Sunday View: The Best Weekend Opinion Reads, Curated Just for You

We sifted through the papers to find the best opinion reads, so you won't have to.

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He Who Started War Must Stop

In his weekly column for The Indian Express, P Chidambaram explores the devastating humanitarian and geopolitical consequences of the United States of America and Israel’s war on Iran. He questions the legitimacy of Donald Trump unilaterally determining whether Iran should possess nuclear weapons, particularly in the absence of verification or adjudication by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Leave out the nature of Iran’s regime, notably oppressive, but focus on the people. What have they done to deserve the devastation? The US, egged on by Israel, alleged that Iran had stockpiled enriched uranium and had nearly completed the development of nuclear weapons. Mr Steve Witkoff and Mr Jared Kushner were deputed to hold talks on behalf of the US with Iran, enabled by Qatar. Apprehending the start of a war, Oman’s foreign minister rushed to Washington to assure the US that Iran had agreed to “zero stockpiling of enriched uranium” and had vowed to “never, ever possess nuclear weapons”. Brushing aside the assurance, President Trump abruptly terminated the talks and ordered the attack on Iran.

P Chidambaram, for The Indian Express

The war has sparked a global economic and political fallout, which includes, but is not restricted to, soaring oil prices and disrupted trade relations. Lamenting India’s partisan stance, Chidambaram opines that this recent episode has all but exposed the futility and moral cost of a war, as the principles of international law and order continue to erode.

Is There Method to Trump’s Madness?

Columnist Jamelle Bouie argues that Donald Trump’s decision to wage a war against Iran is bereft of strategic logic, if not entirely devoid of it. In his piece for The New York Times, he contends that the Trump’s administration is characterised by a White House environment of subservience, where he is surrounded by loyalists who shield dissenting views.

The presidency runs on information and that information, you might imagine, needs to be accurate. There is no way for a president to prioritize, decide and follow through if he does not have access to the facts and unvarnished intelligence needed to make cleareyed decisions. Naturally, Trump, who does not care to govern, has no interest in this kind of information, if he could even retain it in the first place. He prefers to act from his gut, which is to say, his most venal impulses.

Jamelle Bouie, for The New York Times

Citing a theory of political scientist Richard Neustadt, Bouie argues good governance needs informed leadership — a quality that is absent in Trump’s presidency. As a result, the American president is currently driven by impulse and personal ego as opposed to strategy, leaving the world to bear the unpredictable consequences of his actions.

The Ides of March

Invoking the symbolism of the ‘Ides of March’ from William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Gopalkrishna Gandhi draws a parallel between the ongoing conflict involving the US–Israel alliance and Iran and the ancient rivalry between Rome and Persia in his column for The Telegraph. He suggests that imperial ambitions have a way of returning in new guises across history.

We need to be aware of the Ides of March not superstitiously but super-intelligently to see the fatal folly of transborder, trans-vires, ultra vires ambitions. As India joins other nations and agencies working for de-escalation, we need to see the imperative need for this folly to end not just because killings must end, the suffering of innocents in the theatres of war must end, the serial extension of deaths of perpetrators, in the manner of the consuls and the senators of 44 BCE must not repeat, but because this war can do — and has already begun to do — more than what missile attacks can, through direct incineration. It can give the globe its worst-ever oil shock, its liquefied natural gas crunch and put all of us humans into a near-death experience of energy thirst. Worse, this war can swell into the ultimate of war-scorchings — a nuclear war. Believe me, I write this with fingers crossed, that dire drama may well take place before this column is printed. Israel, possessed of that vile technology, may well deploy it. And if it does, will other nuclear powers just watch saying tut-tut? They will not.

Gopalkrishna Gandhi, for The Telegraph

The former governor of West Bengal warns that the escalating tensions could result in a widening global crisis, as the ‘Ides of March’ is not merely a superstition, but a timeless caution about the destructive impulses of power. Modern leaders, he suggests, must recognise the perils of war before it spirals into a catastrophe of global proportions.

Does Trump Risk Turning America Into a Rogue State?

In his column for The New York Times, Nicholas Kristof argues that the USA and Israel’s war on Iran has eroded the global norms that were created in the aftermath of World War II, particularly the principles enshrined in the Geneva Conventions. The author invokes a thought experiment, wherein he says that if Iran had attacked the US from Mexico, America would strongly condemn such action, highlighting their moral double standards.

There are more practical reasons to oppose Trump’s war: Overall, it has not toppled Iran’s dictatorship and might have strengthened it. We helped install a younger supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, who may be even harder line than his father. Blockage of the Strait of Hormuz raises gas prices and threatens supplies of fertilizer. Despite immense cost in lives and treasure, both the American and Iranian people seem, for now, to be in a worse place than before Trump started the war.

Nicholas Kristof, for The New York Times

Beyond the humanitarian and infrastructural devastation, Kristof contends the greatest casualty of the conflict will be the erosion of a prolonged and sustained effort to seek restraint on the brutality of wars. Donald Trump, he argues, has not only aggravated global instability, but has also emboldened hardline forces within Iran.

Why India’s Calculated Silence on the Iran-Israel War Is Its Greatest Strength

Columnist Tavleen Singh rebukes India’s left and liberal intelligentsia for their criticism of the Indian government amid the ongoing conflict between the USA-Israel alliance and Iran. In her piece for The Indian Express, she draws on her personal experience during the Emergency under Indira Gandhi, where the Indian leftists supported authoritarian measures, while they have also expressed admiration for figures such as Mao Zedong and Joseph Stalin despite their well-documented records of repression.

