The wake-up call from Islamic NATO

K N Pandita

knp627@gmail.com

As the Gulf oil began shaping a new world order, the oil-producing countries in the Gulf did not think that a boon could one day prove their disaster. That happened. Two of them met with a near-disaster situation and lost their supreme executives. The fate of a Latin American state in an identical situation is hanging in the balance.

Iran's five-month resistance against the United States challenges the myth of unipolar American dominance, and exposes the vulnerability of regional US allies. This conflict shatters the idea that Washington dictates global politics unhindered, while forcing satellite states in West Asia to reassess their security and defence strategies.

The strategic landscape across West Asia and the broader continent is shifting, forcing regional and global actors to adapt. Concurrently, international platforms like BRICS are gaining momentum, while Iranian strikes on U.S. assets within neighbouring Gulf states --- such as the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, and more recently Arbil in Southern Kurdistan --- compel these nations to urgently overhaul their security frameworks.

A noteworthy outcome of Iran's vow to undo the existence of Israel is that, in retaliation, dozens of its nuclear scientists, engineers, commanders and civilian officers have been eliminated. Additionally, Washington claims it has paralysed Iran's navy and air force completely.

Liberal segments of Iranian society, including the Leftists, nationalists and human rights activists, did raise a strong voice against the wanton destruction of valuable national intellectual power grid. The mass protests preceded the February 28 Iran - Israel conflict, which subsequently graduated to a tripartite conflict.

But the anti-democracy and regressively theocratic regime in Tehran repeated its 2022 mass suppression tactics with far harsher vengeance. According to credible private sources, more than thirty thousand people were done to death.

The US joined the war in support of Israel. Modestly informed about the long and deep-seated hostility of Iran against America's West Asian policy, President Trump was caught in a "do or not to do" syndrome about the Iran war.

He went on changing the goalpost every week. Iran said the difficulty in sustained talks with the US is Trump's inherent vacillation.

A reversal of anti-theocracy stance that had hitherto swayed the entire Iranian nation happened dramatically when President Trump, in his roving utterances, threatened to annihilate the civilisation of Iran if Tehran refused to surrender.

The die was cast. Overnight, the anti-theocratic Iran became an ardent supporter of the regressive regime. Millions of flags bearing old monarchical insignia disappeared from streets and were replaced with the flags of theocratic Islamic state. "Death to Great Satan" and "Revenge" slogans pierced the sky over Tehran.

IRGC got new oxygen. It targeted Littoral States, particularly those with American footprints. Pakistan was spared, though according to American official circles "Pakistan is more aligned than the allies." The real reason is Pakistan's nuclear capability and deep American strategic relations.

In intensifying hostility against the US-Israel combine, with an added front against Gulf countries, Iran made a fateful decision of closing the Hormuz Strait to bring pressure on the world community to impress upon the US to lift the blockade of Hormuz. However, contrary to her expectations, neither Russia nor China will fight her war. Great powers fight for themselves, not for others.

While the Hormuz conundrum remains unresolved, three prominent Islamic countries, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey, have signed a defence pact called the Mecca Defence Agreement on July 7. The agreement says an attack on any one signatory will be considered an attack on all three of them.

In a sense, it is the preparation for forming an Islamic NATO. Egypt and some other Muslim countries in West Asia are seriously thinking of joining the Islamic NATO. It is a reaction to the American interference in the Islamic countries in general and the formation of a united front against Israel and India, the two democracies committed to resisting the jihadist global campaign. Iran has opposed it, saying it is an American ploy to weld the Islamic world into a string to punish Iran that has not only defied the US but also mortified it.

Islamic NATO signatories have already begun to flex their muscles. Pakistan's Defence and Foreign Minister, Ishaq Khan, has publicly said that India is its number one enemy, conveying subtly that destruction of India is its priority.

Politics is a game of pragmatism. None of the West Asian Islamic countries with whom PM Modi has been gleefully fraternising in the last two decades will have a soothing word for India. With Saudi wealth, a robust and creative Turkish defence industry and Pakistan with nuclear capability and also its eagerness to subject India to sudden nuclear attack strongly prompted by China, India is in a great predicament security-wise. Imagine how naively Indian propaganda machinery has been trying to profile Pakistan in viciously negative terms. The Mecca Defence Agreement not only brings her to forefront as a strategically important country but also one filling her coffers from the most affluent monetary sources in the world, the Pentagon, the Saudi Arabian petrodollar boom, the hard currency remittances from Pak Diaspora world over and finally the commercial giants like the World Bank, IMF, Asian Development Bank etc. all of which are under the looming cloud of the US.

Islamic NATO is a harsh reality for world democracy. The only two democratic countries that have picked up the gauntlet are Israel and India. Actually, the world is divided among three poles: the Islamic NATO, the neutralists and the committed democrats. In the next one year or even less, the Islamic NATO will have as many members as the OIC has. All other conglomerates encrypting Islamists will dissolve into the Islamic NATO. Prof Huntington's prophecy comes true.

The echo of Islamic NATO has rapidly spread to vulnerable parts, and the revival of terrorist threats to Kashmir-based Hindu government employees in the recesses of distant Himalayas is its reverberation.