The US and Israeli air strikes on Iran on February 28 took the Iranian authorities and most of the world by surprise because of the earlier optimistic reports about the progress made by the US and Iranian delegations in the indirect talks in Geneva with the mediation of the Omani foreign minister.
The strikes, undertaken in a blatant violation of the UN Charter and international law, further hastened the unravelling of the world order and the trend towards international anarchy. They also exposed the US as a power-hungry and power-driven country ready to commit acts of aggression against other countries in pursuit of its unjustified national objectives. The strikes, unfortunately, resulted in the decapitation of Iran’s top political and military leadership, including the martyrdom of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
In retaliation, Iran launched missile attacks on targets in Israel as well as on American bases in the Gulf region, leading to tensions in Iran’s relations with the Arab countries on the other side of the Persian Gulf.
The US attack on Iran was a reflection of its imperialist mindset. The US embarked upon its policy of imperialism in the 19th century with the announcement of the Monroe Doctrine in 1823, which basically told the European powers that the Western Hemisphere was closed to any further colonisation by them and that any such attempt would be considered a threat to US security. The doctrine, which was initially aspirational because of US military weakness, later became a justification for US expansionism and interventions in Latin America, especially under the Roosevelt Corollary, announced in 1904 by US president Theodore Roosevelt.
Under the Roosevelt Corollary, the US declared that it would act as an international police power in the Western Hemisphere, leading to interventions by American marines or warships in Latin America 21 times in the 30 years that followed the announcement of the Roosevelt Corollary.
President Trump has resurrected the Roosevelt Corollary through the Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, as given in the US National Security Strategy announced in November last year. According to the Trump Corollary, “the United States will reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere, and to protect our homeland and our access to key geographies throughout the region. We will deny non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets, in our Hemisphere”. The abduction of President Maduro and his wife by the US forces on January 3, 2026 gave the world a foretaste of what to expect from the US in the Western Hemisphere in the years to come.
However, US imperialism was not and is not limited to the Western Hemisphere. Since the end of World War II, when the US emerged as the dominant force in the Western world because of its overwhelming economic and military power, the rest of the world has also been the victim of American imperialism. Following the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991, the US became the sole superpower, thereby granting it greater freedom of action to assert its imperial ambitions through military interventions and regime-change operations in various parts of the world. The US invasion of Iraq in 2003 was a prime example of its imperialist exuberance in the post-1991 world.
Especially noteworthy is the history of US interventions in Iran in pursuit of its imperialist designs. In 1953, the CIA-backed coup led to the overthrow of Iran’s elected prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh and the restoration of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to power. In the following quarter of a century, the US forced Iran to grant extra-territorial concessions for the privileged treatment of its citizens, besides exploiting its vast oil and gas resources.
After the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979, the US encouraged Iraq under Saddam Hussein to invade Iran, leading to the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88) in which the US and other Western countries sided with Iraq. The US also subjected Iran to crippling economic sanctions to weaken its economy and force it to adopt a pliable attitude towards the US hegemonic policies in the Middle East.
Iran’s uranium enrichment programme, which was revealed by the Iranian opposition in 2002, resulted in the intensification of the US sanctions. Negotiations on the issue led to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in 2015, under which Iran accepted restrictions on its uranium enrichment programme in return for the easing of sanctions on it. Unfortunately, in 2018, during his first term, President Trump withdrew from the JCPOA, leading to a re-intensification of tensions in Iran-US relations.
The core issue responsible for the Iran-US enmity since 1979 is Washington’s assessment of Iran as a major obstacle to the realisation of its imperialist strategic goals in the Middle East. These goals aim at ensuring America’s hegemony in the region, its decisive role in the exploitation of the region’s vast oil and gas resources, its ability to control the vitally important trade routes passing through the Middle East, and the security of Israel as the US military outpost in the region.
Israel, thus, serves a vital function in America’s strategic calculations and for the projection and promotion of Western interests in the region. Israel itself views the Islamic Republic of Iran as an implacable foe because of the latter’s consistent opposition to its anti-Palestine and expansionist policies in the region. It is not surprising, therefore, that the US and Israel are closely cooperating in their attacks on Iran.
The American insensitivity to recognised norms of inter-state conduct under President Trump has been further exposed by his insistence that the US should have a role in the selection of Khamenei’s successor in Iran. There are also reports about the US encouragement to Kurds in western Iran to rise against the central government, thereby confirming the assessment that regime change was the real objective of the US and Israeli attacks on Iran. In any case, the US administration has failed to put forward any convincing justification for its attacks on Iran, which inevitably will have far-reaching adverse consequences for regional and global peace, stability and prosperity.
Pakistan must tread carefully in dealing with the dangerous situation developing in our neighbourhood. We have rightly condemned the surprise attack by the US and Israel on Iran on February 28. We have also duly expressed our regrets over the Iranian retaliatory missile and drone strikes on the US bases in the GCC countries. Ideally, the GCC countries should prevent the use of American bases on their soil for attacks on Iran, which should cease its own missile and drone attacks on them.
Further, in view of the risk of the further expansion of the conflict, we should consider undertaking a diplomatic initiative together with such major Muslim countries as Turkiye, Egypt, Indonesia, Malaysia and Saudi Arabia to persuade the parties to the conflict to de-escalate the situation and return to the diplomatic path for resolving their differences.
The writer is a retired ambassador and author of ‘Pakistan and a World in Disorder – A Grand Strategy for the Twenty-First Century’. He can be reached at: [email protected]
