Since the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, no Arab state has dared to confront Israel militarily. The wars have not disappeared — they’ve simply changed hands. Since 2006, Iran has taken the lead in orchestrating hostilities against Israel, not through direct confrontation, but through proxy warfare and ideological manipulation, engineering rage on the Arab street while cloaking its ambitions in sacred garb.
Iran’s Sejjil missile — its name meaning “shards hurled at the deviant” — is emblematic of a regime encased in theological obsession and ritualistic hostility. From alleyway slogans to the polished rhetoric of Tehran’s clerical elite, the Islamic Republic has built a political theology upon the bones of religious grievance. To understand Iran, one must look not just to its nuclear program or sanctions evasion schemes, but to its enduring existential mythology. A radical reorientation of this spiritual architecture — not mere regime change — is the only path to sustainable peace.
For all its strategic rationality, Iran’s foreign policy is ultimately anchored in a dualistic and apocalyptic worldview. Islamic eschatology casts Jews in a disparaging role, and the rebirth of Israel in 1948 triggered something deeper than geopolitical anxiety — it reawakened an ancient wound. Among the Abrahamic religions, Christianity and Islam often battle for narrative dominance, but both maintain a complicated, even subconscious, struggle with Judaism. Iran’s animus toward Israel is as much metaphysical as it is material.
Persia’s Forgotten Vedic Roots
But to truly decode Iran, we must move even further back — beyond Islam, beyond even Zoroastrianism — into a forgotten fraternal conflict with Vedic Hinduism.
This is where the Persian puzzle begins to unravel. Zoroastrianism, long assumed to be Iran’s spiritual foundation, may in fact be a counter-narrative — an ideological reaction to Persia’s traumatic break from the Vedic world. The 4th-century Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus records in “Rerum Gestarum”:
“When Zoroaster had boldly made his way into the unknown regions of Upper India, he came to a certain woody retreat, of which, with its tranquil silence the Brahmins, men of sublime genius, were the possessors. From their teaching he learnt the principles of the motion of the world and of the stars, and the pure rites of sacrifice… and of what he learnt he infused some portion into the minds of the Magi.”
This account suggests what few dare to explore: that Persia’s foundational theology was not born ex nihilo, but was grafted from its Vedic cousins and reformulated through a lens of imperial ambition. Bereft of its spiritual kinship with India, Persia compensated by building an empire of priestcraft and tribal confederation, reaching east and west to forge a new spiritual identity rooted in messianism and separation.
Vedic Rebound
The West’s enduring hope that fissures in Iran’s regime will somehow usher in liberal reform reveals a profound misunderstanding of Persian political theology. What we see in Iran today is not just clerical authoritarianism — it’s a civilizational mirror of India’s own sacred governance, albeit one stripped of pluralism.
Iran’s Ayatollah-led system is an anomaly in the Islamic world. It resembles more closely the Hindu tradition of the philosopher-king, where the sage, not the soldier, leads. Only the most credentialed religious scholars — those with standing in law, theology, and public service — are permitted to sit on the Guardian Council. The Supreme Leader is not a monarch but a jurist-king elected for life, in accordance with ancient notions of divine stewardship. It’s as if the soul of the Mahabharata lingers in Tehran’s corridors of power.
The Combatant Clergy Association — simultaneously pious and paramilitary — echoes the Yajurvedic archetype of the warrior-priest. Their embedded influence in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps makes them resilient to internal coups, and their financial oversight inoculates the state against oligarchic capture. The likely heirs to Khamenei’s throne all emerge from this sacred-military class.
Khomeini’s romantic ideal of a “Guardianship of Love” is institutionalized in the Basij, Iran’s youth volunteer force. Structurally and spiritually, it mirrors India’s Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the world’s largest grassroots movement. Even Iran’s flag bears resemblance to the khanda, the Sikh emblem — a spiritual offshoot of Hinduism. That’s no coincidence: Khomeini’s ancestors migrated from India in 1834. The Indo-Persian entanglement is more than historical — it’s foundational.
Fossil Fetishes
Yet for all its ideological scaffolding, Iran’s theocracy is haunted by spiritual discontent. It mimics the Vedic hierarchy but lacks its inner light. Its ritualism is brittle, its orthodoxy exhausted. What remains is an ossified version of what once aspired to be transcendent.
Many Iranians tattoo the Faravahar, a Zoroastrian symbol borrowed from the Assyrian deity Ashur, as a gesture of national pride. But it is rarely a call to spiritual renewal. In post-Soviet Tajikistan — another Persianate society — Zoroastrian revivalism failed to animate the soul. It’s an identity marker, not a messianic spark.
Nietzsche confessed to his confidant Johann Heinrich Koselitz (also known by his pen name Peter Gast) that “Thus Spake Zarathustra” was, at its core, an ode to Manu — the ancient Hindu lawgiver particularly known for the Manusmriti, a foundational text on Dharma. That legacy survives in Iran, not through faith, but through yearning. Ever since its rupture from the Vedic order, Iran has been in search of its messiah, its redeemer, its ideological lodestar. One after another — Zoroaster, Khomeini, now perhaps Khamenei’s successors — Iran attaches itself to prophets, not principles.
Today, in the religious underground, serious seekers no longer look to the imams. They are turning to Buddhism. To Hinduism. To the East.
A Spiritual Reconciliation
Western efforts to introduce religious streams into Iran that are disconnected from Iran’s earliest spiritual tradition remain largely symbolic. They grasp at the low-hanging fruit, not the roots.
If the United States truly hopes to break the cycle of Iran’s ideological war on Israel and the West, it must broker something far more radical: a spiritual reconciliation, not with the West, but with the East. With the civilizational family from which it once exiled itself.
Only by reawakening Iran’s kinship with its Vedic past can we redirect its vast spiritual energy away from destruction and toward renewal. Such a return may usher in a golden age of peace — or ignite a new crisis of identity. Either way, it won’t be Washington’s or Jerusalem’s war to fight.
It will be India’s.
This article first appeared in Western Journal.
Adelle Nazarian
Adelle Nazarian has over 15 years of experience in journalism, geopolitics, and the media world. She is also an entrepreneur who has founded and served as CEO of several organizations including a geopolitical consulting firm. Adelle is also a Senior Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy (GIIS) in Washington, D.C. She enjoys traveling, is constantly learning and is inquisitive by nature. Adelle speaks English, Persian (Farsi), French and Mandarin Chinese. Follow Adelle Nazarian on X @AdelleNaz.
