Published: July 16, 2026 4:32 pm
Author: RT
None of the US objectives in the Middle East conflict have been achieved, Rajiv Sikri tells RT India
The Middle East conflict has helped Iran to realize it has a potent weapon in its arsenal in the contentious Strait of Hormuz, a former Indian diplomat said.
At the same time, the stated objectives of the US in the conflict it unleashed also stand unfulfilled, former diplomat Rajiv Sikri told RT India in an exclusive interview.
“Americans just can’t stand the thought that they’ve lost this war because none of the objectives for which they fought the war appear to have been achieved, whether it was regime change or the nuclear issue,” Sikri told Runjhun Sharma in the latest episode of India, Russia and the World.
The ceasefire was brokered because after the Americans and the Israelis tried to bomb Iran into submission, “they ran out of ammunition.”
The issue with the protracted conflict is that Israel doesn’t want this war to stop and for all stakeholders, “this has become an existential issue.”
“For Iran, it was a question of survival,” he said, adding that Israel considers Iran as a principal rival “preventing its total domination of the region.”
Not succeeding against a “regional power like Iran is very humiliating” for Washington also, he pointed out.
Iran is vital to Moscow as it is in the same neighborhood. “Any instability there would affect Russia. I don’t think that Russia wants Iran to collapse,” he said, adding that Moscow will provide considerable assistance on the security and technological fronts to Iran.
He said that Russian Security Council Deputy Chair Dmitry Medvedev’s presence at the funeral of slain Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei signals that Russia will stand by the country. “It’s a message to Iran and to America, Israel, and the rest of the world,” Sikri said.
He also noted that the Tarique Rahman administration in Bangladesh has not done anything to reverse some of the questionable and anti-India policies of the Muhammad Yunus regime.
“I think India will have to be quite alert and watchful on what is happening in Bangladesh because you have now a revival of the pre-1971 scenario where you had China, US and Pakistan working in concert.”
