Beyond prejudices and biases

Consider this thought experiment. Imagine that two large missiles struck the White House. The first hit the residential quarters at a time when the family were all home. President Trump, his wife Melania, his sons Donald and Eric and their wives and their children.

Imagine they were killed by the first missile, all of them. And a second missile landed just when rescuers ran to the family gathering to help and killed all of them as well. After this, imagine Trump’s cabinet dying in their homes, with their families.

Foreign minister (they call it secretary of state) Rubio, Peter Hegseth the defence minister, and others who are usually seen around Trump. And after this, think of the same people who did all this, striking an American school and killing more than 150 schoolgirls.

America has the greatest navy in history — it has 11 giant aircraft carriers, each with a dozen or more ships attached to it in support — and imagine that without a declaration of war, this same entity that killed all those people above, surreptitiously torpedoed one of the great American battleships and sank it killing most of the sailors on board.

Readers of these words will not require much imagination to consider these things, because these things all actually happened to the Iranis. And they happened at the hands of the Americans.

If these words above appear jarring it is because we are conditioned to think of Americans in a different way than we are conditioned to think of Iranis. This is particularly true of the Anglophone world of which we are part but is more generally true almost anywhere.

The consistent demonisation and maligning of Iran (as was the case with Iraq, Afghanistan, Russia and so on and so forth) has led to our not being able to empathise with them as we might do for the Americans. Now set aside our thought experiment and consider these two lists of conditions that the two sides have laid out to end the war.

The Americans have 15 items on their list.

These are as follows:

1. Iran must completely dismantle its nuclear program

2. End all uranium enrichment

3. Allow America unhindered inspections of this

4. Stop ballistic missile development

5. Scale back military capabilities

6. End support for groups in Palestine and Lebanon

7. End influence abroad

8. Cede control of the Hormuz Strait

9. Cede control over shipping lanes

10. Stop attacks against US allies in Gulf

11. De-escalate war in the region

12. Submit to US-led negotiations

13. Accept long-term monitoring and compliance conditions

14. Limit arms transfers

15. Change future behaviour

The Iranis have a list with five conditions which read as follows:

1. Assassinations of Irani leaders must end

2. Guarantee of no future war

3. Compensation for damage of this war

4. End of Israel’s wider war on region

5. Recognition of Iran’s sovereign rights over Strait of Hormuz

We can observe a few things here. There are elements missing from the Irani list though they have been spoken about by them and heard by the world.

Iran, like India, like Pakistan and indeed like America and Israel, has the right to a peaceful nuclear programme that includes the enrichment of uranium. Why have they left it out? Likely because it should not be said to the world that Iran must not and cannot be treated differently from the rest.

Other than that Iran’s list is defensive in nature and makes no demands on those who have waged war on it. About the American list which has been confirmed by Trump, what can be said? Only that it is offensive, maximalist and deranged.

Offensive in the sense of threatening, maximalist in that it in no way offers space for negotiations. And deranged because it assumes that America and Israel are currently in the position to drive the direction of this conflict, which they are not.

For this reason, unfortunately for all involved in this conflict and its effect, including us, the pain is not expected to end soon. Now consider one final thing. If indeed what we began with had come to pass.

That it had been America and Trump and his family and his ministers and American schoolgirls and sailors who had been murdered without provocation, would our prime minister and foreign minister have said and done the same things as they have since February 28? I doubt it.

When we say Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam do we actually mean that India’s wisdom is to consider the world and all its people as one family? The answer is no, as India shows clearly and transparently with its actions rather than with its words. The world has a hierarchy and the family has immediate members and distant aunts and forgotten uncles and disliked cousins.

Relatives who are geographically quite close (Iran and India shared a physical border till 1947) but mentally far can be set aside and their trauma overlooked, as we have so comprehensively done in the case of Iran. I am not arguing for a new way of approaching this crisis, which can be done elsewhere and not in this column.

I am asking merely that we consider the prejudices and biases we have burdened ourselves with when we examine the world and what is happening in it today.

Views are personal. More of Aakar Patel’s writing may be read here