DC Edit | Modi Must Push Bibi To Halt War; Gulf Attacks Must End

US President Donald Trump, who began the war against Iran in collaboration with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, must end it at once. What he risks otherwise is not only the global economy nosediving in the face of rising oil and gas prices but also losing support at home, where resistance to military action half a world away is building up as prices rise in fuel pumps as well as supermarkets.

The US-Israel offensive with air power may have caused considerable damage in Iran, besides taking down its top theocratic and military leadership, but Iran’s strategic shrewdness in waging asymmetrical warfare through drones and missiles has embroiled the whole region in a conflict the price of which all the world is paying. It is a small mercy that Mr Trump has seen through the tactics and asked Israel to stop targeting energy sites leading to temporary cooling in runaway crude prices.

A typical US overestimation of what political outcomes can be engineered with military power while not considering fully the likely fallout has been made clear in the war that is into its third week now. Iran’s ability to cause mayhem after the US hit military facilities at Kharg Island and Israel attacked the South Pars gas field is becoming obvious. The war is getting to a stage where Iran may have to decide to join in if Mr Trump accepts it is best to get out of this quagmire.

As Mr Netanyahu talks up the need for putting boots on the ground in Iran, meaning the US must consider this, the time might have come for Prime Minister Narendra Modi to hold a frank dialogue with the Israeli Prime Minister with whom he has a very good working relationship. It might be worth advising Mr Netanyahu that the Israeli war aims in the region may be its business, but everything follows a cause-and-effect pattern in an interconnected world and India is one of the countries severely affected by the Strait of Hormuz blockade.

Israel’s attack on an energy site in Iran has only brought retaliation in kind with Iran striking such sites like gas fields, refineries and oil dumps freely in many Arab nations and in Haifa in Israel. Such reckless attacks on energy sites as well as Iran taking aim at ships in the Strait of Hormuz and in the waters in the region will only lead to global energy costs going up and staying so for years.

The time has come to go beyond hitting Iran infrastructure and open the door for negotiations, including on Iran’s nuclear bomb ambitions. The only way forward is to talk so that the exemplary patience that Arab nations have shown thus far in not retaliating directly at a fellow Muslim-majority country in Iran does not run out and they begin to drag other powers in to make this the world war that humanity fears the likes of Nostradamus may have predicted.

European countries are coming forward now to try and keep the Strait of Hormuz open for free passage of ships of all flags. This could lead to more confrontations. The quicker all concerned come around to the view that a modern war fought in the air rather than conventionally and on the ground is unwinnable and only brings grief to all the better for the world that will take a long time to recover from what has happened in the three weeks since the Feb. 28 attack on Iran.