The title "A Truce That Is Not Peace", is that of a novel by Miriam Toews. It best describes the present meaningless conflict raging between USA and Israel vs Iran. Iranian Navy Commander Admiral Habibollah Sayari said on Dec. 29, 2025,"Shutting the strait for Iran's armed forces is really easy—or as we say [in Iran] easier than drinking a glass of water." Hardly four months later, Iranians are struggling to find a glass of pure water. What an irony?
Benjamin Disraeli made a trenchant observation "The world is weary of statesmen whom democracy has degraded into politicians". Scanning every day, the morning newspapers and listening to the TV news, one realizes that the world today is bereft of Statesmen, but pygmy politicians are abundant in every nation, who in turn select pygmy bureaucrats and pygmy army chiefs to do their bidding.
Events that have unfolded across West Asian countries of Israel, Gaza, Iran, Syria, Lebanon and USA, exemplify what happens when moronic fundamentalists get authority and power to rule nations. They not only destroy themselves, but involve nations, who share their own brand of zealotry, from different parts of the globe to create a global catastrophe. Unfazed by internecine wars, and colossal human casualties, these pygmy zealots, are constantly touting threats of imminent devastation, against each other.
People have realized that Western leaders attired in suits and ties, and Arab leaders wearing spotless white Bisht or Thobe, are no guarantee of either intellectual prowess or statesmanship. There is a proverb "Not every man in a suit and tie is a gentleman. Not every gentleman wears a suit and tie." How true of the present age about which it is said "The sharpest suits have covered the dirtiest secrets."
What is more amazing is the silence of leaders across Europe, Asia, and Africa, at the mindless holocaust and senseless destruction, being perpetrated and exhibited across TV screens globally. Media is busy focussing on the drones and missiles zooming across the skies, slamming into schools, universities, hospitals, oil-refineries, military bases, bridges, and residential buildings. Nobody is interested in covering the scale of human misery, the thousands of men, women and children, injured, incapacitated, and killed, does not evoke any interest, nor deemed worthy of news coverage. As Martin Luther King Jr. puts it "We have guided missiles and misguided men".
Another matter of concern has been the operational ineffectiveness, and utter helplessness of the United Nations, which compel many political observers to suggest that UN's continued existence in its present form, does not make much of a sense. As noted by Nanjundan in 1995, itself: "The UN is in premature gerontocracy; the decline over the last 20 years due to bureaucratic inefficiency and corruption has been compounded by the post-cold war dominance of and dependence on the sole superpower, the US" (Nanjundan, Samir. "UN at 50." Economic and Political Weekly 30.43 (1995).
Indeed, if we look into the stated objectives of the United Nations and the results in the world, then we can infer that the innumerable meetings and events of the UN lead to no effective results, and it is quite simply an enormous waste of time and resources.
This is because it is not meant to succeed in bringing about friendlier relations between nations, but it rather serves as a convenient platform for international geo-political manipulations and power struggles under the guise of pretended concern for peace, human rights, terrorism, narcotics, food and water problems, and climate change. Apart from being averse to change, the organisation is not a supporter of democratic decisions since most of its decisions are not unanimous. The UN convention 1267 on extremism has failed as countries like France, and the US differentiates between the "good" terrorists and the "bad" terrorists. India's efforts to pass the Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism (CCIT)- convention that allows extradition of global terrorists- has been thwarted, as vested interests dominate the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). The UN is ineffective because it was designed to be an oligarchy of the victors of WWII (UK, US, France, Russia, and China) and not truly a united league of nations. The veto power of the Security Council kneecaps any beneficial decisions made by the majority of nations. While the West talks about the values of democracy, they have little faith that it works in a global setting. As long as the Security Council has the power of the veto, the UN will remain neutered and ineffective.
Another problem affecting the neutrality of the UN is that it is heavily dependent on the USA for substantial funding. The United States remains the largest donor to the United Nations today. In 2025, it was responsible for 22 percent of the UN regular budget, which finances the day-to-day operations of the organization and its primary activities, and approximately 26 percent of the UN peacekeeping budget. Since the outset of his second term, however, President Donald Trump has made significant cuts to U.S. funding—as he did in his first term. He is also reducing U.S. engagement due to what he says is the United Nations' inability to solve global conflicts, certain agencies' politically divisive agendas, and the disparity in financial contributions among wealthier countries.
Predictably, the UN has failed to resolve the Iranian conflict primarily due to sharp divisions within the Security Council, where Russia and China frequently use their veto power to block resolutions against Iran. The Council is often gridlocked over issues like Iran's control of the Strait of Hormuz, regional proxy conflicts, and nuclear concerns, rendering it totally redundant.
Another big disappointment has been the total ineffectiveness of all religious leaders to resolve the Iranian conflict. Evangelical voices from Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nazareth and Vatican have not been able to convince the Arab peoples and nations in Muslim-majority contexts. Equally disappointing is the inability of world Muslim religious leaders to effectively broker peace in the Iran conflict—particularly amid the intense escalation in 2025-2026, which stems from a combination of deep-seated historical sectarian divides, fanaticism, extreme geopolitical polarization, and the ideological nature of the Iranian regime. Iran is 90 to 95 per cent Shia Muslim, the world's largest Shia-majority nation according to Pew Research Centre data, and the Shia religious belt stretches from the Mediterranean to the Indian States of Kashmir and Uttar Pradesh. That geography is now embroiled in a bitter war against Jews and Christians.
Even India's vast array of Swamis, Gurus, and Ammas, have been conspicuously silent, on the senseless carnage happening in Iran. They are more worried about safeguarding their mini financial empires, like their Christian counterparts. Laurence McKinley Gould, polar explorer, educator and geologist, wisely remarked " I do not believe the greatest threat to our future is from bombs or guided missiles. I don't think our civilization will die that way. I think it will die when we no longer care when the spiritual forces that make us wish to be right and noble die in our hearts".
The USA-Israel vs Iran conflict has also brought to limelight on why security treaties—such as mutual defense pacts, non-aggression treaties, and arms control agreements are viewed as ineffective, wasteful, and even counterproductive. Today, there are no strong economies anywhere in the world, all have become fragile, no nation is therefore going to risk fighting the battles of another country. Benjamin Franklin correctly said: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."