While covering the Iran-Israel-US war in June this year, I had concluded that: a) the combined US-Israeli attack had badly damaged the Irani nuclear infrastructure and ambition, without obliterating it, as President Trump had claimed; b) Iran will never abandon its nuclear ambition and will sooner than later acquire nuclear arms; c) the Shia arc stands eclipsed before a Sunni crescent given that Iran's 3H proxies (Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthis) stand militarily degraded, and its client state Syria is out of Tehran's orbit; d) in 'missile economics' Iran retains the capability to target Israel with precision using cruise and ballistic missiles and that threat remains; e) contrary to Western expectations, Iranians rallied around clerics whose grip on power remains firm 'for now'; f) the battle redefines the nature of warfare, especially the non-contact conflict, particularly for India and Pakistan. Population on both sides must now contend with intense psy ops; and g) 'counterintelligence' and espionage emerge as niche force-multipliers in warfare.

An eminent US scholar of Irani descent, Prof Vali Nasr recently published his new book, Iran's Grand Strategy: A Political History. The venerable professor, who has visited Pakistan and has previously worked with Richard Holbrooke, is a keen observer of the region. His MIT/Harvard educated father, Seyyed Hossein Nasr is also a respected scholar of Islam and a former professor at George Washington University. Mr Hossein has undertaken critical work on Allama Iqbal.

Back to the work of Prof Vali Nasr, who concedes Iran's role in almost every crisis in the Middle East, that has caused 'serial humiliations' to........

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