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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........

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