FOUR recent pieces on the Iran crisis by eminent commentators writing in the New York Times are worthy of reflection for the distinct perspectives they bring. For instance, American President Donald Trump’s fantasy is crashing around him, says Lydia Polgreen. Trump thinks “America’s awesome power means it is unfettered by any rules, untroubled by any consequences”. Perceived to be “blessed by geography and protected from its enemies by two vast oceans, why shouldn’t it do what it will?”

In the wake of negotiations that were ongoing, a reckless war was launched by the US and Israel when they killed Iran’s top leader on Feb 28 with the ostensible aim of regime change. A disciplined and well-armed response by the Iranians was not anticipated. Their missiles and drones have not only targeted Israel but have also hit US military bases and oil refineries in Gulf states including Qatar, Bahrain, the UAE, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Airports, hotels, data centres and energy infrastructure have been struck. The Strait of Hormuz, crucial to the export of oil and gas, stands inoperative, crippling energy markets. The bubble of secure investment havens in the Gulf has burst.

America’s major conflicts since World War II have taken place in nations that, according to Polgreen, were “on the economic periphery” — Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq. The current US-Israel attack on Iran is unfolding in a crucial global financial centre. The Gulf is home to about half of the world’s proven reserves of oil, which now stand imperilled. Polgreen points out that a fifth of the global LNG comes via the strait, chiefly from Qatar. Liquefaction facilities are shut, with dire implications for importers in Europe and Asia. Trump has ominously declared the war could go on “forever”. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth declared “death and destruction from the sky all day long” over Tehran, whose population is around 10 million. He said it “was never meant to be a fair fight. We are punching them while they’re down, which is exactly how it should be”. Polgreen is reminded of poet Aimé Césaire’s words: “The hour of the barbarian is at hand. The modern barbarian. The American hour. Violence, excess, waste, mercantilism, bluff, conformism, stupidity, vulgarity, disorder.”

The war launched by the US-Israel combine against Iran has led to worrying questions and scenarios.

Conservative Bret Stephens has debated four scenarios vis-à-vis Iran. Regime change, he says, remains the “most optimistic” scenario, with the “resumption of the mass demonstrations that the regime bloodily stamped out in January … rising to tear down their rulers’ enfeebled apparatus of repression”. Next, according to him, is “regime modification”, where the present rulers remain but comply with US-Israeli demands. He feels that the “new Khamenei’s reign may be very short-lived”. He cites “vulnerability and isolation” especially if American forces seize Kharg Island that accounts for nearly 90 per cent of Iran’s oil exports. This could cripple the regime which would abandon uranium enrichment and wouldn’t be able to support its proxies in Lebanon. The third scenario, not so palatable to Stephens, entails some sort of a “mutual ceasefire declaration”, with all sides proclaiming victory. However, the hawks will say Trump did not achieve Iran’s “unconditional surrender”, and had no hand in choosing the regime’s next leader. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would fall short “of his decades-long dream of toppling the mullahs”. The new Iranian leaders would claim that the “resistance” they embody “proved stronger than the Great and Little Satans combined”.

This scenario suggests that the regime will exist in a “zombified state”, leading to his fourth scenario, and warning, of “state collapse”, “in which the regime would survive in some areas of Iran, fall in others, invite foreign intervention and lead to killing on an epic scale”. The Israelis would prefer a fractured Iran but for the US and its Arab allies, it would be a persistent problem. Stephens’ prescription: “Seize Kharg Island. Mine or blockade Iran’s remaining ports. Destroy as much Iranian military capability as possible … destroy what is left of Iran’s nuclear capacity and know-how”. This is considered the “most realistic path to victory at the lowest plausible price in lives, risk and treasure”.

Thomas Friedman wants politics, not bombs to be the key to Iranian solution. He questions whether the Iranian regime can be removed “without plunging the entire Iranian landmass, about a sixth the size of the United States and home to 90m, into chaos?” He cautions against massive disorder and wants a way forward — one that is based on humility. He wants Trump and Netanyahu to “take their military achievement and call it a day, at least for now”. This war was started by the US and Israel “without any clear endgame in mind”. Netanyahu, he suspects, would be eager to “turn Iran into another big Gaza”. “Keeping Israel at war with Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah enables Netanyahu to drag out his corruption trial and avoid a commission of inquiry for his failure to prevent Hamas’s Oct 7, 2023, invasion. (If you think that is too cynical, you don’t know Netanyahu),” he writes.

Finally, in his guest essay for NYT, author Reza Aslan, who lived in Tehran as a child before immigrating to the US says that freedom and democracy won’t be delivered by missiles. As a child, he “carried an image of America as something almost mythic. It was not just a distant superpower. It was a moral force, a place that corrected wrongs, defended the vulnerable, tipped history towards justice”. When American leaders ask the Iranians to topple the regime, they may, according to Aslan, be “tapping into a powerful longing … yet, as recent history reminds us, regime change delivered from the outside rarely produces the democracy imagined on the inside”. He adds that “Iran’s political culture carries a deep sense of historical continuity and collective identity — a connection to a civilisation that predates modern states and whose stories of resistance and martyrdom run deep”. Aslan concludes: “Across three millenniums of poetry, philosophy, empire and renewal, this civilisation has outlasted conquerors and kings, clerics and generals … because its people endured — sustained by a fierce pride in their language and heritage.”

The writer is a former police officer.

Published in Dawn, March 18th, 2026