Since India and Pakistan became official nuclear powers in 1998, they have come to blows several times. Each time, they have exchanged fire over the Kashmir border on one pretext or another but have quickly come to their senses and declared a ceasefire. Despite the frequent exchange of fiery rhetoric between the two countries, there has never been a full-fledged war between them since they became nuclear powers. Before 1998, however, they fought three full-scale wars. In effect, their nuclear arsenal has worked as a deterrent. With the constant threat of their conflict going nuclear hanging over them, they quickly come to their senses after the initial exchange of fire. The most recent example of this was in early May. India attacked Pakistan on bogus grounds and Pakistan retaliated in kind by downing several Indian jets. India quickly turned to the US, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia, requesting a ceasefire and within days calm was restored. India’s economy is ten times the size of Pakistan’s and it has nearly six times the population. On paper, in a full-scale conventional war, Pakistan does not stand a chance against its massive neighbour, but the threat of the mutual assured destruction (MAD) courtesy of its nuclear threat gives Pakistan a massive leverage in wars of aggression.
Muammar Gaddafi found the perils of not having nukes the hard way. The Libyan leader made the fatal mistake of trusting Western promises and gave up his nuclear programme in 2003 in exchange for sanctions relief. Eight years later, Libya was attacked, Gaddafi was sodomised with a weapon, and swiftly killed. Gaddafi’s country, once a jewel in Africa with free healthcare and education for its citizens, is now a failed state where Western powers and their proxies vie for the spoils while his countrymen are traded in open-air slave markets.
Gaddafi and Libya’s tragic fate serve as a stark warning for nations like Iran, which have chosen disarmament over deterrence — a decision that has left them vulnerable to attack.
Indeed, Iran’s refusal to develop nuclear weapons, despite possessing the necessary technology, has consistently placed it at risk from hostile forces. Israeli terrorists have openly mused about the prospects of bombing one of the oldest civilisations and they finally made good on their desires last week. Once they began their terror campaign, it was only a matter of time before their chief benefactor, Uncle Sam, waded in. Swimming in copious Israeli lobby money, including $100 million from rabid Zionist Miriam Adelson, which propelled him to the White House, Trump was always going in one direction when the Israelis urged him to attack Iran. After some tense days, the attack finally came on Saturday night when the US pummeled three Iranian nuclear facilities using the 30,000-pound GBU-57 MOP bunker-buster bombs for the very first time.
That Iran does not have any nuclear weapons has never been in doubt. Due to its membership of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the Iranians were obligated to allow regular inspections of their nuclear facilities. The inspectors always gave them a clean chit, confirming that their programme was entirely peaceful and that they were not making nuclear weapons. Furthermore, even the intelligence agencies of Iran’s enemy states, the US and Israel, made it clear that the Iranians did not possess any nuclear weapons. Iran even forbade itself from possessing nuclear weapons. Ali Khamenei, the Iranian Supreme Leader, issued a fatwa in 2003, declaring nuclear weapons forbidden in Islamic law due to their destructive capacity. So, the highest Iranian religious authority forbade them from possessing nukes, and international inspectors certified that they were free of them.
Yet, it did not protect Iran from becoming the target of the terrorist Western states and their Israeli appendage — which has been effectively running American foreign policy for several decades.
Netanyahu has been talking about Iran being on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons since the 1990s and has been pining to get the US to attack the country. From presenting cartoonish drawings of the supposed Iranian bomb at the UN to presenting “half a tonne” of material supposedly pilfered from Iran’s “secret atomic archive,” Netanyahu has long been egging his Western backers to take out the “Iranian regime.”
The writing was always on the wall. Iran should have seen it and prepared for it accordingly.
The one thing that would have made it absolutely untouchable to Israeli-American aggression is actually acquiring nuclear weapons. International relations mavens like John Mearsheimer have long argued that Iranian nuclear weapons would bring stability to the Middle East:
There’s no question that a nuclear armed Iran would bring stability to the region because nuclear weapons are weapons of peace. They are weapons of deterrence. They have hardly any offensive capability at all. And if Iran had a nuclear deterrent, there’s no way that the United States or Israel for that matter would be threatening to attack Iran right now — in the same way that if Saddam Hussein had nuclear weapons in 2003, the United States would not have invaded Iraq and if Libya had nuclear weapons in 2011, the United States would not have gone to war against Libya. So, I think that if you had a Middle East where other states besides Israel — this, of course, includes Iran — had a nuclear deterrent, it would be a more peaceful region.
The opposite cases of Pakistan and Libya are cases in point for nuclear deterrence.
Iran had nothing to lose by acquiring nukes. Despite not possessing nuclear weapons, it is the second-most sanctioned country in the world after Russia, with nearly 5,000 sanctions, crippling its economy and freedom to do business with the rest of the world. Despite being the country with the fourth-largest oil reserves, Iran’s options for exporting its rich oil and mineral resources are severely curtailed. The state of its economy has seen its sharpest minds leave en masse for foreign shores in search of better prospects. (My last employer had a very liberal policy with hiring Iranian developers because “they were extremely competent and very cheap.” None of the Iranians I got to know personally wanted to return home.) The country had adapted to the sanctions and become self-sufficient to some extent. There was not much more that the terrorist Western regimes could have imposed in the form of sanctions as punishment for seeking nukes. The cost of acquiring nuclear weapons was relatively non-existent compared to not having them.
Yet, Iran pursued diplomacy with the hope of sanctions relief. They even got a nuclear deal in 2015 under Obama but not much in the way of relief. Obama imposed a fresh set of sanctions within a day of signing the nuclear deal! Trump ultimately trashed it during the early days of his first term. Under Pezeshkian, Iran embarked upon a quest that appeared futile from the off. They seemed to have an inordinate belief in such lores as international law, diplomacy, decency, and norms of behaviour — especially in a post-October 7 world — even as they watched the West trample all over those notions in broad daylight in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen. It must have taken Iran Panglossian levels of optimism to seek another nuclear deal with the same president, who not only trashed the previous deal but also assassinated their revered commander, Qassem Soleimani. They sat through five sham meetings before the US dropped the façade and greenlit the Israeli attack on June 13.
Now, Iran has neither a deal nor nuclear weapons, and is left facing a devastating war that will only increase the suffering of its 90 million people and destroy its millennia-old cultural landmarks.
The Iranians are putting up a valiant fight, scorching the genocidal squatters in occupied Palestine with a regular barrage of missiles and drones. It remains to be seen how it will react to the American aggression on its nuclear facilities, but there is every possibility that Iran, governed by the Shi’a ideology, which is rooted in the spirit of martyrdom, will retaliate by attacking thousands of American troops stationed across dozens of bases in the traitorous Arab states of its neighbourhood. In a statement today, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) reminded the USA, “As we have repeatedly declared, the number, spread and size of US military bases in the region are not strengths; they only double their vulnerability.”
Israelis, Americans, and their allies will bear the consequences for their criminal aggression. But more than anything else, this should serve as a moment of clarity for Iran. It should discard all the faulty notions that stopped it from developing nuclear weapons, despite possessing the technology to do so. It should know by now that there is no better guarantee of peace.
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If Iran had nukes the US and Israel would not be playing this game. This should serve as proof Iran is not a nuclear power.
Sense it appears that the US has Israels back maybe it would make more sense to take away Israels nukes??? That way Israel would look more like the proxy that It is.
Iran must get Nuclear weapons because the Devil IsRael.