Three weeks into a war that began on 28 February 2026 with joint US-Israeli strikes on Iran, the Middle East conflict has spiralled into one of the most dangerous regional conflagrations in decades. In an unprecedented escalation, Iran has attacked all six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, for the first time in history.
Targets have ranged from US military bases to civilian airports, oil refineries and residential buildings. The Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly a fifth of the world’s oil passes, has been effectively brought to a standstill, with vessel traffic grinding to a halt.
US President Donald Trump, expressing surprise that Iran had struck neighbouring Gulf states, has demanded allies dispatch warships to reopen the strait, a call that has met with open reluctance from Europe, Japan, Australia and others. With over 1,300 Iranians killed, civilian casualties mounting across the Gulf and oil prices nearing $120 a barrel, the world is watching a crisis with no clear end in sight.
The Human and Economic Cost
Among the casualties in the Gulf is an 11-year-old girl in Kuwait who died from shrapnel wounds and a woman killed after an Iranian assault on a residential building in Bahrain’s capital, Manama. At least one person has been killed in Kuwait, three in the UAE and 16 have been injured in Qatar. In Iran, at least 555 people were killed in the initial US-Israeli attacks, while nine were killed and 121 wounded in Israel.
Bahrain’s state-owned energy company Bapco declared force majeure after waves of Iranian strikes targeted its energy installations, while operations were suspended at Saudi Arabia’s largest oil refinery, Aramco’s Ras Tanura plant, following an Iranian drone strike in the area. Energy prices have surged, with oil making record moves nearing $120 a barrel.
The Fujairah Oil Industry Zone, which hosts the Middle East’s largest commercial storage capacity for refined oil products at roughly 70 million barrels, has been struck repeatedly, with fires reported this week. Trump, speaking from the Oval Office on Monday, admitted he had not been briefed that Iran might target Gulf neighbours, telling reporters: “No, the greatest experts, nobody thought they were going to hit. They were, I wouldn’t say friendly countries. They were like neutral. They lived with them for years.”
Allies Balk, India Negotiates and Iran Dares Trump to Act
Trump’s demand that allies send warships to escort oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz has exposed deep fractures in the Western alliance. German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius bluntly told reporters, “This is not our war, we have not started it,” capturing the mood across European capitals. Luxembourg’s Foreign Minister Xavier Bettel was equally direct, saying “Blackmail is not what I wish for,” adding that there were “no grounds to invoke Article 5” of the NATO treaty since no member state had been directly attacked.
Trump, meanwhile, warned that “it will be very bad for the future of NATO” if countries fail to police the strait and threatened: “Whether we get support or not, I can say this and I said it to them: We will remember.” Iran’s Revolutionary Guard hit back defiantly, with Brigadier-General Ali Mohammad Naini challenging Trump: “Didn’t Trump say that Iran’s navy has been destroyed? If so, let him send his ships into the Persian Gulf if he dares.” Amid this standoff, India emerged as a quiet diplomatic actor.
External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar told the Financial Times that negotiations between New Delhi and Tehran had allowed two Indian-flagged gas tankers to pass safely through the strait. Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi clarified that the strait was closed specifically to “tankers and ships of enemies and their allies,” not all shipping. The conflict has also taken a dramatic political turn inside Iran: Israel launched a new wave of strikes on Monday targeting infrastructure in central Iran after Mojtaba Khamenei was named successor to his late father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed on 28 February in the joint US-Israeli strikes.
The Logical Indian’s Perspective
What the world is witnessing in the Middle East is not simply a military conflict between rival powers, it is a humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in real time, with ordinary people, from the 11-year-old girl killed by shrapnel in Kuwait to the families sheltering in darkened apartments in Tehran, bearing the heaviest price for decisions made in war rooms thousands of miles away.
The fracturing of the Western alliance over the Strait of Hormuz reveals a deeper truth: wars launched without genuine multilateral consensus inevitably leave their architects isolated when the consequences spiral beyond their control. For India, a country that depends heavily on Gulf oil, is home to millions of workers in the region and has carefully built diplomatic ties with both Iran and the Arab world, this is a moment of profound responsibility. New Delhi’s quiet diplomacy in securing safe passage for its tankers shows that dialogue, not gunboat posturing, can yield results.
