Uncertainty amid the Iran War: Why the answers to India’s external troubles lie squarely at home

If you thought 2025 was a tough transition, 2026 now seems to have plenty more surprises in store. India, in particular, has to trek through two tricky minefields over the next 10 months: energy security and technological flux. These two prickly issues will have to fight for the political leadership’s mind-space, cluttered as it is with tricky geopolitics, rising unemployment, sticky economic growth and an always-on electoral cycle.

There’s another daunting challenge: dealing with a mercurial world leader with rapidly shifting objectives.A face in Greek mythology is said to have launched a thousand ships. In contemporary times, there is a world leader who has been subjected to multiple names. US president Donald Trump has been called many things, especially in his second term, but the term ‘neo-royalist’ has gained much traction.

In a Foreign Affairs article, Harvard University professor Stephen M. Walt called him a “predatory hegemon.” There have been other appellations too: realist, isolationist, mercantilist, nationalist, imperialist. The list will definitely expand during the remainder of his presidency.

Immediately, though, America’s unilateral attack on Iran may fetch Trump some more names, but they would be materially different from all the previous ones. This is because willy-nilly the conflict has multiple business dynamics at its core. The official reasons behind the Iran attacks, ostensibly at the prodding of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, are still unclear with the goalposts being shifted every day: while one day it was obliterating Iran’s nuclear capability, the next day it was regime change.