Opinion: Islamist Ideology, Proxy Wars Stigmatised Iran's Nuclear Programme

News18

22-06-2025

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Iran has refused to settle down as a normal country more than four decades since the Islamic Revolution
While opinions might differ on whether Iran's nuclear programme has a hostile purpose, which necessitated punitive air strikes by Israel upon the former's nuclear reactor sites (by itself a potential hazardous act), the Islamic Republic is ultimately paying for its refusal to settle down as a normal country in the comity of nations since the Islamic Revolution of 1979.
Its founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (1902-1989) made no secret of his antagonism towards the USA and Israel. He made no secret either of his designs on the entire world through Jihad— as evident in his collection of fatwas titled The Little Green Book (1985)— but then it is a matter of priority and feasibility. His aging successor Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (86) sees no reason either to depart from that policy.
Iran made no efforts to resume diplomatic ties with the United States since they broke after the excruciating 444-day hostage crisis (1979-1981) at the US embassy in Tehran. Contrast this Mao Zedong's pragmatic approach in establishing People's Republic of China's diplomatic relations with the United States (1972) though the political philosophy of Peking (now Beijing) and Washington DC were antipodal. Mao chose the USA after his relations soured with his former ally viz. USSR.
In the very first month of the American Embassy hostage crisis in Tehran in November 1979, there was a similar attack on the American Embassy in Islamabad wherein the diplomatic mission was set ablaze by protesters based on a canard that the USA had attacked the Grand Mosque in Mecca. While the attack, praised by Ayatollah Khomeini, was disapproved by General Zia-ul-Haq. Zia, conscious that the attack might turn Pakistan into an international pariah, played his cards well with Washington DC. When in the ensuing month the USSR invaded Afghanistan, Zia emerged as the leader of a pro-US frontline state fighting against Communism. This act turned Pakistan into a 'stalwart ally" of the USA. The question is not an ethical one, whether Pakistan did the right or wrong thing. The question is how smartly Zia played his hand, though he was no friend of the Western value system. Zia created the Afghan Mujahideen, which had a major blowback effect on Pakistan, besides Islamizing the jurisprudence in the country.
The US State Department reports, and the US Congressional research briefs, contain extensive data on how Pakistan is home to several internationally designated terror groups, many of which are anti-US and they are anti-India. Yet, whether we like it or not, Pakistan remains in the good books of the US even under the watch of President Donald Trump, who made boisterous claims about eliminating Islamic terrorism in the world. Pakistan has smartly manipulated the USA, to the extent that despite the return of Taliban in Afghanistan, which has diminished the role of Islamabad in the region, Trump praises Pakistan's leadership. Thus Pakistan, despite being as much a sponsor of terror as Iran, and actually possessing nukes, which Iran is only suspected of developing, has smartly managed Washington DC.
The Islamic republic, on the other hand, in pursuit of its ideology, has put itself on the wrong side of the global order. Khomeini's Islamist rhetoric was aimed at capturing the centre-stage in the Islamic world. This could not happen because Shias constituted less than 15 per cent of the global Muslim population. Moreover, the belief that Muslim governments would be swayed by Islamic sentiments alone in diplomatic matters is patently erroneous. No Arab country, whether republic or monarchy, would officially go against Israel, or come to the aid of their Arab brethren in Gaza, despite the fact that more than 50,000 of Arab Palestinian civilians have perished as a result of Israel's campaign against Hamas. Thus Iran could never become the leader of the Islamic world. Its following is limited to the Shia population of West Asia, which makes it a suspect in the eyes of the Sunni Arabs. It built up Hezbollah in Lebanon, a militant group promising Islamic government, and supported the secular regime of Hafez al-Assad (later his son Bashar al-Assad) as both are Shia. In Iraq it supported the Arab Shias, who despite constituting the majority, had been dominated by the Sunni Arabs from General Abdul Karim Qasim to Saddam Hussein.
That Iran's expectation was naive, was recently proven when Pakistan on predictable lines contradicted Iranian top general Mohsen Rezaei's claim that Pakistan would nuke Israel if Israel used a nuclear bomb on Iran. Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir obviously does not want to meet the same fate as Iran's Chief of Army Staff Mohammed Bagheri and IRGC Commander Hossein Salami!
