Amaresh Misra: Iran Forced Washington Into an Unprecedented Retreat

A Deal Washington Never Wanted to Sign

War historian and analyst Amaresh Misra told Nous that the peace deal ending roughly 110 days of conflict between the United States, Israel and Iran marks a genuinely unprecedented moment in the region's history, whatever happens next. The agreement, expected to be formalised in Switzerland with a full memorandum of understanding, includes a clause Misra said has no real precedent: a coming UN Security Council resolution in which the United States commits, in writing, not to attack Iran. "This is unprecedented, this has never happened before," Misra told Nous, arguing that no other country has ever accepted a Security Council resolution binding itself not to strike a state it was actively at war with days earlier.

Misra argued the clause reveals how desperate Washington had become to extract itself from the Strait of Hormuz standoff, where Iran's naval blockade had halted regional oil shipping. Even as the deal was announced, he noted, Donald Trump was already threatening to resume the war if a 60-day negotiating window failed to satisfy Washington "to my satisfaction," while Iran responded that it saw no reason to wait even that long if Israeli forces did not withdraw from southern Lebanon. Misra pointed to the scale of hidden Israeli losses driving the rush to a truce: by his account, more than 1,200 Israeli soldiers have been wounded and over 30 killed in fighting since early March, a ratio that suggests hundreds more casualties than Israel has publicly admitted.

Trump's Retreat From a Bigger Ambition

Misra situated the deal against what he described as Trump's original goal: not merely striking Iran's nuclear programme but occupying Iran's Kharg Island, its main oil export terminal, in a manner comparable to the administration's approach to Venezuela. Trump himself, Misra said, admitted days earlier that seizing Kharg Island had been the real objective, before conceding that the American public was not prepared to support it. Misra argued that domestic political constraints combined with an unexpected diplomatic isolation: Gulf states including Qatar were negotiating directly with Tehran, promising to halt gas supplies rather than risk Iranian retaliation, and Misra suggested Washington feared Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait and Bahrain would follow Doha's lead one by one if the war dragged on.

Iran as the Region's New Central Power

Asked whether the Western media's own description of Iran as the war's "clear winner" was justified, Misra answered without hedging: "Iran is the only power" in the Gulf now, he told Nous. He argued that for the first time since Israel's founding in 1948, a third party had driven a wedge between Washington and Israel, forcing Trump to use expletives publicly about Israeli conduct even after a 1967 Israeli attack on a US Navy ship killing American sailors had not ruptured the relationship. He placed the moment in a much longer historical frame, arguing it was the first clear military victory for an Asian or Muslim-majority power over a Western force since the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb expelled the East India Company from the subcontinent between 1685 and 1690, ending three centuries in which such forces had generally lost wars even when they occasionally won individual battles.

Misra was careful to describe this as a first phase rather than a resolution. He expects renewed fighting, most likely between Israel and Iran rather than the United States directly, with Iran working to draw Washington back in and Russia and China quietly signalling support from behind the scenes. He linked the standoff to a broader "tectonic shift" comparable to the realignments that followed the two World Wars, arguing that a new US-China confrontation, whether fought as a trade war or eventually a shooting war, is now effectively inevitable given the two powers' incompatible trajectories.

India's Miscalculation

Turning to India, Misra argued the Modi government badly misjudged the moment by aligning visibly with Israel and the United States shortly before the war began, including a prime ministerial visit to Israel weeks before the fighting started. He said Indian sailors were killed and Indian-linked vessels targeted during the conflict, and criticised the government's muted response, including Prime Minister Modi's public appearances in France during the crisis, as evidence of what he called "shameless" diplomacy toward partners who had shown India little consideration in return. He argued India's civil service and strategic establishment had nonetheless worked quietly to avoid a complete rupture with Iran, which limited the damage.

Misra warned that unless India changes its geopolitical alignment, the BJP's 2047 "developed India" ambitions cannot be realised, and he raised, without fully endorsing, a concern he said some BJP figures themselves had voiced to him: that the same political forces aligned against Iran, Russia and China might eventually see India's internal divisions as useful leverage, much as the East India Company once exploited them. He argued groups like the BJP and RSS should resist becoming instruments of any external project to fracture the country, warning that domestic resistance to such an outcome is already building around issues like the pending US-India agricultural trade deal.