Jammu, June 25 -- A protracted conflict could endanger each Player's interests

By K Raveendran

Ever since Israel and the United States jointly launched strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities, de-escalation began to shape the contours of strategic discourse in West Asia. What was initially presented as a bold and surgical operation against Iran's suspected nuclear infrastructure quickly unfolded into something far more perilous, chaotic, and revealing.

For Israel, the ambition to eliminate or at least set back Iran's nuclear program had long stood at the centre of its national security calculus. A nuclear Iran, in Tel Aviv's reckoning, would be an existential threat. That notion drove countless covert sabotage operations, diplomatic ...