Iran's N-Option: Making Hawks Out of Doves

Israel has tricked America into a conflict with Iran, which neither Tehran nor Washington wanted. If this pushes Iran to build nuclear weapons, India's worries will increase

- M K BHADRAKUMAR

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.