Israeli attacks on Iran began on 13th June, in response to Iran’s enrichment of weapon-grade uranium. Not only did Israel operate freely over Iranian skies, but it also effected a series of high-profile assassinations of military personnel using drones from deep within the Iranian territory. After the initial shock, Iran recovered and has launched a series of counterstrikes on Israel. The war has escalated, and a lot depends on the American stance. Honouring Trump’s golden words, “I may do it, I may not do it. I mean, nobody knows what I’m going to do”, I will leave this question for another edition.
The current moment, though, got me thinking about the escalation dynamics between nuclear weapon states. Here are three observations from an Indian lens.
One, the Iranian regime is cruel, but its bigger problem is incompetence. Iran was right to have a nuclear weapons programme once it became clear that Israel had one. It is a normal state of affairs—one country acquires nuclear capabilities and its primary adversary follows. This dyadic relationship is unstable when one nation-state has nukes while the other doesn’t. But once both Iran and Israel had demonstrated nuclear weapon capabilities, a new balance would have been established. Large-scale wars between them would have become less likely because I do not buy the argument that the Iranian regime is irrational and would distribute its nukes to its proxies. No major wars have happened between two nuclear-armed states thus far. So I wouldn’t be surprised if Iran were making weapon-grade uranium this time.
Instead, what’s surprising is that Iran couldn’t build one over all these decades. Fifteen years ago, it was caught unaware when the Stuxnet malware destroyed over 1000 centrifuges at Natanz. And now, it couldn’t keep its enrichment secret enough before its adversaries found out. It is well-known that the transition period when a country is developing nuclear weapons is a dangerous phase because it remains most vulnerable to preventive strikes by the nuclear-armed adversary at this time. Iran stayed in this trishanku state for too long. Either it should have called off its programme entirely or begged, borrowed, and stolen the necessary tech and materials from Russia, China, or even Pakistan. It’s now paying a high price for indecision and incompetence.
Two, Iran’s predicament highlights the pivotal role India’s 1998 Pokhran tests played. All nuclear weapon states hate other contenders, and as the ongoing war shows, will go to any extent to prevent them from getting there. Had India not done the tests then, a growing China could well have done to India what Israel is trying to do with Iran. That decisive step did heighten tensions between India and Pakistan (which also went nuclear subsequently), and the subsequent economic sanctions caused some real pain. But soon enough, others had no option but to contend with the new reality of India as a nuclear-capable state. The George W Bush government was favourable to India, and played a significant role in making India’s voice heard on this issue. Within a decade of the nuclear tests, the civil nuclear deal with the US was on the table.
Three, it’s helpful to compare the India-Pakistan equation with the Iran-Israel dyad. As Operation Sindoor demonstrated, despite the high level of tensions, the two nuclear-armed powers were keen to de-escalate pretty early into the conflict. Compare that with the Iran-Israel conflict, where more than 400 Iranians and 24 Israelis have been killed thus far, with no end to the war in sight. Nuclear deterrence still holds between two nuclear powers. The other difference is that both Pakistan and Iran used terrorists and proxies against their adversaries. But the nuclear overhang prevents a full-scale retaliation on Pakistan, while Iran had no such insurance policy. By egging on proxies before going nuclear, it attracted undesirable attention to its weapons programme.
From a realist lens, Iran failed not because it tried to go nuclear but because it didn’t try enough. And that’s the lesson that a lot of other countries will take away from this war.