From Mossadegh To Multipolarity: Tracing Cold War Strategic Logic In The Iran–Israel–US Conflict
Ananya Dubey, B.A. LL.B. (Hons.), Symbiosis Law School, Pune
ABSTRACT
The Iran–US–Israel rivalry should not be read as a break from the past, but rather as a modern iteration of Cold War strategic dynamics recast for today's multipolar world. Cold War-era interventions were most decisively. Operation Ajax worked in embedding lasting structures of dependency and foreign interference into West Asian politics, shaping the postwar regional order in ways that persist to this day. The evolution of Iran's place in this order and the dramatic shift in Iranian identity in the 1979 Revolution created an Iranian axis and paved the way for the US-Israel-Iran triangle that still exists today. A brief overview of the current conflict in this context brings to light a series of Cold War paradigms: the use of alliances and strategic balancing between regional and global powers, proxy warfare and secret intervention as instruments of statecraft, and a changing security dilemma with the involvement of nuclear deterrence issues. These older mechanisms now operate alongside new pressures introduced by multipolarity with the chief among them being, the diffusion of power across competing global actors and the erosion of the bipolar discipline that once constrained regional escalation. The paper also places India in this context, examines its energy security concerns, oil price volatility, interest of its diaspora and aspirations of connectivity with its neighbours, and shows the need for India to engage in a delicate balancing act between competing powers. Based on realist, neo- realism and liberal perspectives, the analysis suggests that the current crises in the region are rooted in their Cold War heritage despite a change of actors and instruments, and that multipolarity has been more of an imprint of these inherited structures than a dissolution.
Keywords: Cold War legacies, West Asia, security dilemma, multipolarity, India's strategic balancing.