II
Israel and Iran, at their closest points, are around 2,000 km apart. Not sharing boundaries, and belonging to different economic zones, they were not destined to be rivals. While it is true that Islamic Revolution, 1979 terminated the warm ties between the two countries during the reign of Shah of Iran viz. Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, both countries actually but covertly cooperated during Iran-Iraq War (1980-88). 'In early 1980"— says a RAND Corporation report (2011)—'Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin approved the shipment of tires for Phantom fighter planes, as well as weapons for the Iranian Army" (Israel and Iran: A Dangerous Rivalry, p. 14). Israel's action to oblige Iran was in violation of the US policy that no weapons be sent to the Islamic republic until the safe release of US hostages. Iran, in return for Israel's assistance, allowed a large number of Iranian Jews to migrate to Israel or the United States. Israel later acted as conduit for secretive sale of American weapons to Iran, which desperately needed those in the war against Iraq.
Though this covert cooperation diminished by the 1990s, after the Iran-Iraq war came to an end, Israel and Iran did not yet view themselves overtly as rivals. While it is true Iran's nuclear and missile development programmes made Israel's security establishment somewhat jittery, the threat from Iran was not yet a matter of public discourse. The civil war in Lebanon had also come to an end, as a result of the Taif Agreement (1989), and though Israel had discovered Iranian support behind Hezbollah (Mossad even tried to assassinate Iranian cleric, who was the architect of Hezbollah, in 1984 at Damascus through a parcel bomb) it was believed that things in Levant would settle down. With Iran's detractor Saddam Hussein still in the saddle, and an unfriendly Taliban establishing itself in Afghanistan, Iran's preoccupations were still limited to its neighbourhood. However, with the collapse of Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001, followed by fall of Saddam Hussein from power in 2003, Iran's influence was in the ascendant.
Hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected as the President of Iran in 2005. On December 14, 2005 he made a statement at a public rally in Zahedan, a city in south-eastern Iran, that Holocaust of Jews in Third Reich was a myth; and even if it was not a myth land should have been given to the persecuted Jews in Europe, United States, Canada or Alaska rather than in Palestine at the cost of the Arabs. It was a completely unnecessary statement. His public statement caused a furor not only in Israel, but also Europe and the USA. Throughout his tenure (2005-13) Ahmadinejad never recanted his statement, but rather repeated it with gusto.
Historically, whereas Holocaust was a reality, Israel did not owe its existence to it. It was rather the pogroms in the Russian Empire in the late 19th century that triggered settlement of the eastern Jews in Palestine then under the Ottoman Empire. There was also a movement called Hovevei Tzion (The Lovers of the Zion) in Eastern Europe from 1860 to settle in the Holy Land. The two leading Jewish institutions of higher education in Palestine viz. Technion and Hebrew University of Jerusalem had been inaugurated in 1925 in pre-Holocaust era. Most political leaders of Israel like Chaim Weizmann, David Ben Gurion, Golda Meir and Yitzhak Shamir came from the Czarist Empire. The questioning of the Holocaust, a highly sensitive matter, was meant only to humiliate Israel. It was, however, a marker of Islamic Republic antipathy towards Israel.
III
The American view of a country's nuclear programme is governed by the quality of the regime's relationship with Washington DC and its record of threatening American interests. As T.V. Paul (a US-based Indian scholar) explains in The Warrior State: Pakistan in the Contemporary World (2014), the Bush administration treated Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb, lightly despite the CIA uncovering the successful nuclear proliferation ring that Khan ran, by seizing the centrifuges to enrich uranium destined for Libya in October 2003.
Letting Pakistan scot-free despite being the biggest source of nuclear proliferation in the contemporary era, contrasts sharply with the US invasion of Iraq (2003) over alleged weapons of mass destruction, locking horns with Iran and North Korea, and forcing the Gaddafi regime to abandon its nuclear programme in 2003. What explains this contrasting attitude of the USA for different countries during the same period? 'The answer lies"—says Paul— 'in Pakistan's geostrategic salience and its elite's willingness and ability to carry out or thwart US policy objectives in the region" (The Warrior State, P.18).
