Bogey of a religious war
SHIA-Sunni. Arab-Persian. Jew-Muslim. Christian-Muslim. These are false binaries being thrown into the mix in the context of the war on Iran, and it’s been this way since well before the build-up to it. The binaries serve to obscure the nub of the matter, the real stand-off, which has its roots in 20th-century colonialism. Those roots are being nourished and nurtured by post-1990 unipolar imperialism. This is a war that wouldn’t have happened had Israel not usurped Palestinian homeland at will in 1948 and 1967, while continuing to “mow the lawn” in Gaza and West Bank.
Iran last week celebrated Quds Day in the middle of carpet-bombing raids by Israeli and US warplanes. The day marks the primacy Khomeini’s Iran set on the liberation of Jerusalem for Palestine. To support the quest, Khomeini set up an elite Quds Force. There’s a heart-tugging clip you could see of an Iranian woman and her two-year-old child at the Quds Day march through Tehran where President Masoud Pezeshkian also showed up.
She was asked if the war had impaired her ability to change the child’s nappy in the absence of readily available clean water. Her reply was jaw-smacking: “It’s not a bigger problem than the children of Gaza have been facing for years. God willing all will be well and we shall win.” The Palestinians are Sunni Muslims, and those that aren’t are Christian. And this was a chador-clad Shia woman praying for the freedom of Palestine. Figure that out.
This is a war in which Iran’s objectives are nothing if not reasoned and secular. Of course, Israel too, which cites biblical support for its dream of a Greater Israel, from the Nile to the Euphrates, is in fact simply drooling for some more of the arable land to hedge against a looming environmental catastrophe of which it is a foundational part. Which country other than the one of Israel’s dreams is flanked by two mighty rivers as borders? Plundering the occupied River Jordan, giving the Hashemite kingdom a trickle, and evicting Palestinians from the West Bank are part of the story. Israel may never quite be able to get there, but it fancies the dream. It helps rally support for the ruling right-wing coalition in the coming elections.
This is a war in which Iran’s objectives are nothing if not reasoned and secular.
It’s a similar motivation driving Narendra Modi when he lays claim to Pakistan’s bilaterally settled water resources. The Indian mask is ultra nationalist, but the motive is copycat Israel-like water theft it cannot, however, carry out without a stiff challenge from across the border. Ergo: climate change can and will unleash water wars.
As for the Americans, Israel’s Zionist-controlled media behemoths have worked relentlessly to rekindle the sectarian hate from which they have struggled to come out since the 1960s. However, Christian Zionists who back Donald Trump’s war are a spurious category. Their eventual dream is to convert their Jewish friends to Christianity when the time comes. That’s what Christian Zionists hope for — if and when the promised time comes.
But none of these religious, racist or ethnic tropes explain the triad of Venezuela, Russia and Iran being in the crosshairs of currently raging conflicts in which the US has a direct or indirect hand. The blowing up of the Russian gas pipeline to Europe, the seizure of Nicolás Maduro and his wife from their home in Caracas and the assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as a botched prelude to regime change, all plied an eventually secular objective — to seize critical oil resources, particularly so at a turbulent time for American economy. Seize the oil where you can and disrupt its flow where you can’t. Right-wing warmonger Lindsey Graham didn’t hesitate to link the idea of regime change in Iran to his appetite for lucre. “We’ll make lots of money,” he claimed confidently. That was before Iran hit back very hard.
Iran is not a proselytising country. In fact, Khomeini effected important changes in Shia traditions to help cast the revolutionary net wider. He actively encouraged the congregational Friday prayers. He used the handy pulpit not to convert anyone to his religious views, but to exhort the predominantly Muslim masses to overthrow autocratic rulers as he had done in Iran. In this, he courted Palestinians and Sunni Arab mass movements under the aegis of the Muslim Brotherhood. It is this bond that terrifies the autocrats. But don’t forget these rulers were equally petrified of secular Saddam Hussein whose end they celebrated even though Iraq that day came under the rule of its overwhelming Shia majority.
The target glued on Iran’s back by the US has more reasoned explanations than offered by recourse to religious or ethnic references. We can figure out part of the reason from the company post-revolutionary Iran has kept. Nelson Mandela arrived for his first meeting with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran in July 1992 and greeted the host thus: “How are you, my leader?” News of the 1979 Revolution was an inspiration for Mandela in prison. That’s what the two discussed.
Then came Fidel Castro to greet Khamenei, the biggest American bugbear. Both stressed independence, sovereignty and a common opposition to the United States. Khamenei said Iranians loved the Cuban nation for its “resistance against the American bullies”. Castro praised Iran’s 1979 Revolution and declared that the US “imperialist king will finally fall”. Khamenei told Castro that Iran viewed the US as the “embodiment of arrogance” and that resistance to bullying is considered a valuable religious and ethical principle.
Khamenei also noted that he first met Castro in Zimbabwe to discuss their shared belief in “relying on the people” to run the country. Which means Robert Mugabe was another member of Iran’s mutual admiration club. One is not sure about Maduro, but Hugo Chávez met Khamenei several times. This war could also be one of envying that bond.
The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.
Published in Dawn, March 17th, 2026