Apr 01, 2026 11:11 am IST

On April Fools' Day, A Reality Check For US, Iran And The World

The paradox is this: Iran wins simply by surviving, while the US must achieve a far more overwhelmingly convincing result to claim success.

Shashi Tharoor Shashi Tharoor Dr Shashi Tharoor is a two-time MP from Thiruvananthapuram, the Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs, the former Union Minister of State for External Affairs and Human Resource Development and the former UN Under-Secretary-General. He has written 15 books, including, most recently, India Shastra: Reflections On the Nation in Our Time

Shashi Tharoor Dr Shashi Tharoor is a two-time MP from Thiruvananthapuram, the Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs, the former Union Minister of State for External Affairs and Human Resource Development and the former UN Under-Secretary-General. He has written 15 books, including, most recently, India Shastra: Reflections On the Nation in Our Time

As a new month dawns, the confrontation between the United States, Israel, and the Islamic Republic of Iran has transitioned from a series of shadow plays into a high-stakes war of attrition. What began as a devastating campaign of maximum destruction has evolved into a kinetic reality where the definitions of "victory" and "survival" are increasingly at odds. In evaluating where the conflict stands today, one must look past the daily skirmishes and analyse the diverging strategic goals, the resilience of the Iranian state, and the looming threat of regional devastation.

A Fundamental Mismatch

At the heart of the current deadlock is a fundamental asymmetry in what each side is fighting for. For the Iranian leadership, the conflict is existential; it reached that threshold on Day One, when the Supreme Leader and much of his family were killed. History suggests that when a regime perceives a threat as a "war of survival", it gains a grim kind of domestic strength. Despite internal dissent and economic hardship, the external pressure from the US and Israel has, for the moment, allowed the regime to consolidate its grip on the military apparatus and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The "horizontal escalation" doctrine, under which Iran dispersed its military authority in a "mosaic" pattern to independent regional commanders,........

© NDTV