US pushes West Asia deeper into chaos

THE US military attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan mark a significant and definitive escalation in the Israel-Iran conflict, with potentially complex and destabilising implications.

The US is now directly involved militarily in a regional war and the potential for further escalation will depend on four actors and their actions. The first is Iran, the target of US attacks. Tehran has decided to close the Strait of Hormuz. This will lead to convulsions in the global oil market and adversely impact hydrocarbon-importing nations like India.

The second actor is some proxy group — Houthis, Hamas or Hezbollah — which may adopt a low-intensity asymmetric warfare strategy against US and Israeli assets, including merchant shipping.

The third actor is an external power — be it Russia or China — which in recent days have cautioned the US not to get involved in the Israel-Iran war directly. However, the probability that Moscow or Beijing will support Iran with direct military involvement is low, given their domestic priorities.

The fourth actor is the US, specifically its domestic politics, where there are reservations within the Republican Party about the US strikes on Iran. American public opinion, which has supported President Donald Trump and his anti-war posture, is wary of the US being drawn into another long war in a distant part of the world.

The impetuous US action is being justified on the grounds that Iran must not obtain a nuclear weapon — come what may — and that its current enrichment programme points in that direction. Paradoxically, there is no credible evidence to suggest that Tehran is close to acquiring a nuclear weapon. Contradictions within the US raise questions about the rectitude of the American attack. Tulsi Gabbard, Director of National Intelligence (DNI), testified to the US Congress in March that “The (US) intelligence community continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon.”

But Gabbard was rebuked by Trump, who said on June 20 that the DNI was wrong in suggesting that there was no evidence of Iran building a nuclear weapon. This was a clear signal that Trump had decided to strike Iran. Tehran has repeatedly asserted that it is not seeking to acquire nuclear weapons and instead wants to defend its sovereign right to nuclear enrichment as a NNWS (non-nuclear weapon state) signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Iran added that the actions of the aggressors (Israel and the US) are a grave contravention of international norms and conventions and that retribution would follow.

In a post on X, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned the US strikes on Iran. He said: “I am gravely alarmed by the use of force by the United States against Iran. This is a dangerous escalation in a region already on the edge and a direct threat to international peace and security. I call on Member States to de-escalate and to uphold their obligations under the UN Charter and other rules of international law.”

Can the US act unilaterally to contain what it perceives to be a WMD (weapons of mass destruction) threat and is this action of President Trump a violation of Washington’s obligations to uphold international law and related conventions? The answer to this question will shape the contour of the emerging world order, or disorder — at a time when there are many global security challenges that need consensus among the major powers and collective action.

It is instructive that in West Asia, Israel is perceived to have acquired its covert nuclear weapon capability with French support and tacit US endorsement in the late 1960s, though this is a capability that Israel neither denies nor confirms. Israel is also a non-signatory to the NPT along with India and Pakistan.

The rationale for the June 13 attack on Iran by Israel and the current US action is indefensible or debatable. The trigger was provided by the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) June 12 resolution that censured Tehran for transgressions over its uranium enrichment commitments and site inspections. But the IAEA had not concluded that Iran was very close to acquiring a nuclear weapon. Yet Israel attacked Iran with impunity, justifying its unilateral action as an act of pre-emptive self-defence. The convoluted logic was that Iran could have acquired a nuclear weapon in the near future and this was totally unacceptable to Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Trump.

The Asian strategic framework is very complex, with China being part of the five nuclear powers (led by the US) who have accorded the right to possess this capability unto themselves — while denying it to others. At the time the NPT was introduced in 1968, India had argued that this was a case of ‘disarming the unarmed’ and refused to sign such an unequal treaty. Neither did Pakistan and Israel.

Currently, along with the first five, there are four other nuclear weapon-capable powers : India and Pakistan, who declared their capability in 1998; Israel, an opaque nuclear-armed state; and North Korea, a self-declared, Pluto-like N-weapon state.

If these nations exude the certitude that their current regimes and core national security will be jeopardised without nuclear weapons, how is Iran to be convinced that it must renounce the nuclear/enrichment rights which are due to it as a signatory to the NPT?

Iranian leaders have warned that the US attacks would have “everlasting consequences”. Tehran has requested that an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council be held. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said : “They crossed a very big red line by attacking nuclear facilities. We have to respond based on our legitimate right for self-defence.”

President Trump has succumbed to the principle of power and short-term realpolitik, abjuring the abiding power of the equitable principle. Consequently, the management of the global nuclear domain will become even more challenging and volatile than it currently is. That would make the current war definitive in a dangerous manner.

C Uday Bhaskar is Director, Society for Policy Studies.

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