Dhaka, March 6 -- No matter when and how the Iran war ends, its provenance is clear. This is a war between theocratic Iran, a confessional Islamic state; and secular Israel and America, two Western nations produced by the European Enlightenment that secularised Christian thought in Europe and beyond. This war may not have occurred without Shia Iran's biological hatred for Jewish Israel. Israel has not called for the destruction of the Iranian people; Iran has called for the eradication of the "Jewish entity" from the geography of the Middle East. Scriptural readings of contemporary international relations can go only so far, whichever the interpretations and the faiths involved. Nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles have no religion.

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