Monitoring Desk: “It is high time for Iran to conduct a reality check and make a clear threat assessment. There is a group within Tehran’s power corridors that is infatuated with the idea of a westward alignment. These voices are generating strategic ambiguity and unnecessarily putting Iran at risk.”.
This was said by Dr. Shazia Anwer Cheema, a Pakistani geopolitical analyst, author, and foreign affairs expert, in her interview with Gülnar Səlimova of Globalinfo.
Important points of her interview are as follows:
As far as winning and losing are concerned, Israel turns out to be the loser in this twelve-day war. The façade Israel created about its invincibility and impunity has been shattered. However, in my opinion, Iran too has suffered a severe blow due to its strategic ambiguity while navigating between the Global South and the Global North.
Iran’s reluctance to include a security umbrella while signing the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership with Russia has caused serious damage. The decision not to purchase the S-400 system from Russia also proved to be a major strategic misstep.
The level of infiltration within Iranian intelligence should have been rectified at least after the security lapses related to the assassination attempts on Ismail Haniyeh and Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah. Instead, Iran retained the same intelligence structure, which ultimately manifested in a massive assassination campaign inside the country.
Netanyahu has made it explicitly clear that Israel is seeking a “Libyan solution” for Iran—meaning leadership decapitation and regime change. The nuclear issue is, in my opinion, secondary, and Iran bears responsibility for it. By deciding to enrich uranium up to 60% and claiming it was for peaceful purposes, Iran essentially made itself a nuclear threshold state without actually acquiring nuclear weapons. This naturally provided the pretext for JCPOA I and II. On top of that, Iran fell into the trap of negotiations and allowed the IAEA inside the country, which, through Plantier and Mosaic, allegedly gathered data and shared it with the US and Israel.
Baku has strong ties with Israel, and fostering a similar relationship with Iran could create a situation where Iran might consider Azerbaijan a potential mediator. However, as far as I know, Iran harbours considerable resentment towards Baku, and under the current circumstances, it is highly unlikely that Iran would agree to such an arrangement.
The attacks on the three nuclear facilities were, in my understanding, symbolic—as was the counterattack on the US airbase in Qatar. Both targets were reportedly evacuated beforehand and sustained minimal damage. As far as Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile is concerned, circumstantial evidence suggests it is safe at some undisclosed location.
As I have stated earlier, Iran’s decision to become a nuclear threshold state without proceeding to weaponisation has proven fatal. Now, Iran is left with two choices:
- Build its nuclear deterrent;
- Agree to the Chinese and Russian proposal and sign a holistic security deterrence package.
As Trump tries to navigate between the MAGA base and Israeli hardliners, symbolic attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities may suffice for the MAGA crowd, alongside amplified rhetoric about obliteration. However, the Zionist lobby around Trump is dissatisfied with the diplomatic camouflage of a regime change operation. They want complete surrender and the Balkanisation of Iran—a dysfunctional, Syria-like state, easy to manipulate and manoeuvre. Thus, Trump is under pressure to attack Iran again, albeit under the pretext of targeting its nuclear programme.
Iran has already been sanctioned enough, yet it has survived. New sanctions will not impose any significant additional burden. What Iran must understand is that its future lies within the region, and the hope that the West will abandon its long-standing strategy of destabilising the region to leverage Israel is a fool’s paradise.
