries on Middle Eastern and Islamic Affairs for the web portal Al Jazeera Balkans, Online Opinion, Engage and Open Democracy. Osman holds dual Bosnian and Australian citizenship.