(Part 4)
Barbarian War: A War Without Morality
On 2nd March 2026 the American Secretary of War oops Defence declared the policy of USA in this war with Iran:
No stupid rules of engagement, no nation building quagmire, no democracy building exercise, no politically correct wars. We fight to win and we don’t waste time or lives.
The implication of this war without rules were demonstrated by USA in Indian Ocean. Iran demonstrated it in its neighborhood.
IRIS Dena Sunk
The frigate was torpedoed on March 4 by a US submarine using a Mark 48 torpedo. It was returning home after India’s MILAN 2026 naval exercises. The ship was in international waters, approximately 40 nautical miles off Galle, Sri Lanka. Hegseth called it “quiet death.” No survivors rescued. No warning given. An unarmed ship fresh from India’s naval exercises. This did not happen due to a bug in war strategy. It was the strategy itself. Hegseth declared it openly from the Pentagon podium. Geneva Convention is no more applicable in this war. Both sides are in tacit agreement to its applicability. It is a war without morality.
The ship may have been unarmed as Milan exercises required “peace protocol.” Iran’s ambassador to India said the vessel was “unarmed and in a regular maneuver at sea.” Sri Lanka responded to May Day call from the ship. Sri Lanka recovered 87 bodies and rescued 32 sailors.
Iran retaliated with attack on Azerbaijan.
Attack on Gulf
Iran has been attacking all the gulf countries hitting civilian targets. In past 7 days it has attacked 14 countries so far. It is also alleged to have hit missile radars in Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Attacks had brought the air traffic in gulf to a halt. It has been partially restored but gulf can be assured of no incoming traffic of tourist for quite sometime. Economy of Dubai will bear maximum brunt.
Iranian drones struck Azerbaijan’s Nakhchivan, hitting an airport terminal and a school building and injuring civilians. Azerbaijan’s president warned of retaliatory measures. Iran denies it, but nobody believes that denial.
QatarEnergy halted LNG production after its facilities at Ras Laffan were hit, sending gas prices soaring across Europe and Asia. Qatar is a US ally. Its energy infrastructure is burning anyway.
India’s Diplomacy
India’s position is extremely delicate. In part one of this article, I had argued that date of attack that is 28th February 2026 was not a co-incidence. It was sequential to the visit of PM Modi to Israel in which he unconditionally expressed support to Israel against war on terror. He unequivocally expressed solidarity with Israel on the terror attack of 7 October. No more words were needed to understand what happened thereafter.
On March 5, 2026, after four days of silence, India’s Foreign Secretary signed the condolence book at the Iranian Embassy. External Affair Minister, Jaishankar spoke with Iranian Foreign Minister Araghchi by phone. The silence drew sharp domestic criticism. The IRIS Dena was literally a guest of India’s navy days before being sunk. India was forced into this situation.
Iran’s Foreign Minister has refused any ceasefire and refuses to negotiate with Washington. Iran is not breaking. Iran will live in caves without surrender, as predicted earlier.
The Air Supremacy Paradox
Tehran’s sky turned red with fire last night. Missiles struck it all night. Yet American leverage is overestimated again. Airpower can destroy hardened facilities, degrade military capabilities, and kill commanders. It cannot reorder domestic politics anywhere and certainly not in Iran.
The US controls the sky above Iran completely. Yet Iran controls what matters right now more than airspace. It controls the economic nervous system of the world.
Strait of Hormuz:
Only five total vessel crossings were recorded through Hormuz, far below baseline levels. Over 150 ships anchored outside the strait. Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd suspended transits entirely. Brent crude rose 10 to 13%.
The Strait of Hormuz is not formally closed. But insurance withdrawal is doing the work that physical blockade has not. The outcome for cargo flow is largely the same. This is Iran’s masterstroke. It does not need to win a single battle. It just needs to make the water uninsurable.
Major insurers including Gard, Skuld, NorthStandard, and the London P&I Club cancelled war risk cover effective March 5. War risk premiums have risen from 0.2% to 1% of a ship’s value per transit. That is not a risk premium. That is a prohibition dressed in financial language.
Ships rerouting around Africa’s Cape of Good Hope adds 10 to 14 days to Asia-Europe voyages and boosts fuel use by nearly 40%. Container costs from Shanghai to Genoa have tripled since Operation Epic Fury began.
The Tariff Parallel
With tariffs, Washington assumed economic pain would force compliance. Countries adapted, rerouted, and found workarounds instead. The leverage was real but the outcome was not.
Here the same miscalculation is repeating. The US assumed kinetic dominance would produce political collapse in four weeks. Instead Iran has effectively collapsed world trade without winning a single aerial engagement.
Time Line
President Trump may have given timeline of four weeks. Hegseth extended it to eight weeks in his speech. Reality is nobody has a timeline. This starters may had a plan to start with, now the war has taken control of administration of war. The next move will be decided on daily basis by actors of war.
Shoshana Bedrosian, is the spokesperson for Israel Government, said in an interview with News18 that it is difficult to give any revised timeline for the war.
This the fear I had expressed in part 2 of this series of articles on war on Iran. But my guess is that behind the public posturing of regime change, there is another plan. That I will discuss in part 5 of this article.
The Deeper Problem
America’s leverage in both tariffs and this war rests on the same assumption. That the other side values normalcy more than resistance. Iran does not. It never has. A regime that survived eight years of war with Saddam, decades of sanctions, and multiple assassination campaigns does not have a normalcy preference to exploit.
Iran’s attacks have gone beyond Israel, striking multiple countries in the region, disrupting civilian life across cultures and faiths that have nothing to do with this conflict.
The war without morality is also a war without a pressure point. That is World’s real problem right now.
America is so faraway, its civilian population may not feel the hurt of war directly but it will feel the pinch of strangled world economy very soon.
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