Along with the noise that we hear from Indian leftists and jihadis, voices have started to be heard from officials who served governments in those ‘secular’ decades when the Dynasty ruled and people like me (privileged and highborn) made up the entire ruling class. These officials have been openly critical of the Modi government’s ‘silence’ on the war. They have attacked Narendra Modi personally for making India ‘irrelevant’ because of this silence. They make it clear that they would have liked the Prime Minister to openly condemn the attack on Iran.

Tavleen Singh, for The Indian Express

While India’s left has opposed Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s stance on the conflict, Singh opines that a neutral strategy is prudent, as it helps India safeguard national interests, while avoiding alignment with rivals such as China. She suggests the disapproval from the left stems from an entrenched anti-American sentiment, and not from a balanced assessment of the global situation.

Secret Missile Project That Once United Israel, Iran

In his column for The New Indian Express, war journalist Shyam Bhatia recounts the striking irony behind the current missile capabilities of Iran. During the 1970s, Iran, then under the reign of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, secretly collaborated with Israel on a mission to develop missiles, known as Project Flower, which was backed by Iranian funding and Israeli technological knowledge.

Today Iran and Israel are bitter adversaries. Yet, during the late 1970s they were quietly cooperating on military technology whose legacy still echoes in the region’s security crises. The existence of the programme first surfaced in investigative reporting during the 1980s and has since been confirmed by later historical findings. Subsequent research confirmed that the collaboration was real. According to the RAND study Israel and Iran: A Dangerous Rivalry, “in 1977, Iran and Israel began a joint missile development project known as Project Flower.”

Shyam Bhatia, for The New Indian Express

While the Iranian Revolution saw the two nations end their alliance and becoming adversaries, the legacy of the collaboration continues to echo in today’s conflict. Iran’s missile arsenal, shaped in part by that earlier collaboration, now stands poised against Israel itself, alongside the United States.

Does America Ever Learn The Lessons of History?

In his column for Deccan Chronicle, former diplomat Pavan K Varma contends the US has repeatedly ignored historical lessons by assuming states can be reshaped through external intervention. To establish his theory, Varma invokes the example of the United States’ support of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi despite mounting internal discontentment in Iran, which eventually paved way for the Iranian Revolution.

America seems to believe — and now even more so under Trump — that possessing overwhelming military and economic strength gives it the licence to do whatever it wants, international law be damned. It also suffers from the delusionary conviction that Western political models represent a universal template for all societies. When powerful countries openly contemplate overthrowing governments they dislike, they send a message that the rules governing international conduct apply only to the weak, not to the strong.

Pavan K Varma, for Deccan Chronicle

The author opines that the USA’s persistent intervention reveals a deeper strategic flaw in American thinking: the belief that military power can be universally imposed to engineer political outcomes. By pursuing a regime change, Donald Trump has undermined the very global order he claims to defend.

Everyone Has Trump’s Phone Number Now

Exploring another bizarre facet of Donald Trump’s unprecedented style of governance, Michael Scherer and Ashley Parker, in their piece for The Atlantic, describe how the personal contact number of the US president has now become an unlikely currency in Washington. Journalists, lobbyists and other influential figures now increasingly seek to bypass traditional channels and reach the president directly.

Since the United States first attacked Iran two weeks ago, Trump has answered more than three dozen phone calls from journalists representing at least a dozen outlets, including ABC News, Axios, CBS News, CNN, The Daily Mail, The Daily Telegraph, Israel’s Channel 14, Fox News, MS NOW, NBC News, The New York Times, the New York Post, Politico, The Times of Israel, The Washington Post, and, yes, The Atlantic. A journalist from The Washington Reporter, a small conservative outlet, has repeatedly called, and the administration officials say Substack authors have started to call, forcing White House staff to look up names they don’t recognize.

Michael Scherer and Ashley Parker, for The Athletic

The authors inform that Trump frequently answers the calls directly, as he relishes the freewheeling engagement with press. However, this also marks the erosion of official presidential communication, which has deepened the confusion and unpredictability that have come to define the Trump administration.

History’s Ironies: When Illegal Wars Get the Silent Vote

Reflecting on the geopolitical ironies in his column for Deccan Herald, former civil servant Gurucharan Gollerkeri highlights that modern conflicts, such as the one between the US-Israel alliance and Iran, are wrapped in the language of peace, even as they reproduce the enduring logic of power politics.

History’s deepest irony may therefore lie here: An international order created to restrain power risks eroding precisely when its principles are most needed. The silence of global leaders may be tactical. Or it may be symptomatic. If it is the latter, then the crisis is not only regional. It is systemic. And history, with its unforgiving memory, will record not merely who acted – but who acquiesced. The moral question will run deeper: did the empire of power expand because the conscience of the world fell silent?

Gurucharan Gollerkeri, for Deccan Herald

The author argues that the ongoing conflict has all but ensured a dissolution of a decades-long rules-based order, established after 1945. As powerful states like the US increasingly act beyond the constraints of international law and restraint mechanisms like the UN appear ineffectual, weaker states are left with no other choice but to seek protection under the patronage of stronger states.

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