The recent episodes of South Asian and Middle Eastern crises, escalated by the Jewish and Hindu leaderships, added a new chapter in the history of global strategic politics while leaving a worse impact on the international security environment. Both regions witnessed a big question on the defence capabilities of Israel and India, mainly consisting of the Iron Dome and S-400 missile systems.

Attacks challenged the effectiveness of Israel’s Iron Dome and India’s S-400 missile defense systems, marking a strategic setback.

No doubt, the retaliations to the two states in their brief armed confrontations with Iran and Pakistan were unpredictable and challenging. However, the attacks on Iron Dome and S400 defence systems proved a significant setback for the Israeli and Indian strategic thinkers and formal defence planners. It hampered the conventional wisdom of two states relying on a strong defence system equipped with high-precision intercepting features.

While keeping in mind the decade-long multifaceted territorial disagreements between India and Pakistan, the recent crisis suggests that the New Delhi-based defence planners are obsessed with regional hegemonic ambitions without calculating their impacts on the entire regional political order of the nuclearised subcontinent. The analogous scenario emerged from the Middle Eastern strategic contestation under the shadows of long-standing Arab-Israel hostility, where the Knesset has always dubbed Iran as a potential security threat due to its greater and unconditional advocacy of the Palestinian cause.

The Iranian government has adopted an uncompromising stance on the sovereign and independent status of Palestine, whereas the Pakistani leaders have always considered the Plebiscite the only solution to the disputed Kashmiri land. In other words, the Iranian and Pakistani leaders always stand against the occupation of Israeli and Indian forces in their respective regions.

In reaction, the Jewish security planners from the proclaimed Zionist state contain the regional hegemonic aspirations against the territorially adjoining nations, which could be observed in an analogous Indian case. The illegitimate claims of Israel and India on certain territorial areas of Palestine and Kashmir have shaped several commonalities in their strategic posturing, reflecting the prevailing irrationality through ignoring Middle Eastern and South Asian nuclear politics.

The quest to rationalise the designed strategic postures of two states has resulted in a brief crisis in both regions under their pursuit of securing a dominating position in the escalations. Despite lacking a geographical proximity based on two different Asian sub-regions, the recent crisis of two states against two key nations of the Muslim world, Iran and Pakistan, presents an explicit case of strategic convergence between New Delhi and Tel Aviv.

The Hindu and Jewish mainstream defence planners escalated the crisis to undermine the counterbalancing potentials of their archrival Muslim governments from Tehran and Islamabad, but a brief layer of armed confrontation in two regions remained ineffective in providing the desired results to Tel Aviv and New Delhi.

India and Israel’s hegemonic ambitions exacerbate regional instability in South Asia and the Middle East.

The Indian and Israeli governments witnessed a major strategic and psychological setback in their decades-long and consistently evolving strategic pretence due to the operationalisation of adequate defensive measures by Iran and Pakistan. It can be validated through the vulnerable and partially dysfunctional performances of modern air defence systems, Tel Aviv’s Iron Dome and New Delhi’s S-400.

Despite agreeing on a third-party ceasefire mediation facilitated by the United States, the strategic planners of the two states attempted to provide a glimpse of their advanced defence capabilities with the support of modern warfare technologies. The use of hybrid warfare techniques comprises mobilising conventional forces with the support of several unconventional means, showing their improved intelligence and technology-led operational capabilities.

With the support of acquiring modern weapon systems, the leading defence planners from Tel Aviv and New Delhi escalated the crisis. They attempted to weaken the defence preparedness of their opponent Muslim nations, fundamentally driven by specific ideological disagreements. These disagreements transformed into territorial-centric hostilities and disturbed the regional security environments of the Middle East and South Asia through introducing specific strategic postures while considering them integral parts of their core national security values.

The growing commonalities in their strategic regional aspirations and hostile interaction with the two leading Muslim nations gradually resulted in strong bilateral collaboration between Israel and India. The two-sided political leadership developed a consensus on undermining the regional and extra-regional standing of territorially adjoining Iran and Pakistan while adopting an implicit model of clandestine involvement in both states.

The government of Pakistan has on several occasions provided sufficient evidence of Indo-Israeli intelligence interventions; however, Tehran has recently publicised such experiences during its war with Israel. The intelligence sharing of Israel and India is primarily structured in their broader strategic partnership, which is mainly centred on the modernisation of their conventional war-fighting capabilities.

Intelligence collaboration between India and Israel targets Iran and Pakistan, intensifying regional rivalries.

So, the greater reliance of India and Israel on the disruptive warfare technologies convinced their respective national security architectures to impose escalation in their regions to offset the strategic positions of Iran and Pakistan while securing a dominating status.

The imposition of a ceasefire, no doubt, stopped the military mobilisation in both cases and altered the unadventurous perception attached to the conventional security frameworks of the Middle Eastern and South Asian regions. The scope of peace and stability has been overshadowed by India’s and Israel’s pursuit of communication regarding their arrival of modern weapon systems, principally relying on the targeted use of various unmanned vehicles and high-precision targeting capabilities, which was surprising.

These capabilities were effectively neutralised by pragmatic defence planning of Tehran and Islamabad, parallel to inflicting a sense of insecurity in Israeli and Indian defence policies. To address their susceptibilities in the defence sector, the post-conflict developments have shown the growing concentration of Jewish and Hindu leaderships on the improvement of their intercepting defence capabilities. It raises the probabilities of future crises with the sense of achieving aspired strategic advantages, which requires the serious attention of global advocates of peace and stability.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author. They do not represent the views, beliefs, or policies of the Stratheia.