India, March 12 -- What did U.S. President Donald Trump get wrong after deciding to attack Iran? And what did he get right? What made him attack Iran? And what are the implications for the "rest", especially the "Global South"?

Donald Trump's foundational and fundamental "error" lay in the conceptual, emotional and spiritual (or mystical) premises of modern-day Iran. These do not lie in historical Persia but in the foundational and seminal currents of Shia Islam: the day of Karbala (Ashura).

Owing to the schism in Islam on account of "succession issues" after the death of the Prophet of Islam (PBUH), political permutations and combinations led, among other things, to the murder of the Prophet's grandson, Imam Hussein (AS), at Karbala. ...