India, June 17 -- 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 long time; however, a decision taken by the now deceased military chief of Hamas, Yahya Sinwar, to conduct the terror attack against Israel on October 7, 2023, set in motion a dangerous domino effect across the region. Israel prepped for the current operations by dismantling the so-called Axis of Resistance, a potpourri of Iran-backed groups that played the role of frontline defence and offence for Tehran. Iran's nuclear programme has been subject to intense international diplomacy over the years. Western powers, over the decade, have tried to resolve this thorny issue using negotiations and pushing Iran to cooperate by mobilising a variety of sanctions against the country's economy and polity. Simultaneously, Israel has orchestrated a war led by its intelligence units to degrade Iran's nuclear programme and delay the time frame within which it could develop a bomb. While a lot of the narrative around the debate of nuclearisation deals with the impact a nuclear Iran would have on regional stability and security, it is also important to highlight that Israel is widely believed to be an undeclared nuclear power itself. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) estimates Israel to have approximately 80 nuclear weapons. The idea of disallowing Iran a nuclear weapon has much to do with maintenance of military and technological prowess in the region, something that is critical for Israel. And this is not just about Iran's nuclear capabilities. Recently, Israel has also been a roadblock for States like the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to purchase F-35 fighter jets for its air force from the US. Israel remains the only regional military operating the platform, giving it a significant advantage that has been on display against Iran. Reports suggest a near-total command of Iranian airspace by Israeli aerial power. However, it has been the clandestine warfare over the years that has built the capacities we see mobilised today. During the first tranche of negotiations on the Iran nuclear programme between the P5+1 powers and Tehran beginning in 2006, Israel, which has fiercely criticised any international attempt to allow Iran a strong nuclear foothold, launched multiple covert campaigns targeting Iranian nuclear scientists and military leadership, consistently showing that it had cultivated significant inroads within the Iranian society, polity, and military. Examples over time have included the assassination of Iran's top nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh by using an Artificial Intelligence (AI)-run automated weapon system in Tehran, the 2012 infiltration inside Iran's nuclear centres to find the smoking gun as evidence, and the more recent assassination of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in the centre of Iran's capital. For Tehran, absorbing the ongoing Israeli military campaign is a Catch-22 situation, which it has responded to by launching hundreds of ballistic missiles and drones towards Israel, but with limited strategic outcomes considering that Israel has eliminated top military leaders of the country. This includes Hossein Salami, commander-in-chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Mohammad Bagheri, Iran's highest-ranking military officer handling both the IRGC and the Iranian army, Ali Shamkhani, political advisor to Ayatollah Khamenei and a powerful figure across the country's political and military spectrums amongst others. Since the assassination of IRGC and Quds Force leader Qasem Soleimani by an American drone strike in Iraq in 2020, Tehran's regional response to such attacks has been calibrated both in part by design but also pushed by capacity limitations. In the current escalation, Iran's response has relied largely on its ballistic missiles which have managed to cause damage inside Israel, including civilian casualties. Options for Tehran not to act are limited, specifically with the kind of damage IRGC, its principal military force, has suffered. The long-term strategic aims for both Israel and Iran remain clouded. While a setback is imminent, the strikes by themselves may not be enough to push Iran to give up its nuclear ambitions. Furthermore, they will diminish the space for moderate politics in the country, further entrenching both current and upcoming political classes ideologically. Regime change, as many seem to predict, will remain elusive as only a popular movement or internal coup delivers such changes in a State. The probability of both is next to nil. The challenge for Iran moving forward will be immense with its reputation as a pole of power in West Asia severely dented by a much smaller adversary. However, both Israel and Iran may now look at a protracted war while Arab neighbours scramble to act neutral, and powers such as the US under President Donald Trump push Israel to do the bulk of the heavy lifting without their own direct involvement, making it truly a West Asia-owned crisis to escalate, mediate, and de-escalate....