The American attack on Iran is a potentially cataclysmic event for Indian foreign and security policy in its regional ramifications and long-term significance. June 22’s Operation Midnight Hammer cannot be justified under international law or the UN charter. Iran’s peaceful nuclear programme as a member of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) did not constitute a casus belli. The political chicanery is appalling as the US’s co-aggressor, Israel, is itself a non-NPT nuclear weapon state whose clandestine weapon programme was possible only with American help.
The US’s unilateral repudiation of the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA, led to the present impasse. If there is anyone to be blamed in a historical perspective, it is President Donald Trump, who in 2018 tore up the agreement that guaranteed Iran’s uranium enrichment would be capped at 3.6 percent under strict International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards. Both in 2018 and this June, Trump acted at the behest of Israel, which has gone berserk with notions of regional hegemony and Jerusalem as West Asia’s lodestar.
At issue today is what was accomplished in the June 22 strike on Iran’s nuclear sites. Trump insists the attack “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear programme. What Trump implies is that, in his calculus, the Iran nuclear issue is no longer there and talks can resume for reaching a “comprehensive peace agreement”. On the other hand, Pentagon estimates Iran’s nuclear programme has been set back by one to two years. The IAEA anticipates Iran could begin enriching uranium again in a matter of months. And Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei claims Trump “exaggerated” the impact of strikes, the US “has gained nothing from this war”, and that the American strikes “did nothing significant” to Iran’s nuclear facilities. The mystery deepened as reports from Tehran began appearing that Iran’s stockpiles of enriched uranium were transferred to secret locations prior to the US strike.
Suffice to say, Trump has a grand bargain in mind to draw Iran and Israel into a regional matrix of economic interlinkages with the West devolving upon trade deals, economic ties, investment and connectivity to create a new West Asia. Trump hopes to seize upon a Gaza ceasefire to jumpstart the plan with Iran’s neighbours and navigate towards Abraham Accords 2.0. All of this seems delusional since it has several moveable parts—chaos in Syria; Hezbollah’s refusal to surrender its weapons; the likelihood of an Israeli invasion of Lebanon; Arab outrage to Israel’s war in Gaza; Hamas’s future role; Saudi Arabia’s hesitation to have ties with Israel; Saudi wariness of Israel as an increasingly militaristic and destabilising force; and widespread scepticism (except among Israeli businessmen) about the ‘Gaza Riviera’ itself.
All that can be said with certainty is that Midnight Hammer cannot be repeated. American stealth planes flew through northern Syria, crossed the tangled mountains of Kurdistan, evaded radars into Azerbaijan and further on to the Caspian Sea, from where in a standoff position they delivered the bombs. Meticulous planning and trial runs over several months possibly preceded the complex operation. Trump expected, per Israeli prognosis, that the shock and awe of the ‘bunker buster’ bombs would trigger a regime change in Iran, culminating in a pro-Western government. But the reality is quite different—the US-Israeli attack only rallied mass support for the Iranian government.
That said, Trump is averse to an attritional war. Besides, he has to weigh a range of variables in American politics, too. Basically, the domestic opinion militates against any more expeditionary wars abroad. Senator Bernie Sanders said last week that there is a perceptible waning of support for Israel in American public opinion. Again, the two principal templates of the MAGA movement, Trump’s core constituency during the 2024 election, were immigration and rejection of ‘forever wars’. Influential figures like ex-White House chief strategist Steve Bannon and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson lead the MAGA resistance to Trump’s war with Iran. Any erosion of Trump’s political base would impact the 2026 mid-term elections to the Congress, where his majority remains tenuous.
There is no question that the US enjoys vast military superiority over Iran, but the big question is about the nature of a victory and the aftermath of a war. Iran will not be deceived again, as on June 13 when Israel attacked it while peace talks with the US were on. Iran has warned about far more destructive weapons in reserve for the next war. Its capability to inflict serious destruction on Israel and ransack American assets in the region is not to be doubted. Loss of American lives is always a sensitive issue, especially if Trump goes to war without congressional approval.
Tehran is making the resumption of talks conditional on the US’s guarantee it will not attack again. Meanwhile, Iran has suspended its cooperation with the IAEA, which has been allegedly infiltrated by Mossad and MI6. Iran accuses the UN agency of complicity in the assassination of nuclear scientists by Israel. Clearly, the international community no longer has the means to monitor the status of Iran’s nuclear programme. And this is when the expiry of the JCPOA is approaching in October. If the E3—France, UK and Germany—were to invoke the ‘snapback mechanism’, which is outside the purview of veto by the Security Council’s permanent members, and reimpose UN sanctions, they have take the necessary steps in the coming weeks.
Iran has hinted that if the UN sanctions are reimposed, it may quit the NPT. That will, of course, be highly consequential, since there is a growing body of opinion within Iran that it made a cardinal mistake by opting for a peaceful nuclear programme rather than developing a nuclear deterrent to ward off predatory powers. If anything, the USIsraeli attack reinforces this line of thinking. An epochal paradox of our times is that Iran’s own choice would have been a normal relationship with America’s peacemaking president. If Iran develops the bomb under duress, the roof comes down on West Asia’s nuclear non-proliferation era, spawning an arc of nuclear weapon states in India’s extended neighbourhood with profound implications for regional stability and security.
M K Bhadrakumar | Former diplomat
(Views are personal)