At dawn on February 28, explosions tore through central Tehran, University Street, Jomhouri Square, districts not far from the offices of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Israel had struck Iran. It declared a state of emergency and braced for retaliation. The United States has provided support for what was described as a pre-emptive strike.The language is always familiar. We have heard it before, in Kabul in 2001, in Baghdad in 2003, across Syrian skies for more than a decade. Each time, the argument is moral clarity. An evil regime must be checked. A future catastrophe must be prevented. A threat must be neutralised before it matures.AdvertisementAnd yet, from Afghanistan to Iraq to Syria, the region has not been healed by bombing campaigns. It has been fractured by them. Let us begin with honesty. Iran’s leadership has been repressive. Protests have been crushed. Dissent has been punished. Many Iranians themselves have risked their lives to challenge the state. That reality is not in dispute. But Iran’s brutality at home does not confer moral immunity on external attackers.When Israel, backed by the United States, strikes Iran in the name of preventing nuclear proliferation, the argument collides with an uncomfortable fact: Both countries possess nuclear arsenals. Iran does not. The justification offered is that their weapons are stabilising; Iran’s hypothetical ones would be destabilising.If nuclear weapons are catastrophic, they are catastrophic everywhere. If deterrence is legitimate, it cannot be the exclusive privilege of the powerful. Otherwise, the doctrine becomes transparent: Some states may own the ultimate weapon; others may be bombed to prevent them from approaching it. This is not non-proliferation. It is a hierarchy, enforced by missiles carries enormous risk, humanitarian, strategic, economic, and geopolitical.AdvertisementFirst, the human cost. Even limited strikes rarely remain limited in consequence. Missiles hit military facilities; shockwaves hit homes, hospitals, and infrastructure. Civilian casualties are almost inevitable. Escalation invites retaliation. Iran possesses one of the region’s largest missile and drone arsenals. It has demonstrated the capacity to launch hundreds of projectiles at Israel in past exchanges. US bases across the region would be within range. Hezbollah and other allied militias in Lebanon, Iraq, and Syria could be activated, transforming a bilateral strike into a multi-front regional war.Second, geography. Iran sits astride the northern coast of the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil supply transits. Any serious conflict could disrupt shipping, even temporarily, sending global energy prices soaring. Analysts have already warned that heightened tensions alone push Brent crude upward. A sustained war could drive prices far higher, triggering inflationary shocks worldwide.Oil does not remain a Middle Eastern issue. It moves through transport networks, food supply chains, and electricity grids. When energy prices spike, the poorest feel it first. Inflation rises. Central banks tighten. Growth slows. The risk of recession grows. A war justified as a strategic necessity becomes an economic shockwave felt from Berlin to Bengaluru.Third, strategic illusion. Airstrikes are not a magic eraser. Iran’s nuclear and missile facilities are dispersed, hardened, and in some cases buried underground. Military experts repeatedly note that destroying such infrastructure comprehensively from the air is extraordinarily difficult. Partial damage may delay a programme; it rarely eliminates it. Worse, it can accelerate it. Historical precedent suggests that external attack strengthens hardline factions, consolidates nationalist sentiment, and weakens internal reformist voices.Bombing does not necessarily weaken a regime. It can entrench it. We saw this in Iraq. The removal of Saddam Hussein did not yield swift democratic consolidation. It yielded insurgency, sectarian war, and years of instability. In Afghanistan, two decades of intervention ended not with institutional transformation but with the Taliban’s return. In Syria, external bombardment layered upon civil war deepened fragmentation rather than resolving it.you may likePrime Minister Narendra Modi has just returned from Israel, reaffirming strategic ties. Those ties are real and valuable. But India’s interests extend far beyond any single partnership. India relies heavily on energy flows from West Asia. Millions of Indians live and work across the Gulf. A broader regional conflict would affect remittances, oil prices, inflation, and economic stability at home.India has long articulated a vision of strategic autonomy and a rules-based international order. It cannot afford to appear reflexively aligned with unilateral military action justified through selective moral logic. That does not require defending the Iranian regime. It requires advocating diplomacy, restraint, and international verification mechanisms rather than endorsing a pattern of preventive bombing that history suggests rarely produces lasting stability. Because once the missiles fly, the consequences do not remain where they were aimed.The writer is the humanitarian food security and diplomacy ambassador, India, for President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office