The war on Iran is not another cyclical flare-up and “waiting for the public to take over complex political systems is not something that is fundamentally workable”, according to strategic expert Kabir Taneja.
“We are not in the West Asia of December 2025,” Taneja, executive director with the Observer Research Foundation Middle East in Dubai, told The Telegraph Online.
He framed the moment through the long arc of Iran’s post-revolution history. The 1979 Islamic Revolution under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini created the ideological architecture of the Islamic Republic. But it was his successor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who consolidated Iran’s position as a durable regional power over the past three decades.
“Khamenei really took Iran into a position of a regional power,” Taneja noted. His removal, he warned, has pushed the system into “a zone of the unknown".
Iran’s political order was built by Khamenei to survive external pressure. Despite aggressive rhetoric from US President Donald Trump suggesting that military force could catalyse internal political change, Taneja highlighted the limits of the rhetoric.
“The idea of using military force and then waiting for the public to take over complex political systems is not something that is fundamentally workable,” he said, calling the assumption “a ridiculous insinuation".
In his reading, the absence of visible mass political mobilisation inside Iran remains the key constraint on any externally induced regime change.
“Political vacuums cannot be filled up,” he said. “And all those political movements need strong figureheads. None of that exists right now.”
Washington’s unclear endgame
If Tehran faces uncertainty, Washington’s objectives seem no less opaque.
“No one knows,” Taneja said when asked about the Trump administration’s endgame in Iran.
Public messaging has emphasised overwhelming air power while simultaneously suggesting that political change must come from within Iran – a combination he described as strategically incoherent.
He outlined three possible explanations: a hurried blueprint, internal confusion within Washington, or Israeli success in drawing the US deeper into the confrontation.
“From an Israeli point of view, I think this was the only window they had,” he said.
Israel’s ambitions and their limits
Israel’s operational reach inside Iran, Taneja suggested, has been strikingly effective. The depth of its intelligence penetration, he said, appears “insane” and extends across political and military hierarchies.
Yet tactical success does not automatically translate into strategic transformation.
If Iran quickly installs a new supreme leader, he warned, Israel could find itself back where it started. “It will be a wait and watch,” he added, emphasising that reshaping Iran’s internal political order from the outside remains extraordinarily difficult.
Ultimately, he argued, "It's the people of Iran that are going to decide.”
The proxy chessboard
What makes the current moment particularly combustible is the collision of two fundamentally different military doctrines.
Israel, backed by the US, has relied on conventional technological superiority. Iran, recognising it cannot match that strength directly, built what Taneja described as an asymmetric ecosystem consisting of Hezbollah in Lebanon, militia networks in Iraq, support for Hamas, and the arming of the Houthis in Yemen.
“This is how they have been fighting,” he said.
But Tehran’s latest moves suggest its options may be narrowing. By reportedly targeting Gulf states in an attempt to generate pressure on Washington and Tel Aviv, Iran may have jeopardised years of painstaking regional diplomacy.
“They had normalised relationships with the UAE. Qatar was a close partner, and Saudi Arabia was normalised by Chinese mediation in 2023,” Taneja noted. “All of that is gone.”
The implication is stark: Iran appears to be acting under what it perceives as existential pressure. It is a mindset that has historically increased escalation risks.
The Hormuz threat and India’s exposure
For India, the most immediate danger lies not in missiles but in maritime chokepoints.
The Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly a fifth of the world’s oil passes, is now firmly in the risk zone. Reportedly, Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps senior adviser Ebrahim Jabari said on Monday, March 2, that the strait was “closed” and any vessel attempting to pass through would "be set ablaze”.
“Blocking or mining the Strait of Hormuz is going to be one of them,” Taneja warned, describing it as a card Tehran may yet play.
Compounding the risk, Yemen’s Houthi movement has signalled a potential return to attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea, raising the prospect that two of the world’s most critical energy arteries could come under simultaneous stress.
The result would likely be less about physical shortages and more about price shock.
“Supplies you can still manage from here and there,” Taneja said. “Pricing is something that is much more difficult to control.”
If crude were to surge past $100 a barrel, he cautioned, India, one of the world’s most price-sensitive energy markets, would face immediate inflationary pressure.
“That’s terrible news for India,” he said.
The deeper risk, Taneja suggested, is not a single dramatic escalation but a prolonged period of instability in which miscalculation becomes more likely and economic shocks more frequent.