India, June 16 -- Israel has initiated a wave of military strikes against Iran targeting the country's nuclear programme in a bid to delay Tehran's march towards becoming a nuclear weapon State. Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has justified his decision to initiate the kinetic option, terming the Iranian nuclear programme as an existential threat. Iran, in response, has called these actions a "declaration of war".

While the world has been consumed with a wide gamut of conflicts and geopolitical shocks, this latest round of castling between the Jewish State and the seat of power for Shia Islam is, in fact, a decades-old shadow war coming out into the open. Both Israel and Iran have been targeting each other's interests for a lo...