Iran's nuclear programme was stigmatized by its outlook on the West and Israel. The rest is only a matter of details. Whereas Iran holds that it had complied with its international obligation, like the Non-Proliferation Treaty, IAEA Protocols and Additional Protocols, and Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) that Tehran concluded with China, France, Germany, Russia, Britain and the United States certain loose ends repeatedly crop up. This casts a doubt on the motive of the Iranian nuclear programme.
Jared Mokowitz, the Democratic member representing Florida, in the US House of Representatives moved a resolution (H.Res. 105) on February 4, 2025, on affirming the threats to world stability from a nuclear weapons-capable Islamic Republic of Iran. Several points from there would be worth quoting.
On May 20, 2022, the IAEA reported that the Islamic Republic of Iran had achieved a stockpile of 43.3 kilograms (95.5 pounds) of 60 percent highly enriched uranium, roughly enough material for a nuclear weapon.
In February 2023, the IAEA reported that Islamic Republic of Iran had enriched uranium to 83.7 percent, which is just short of the 90-percent threshold for weapons-grade fissile material.
On September 4, 2023, an IAEA report estimated the total uranium stockpile of the Islamic Republic of Iran to be 3795.5 kilograms (8367.65 pounds) and that Islamic Republic of Iran has enough fissile material that, if further enriched, would be sufficient to produce nuclear weapons.
Whereas on October 18, 2023, the United Nations Security Council Resolution 2213 (2015) lapsed, and many proliferation-related penalties and restrictions were lifted, allowing the Islamic Republic of Iran to test or transfer ballistic missiles, which may contribute to the further development of a nuclear weapon delivery system.
The resolution further states that on November 24, 2024, the Islamic Republic of Iran informed the IAEA that it planned to start enriching uranium with thousands of advanced centrifuges at its Fordow and Nantz plants, while also installing more uranium-enrichment centrifuges at those locations. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence published an assessment on December 5, 2024, which stated that Iran's 20-percent and 60-percent enriched uranium stockpiles were far greater than needed for what it claims it would use the uranium for, and Iran could produce more than a dozen nuclear weapons if its total uranium stockpile were further enriched.
This might explain why Israel went in for air strikes on nuclear and military facilities in Iran. Israel, a small country, could not leave its security to chance and good intentions of opponents. Its surprise air strike on Iraq's nuclear reactor viz. Osirak near Baghdad on June 7, 1981 became the stuff of legend. It crippled the Iraqi nuclear programme. Similarly, its air strike on September 6, 2007 at a suspected nuclear reactor at Deir ez-Zor region in Syria also sent a strong message. The strikes on Iran nuclear plants were expected many times over the last 20 years. However, Meir Dagan, the then Director of Mossad, went in for a low-cost strategy of assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists. His strategy lent its rather provocative title to Ronen Bergman's comprehensive but controversial book Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel's Targeted Assassinations (2018).
'The goal is to liberate Palestine"—declared Ayatollah Khamenei on December 4, 1990 at the First Islamic Conference on Palestine— 'and wipe out the Israeli government. There is no difference between the territories occupied before and after the year 1967. Every inch of Palestinian lands is Muslims' homeland. Any non-Muslim and non-Palestinian rule over Palestine is illegitimate rule. As our magnanimous Imam Khomeini said, 'Israel must disappear.' If Palestinian Jews accept Islamic rule, they may live in Palestine. It is not a matter of anti-Semitism. The problem is that a Muslim homeland has been occupied" (The Most Important Problem of the Islamic World: Selected Statements by Ayatollah Khamenei About Palestine, P.11-12).
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Naturally, Israel could not wait to see the enrichment of this hostile ideology with fissile material. Hence, it went for air strikes.
The writer is the author of 'The Microphone Men: How Orators Created a Modern India' (2019) and an independent researcher based in New Delhi. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect News18's views.
Location :
New Delhi, India, India
First Published:
June 22, 2025, 18:22 IST
News opinion Opinion: Islamist Ideology, Proxy Wars Stigmatised Iran's Nuclear Programme