Nuclear debates in West Asia since Pokhran II

This piece is part of the series, 25 Years Since Pokhran-II: Reviewing India's Nuclear Odyssey

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Twenty-five years since India conducted its second round of nuclear tests at Pokhran in the desert of Rajasthan, debates in and around nuclear power, deterrence, and proliferation alike have evolved significantly. While the fundamentals of the nuclear threat remain relevant, and some would even argue as being even greater than before, the geopolitics around it has also evolved. In West Asia (Middle East), aspirations for nuclear power have been consistent, at least in rhetoric, if not in practice. In 1998, Pakistan followed India with its nuclear test about 10 days after India’s Pokhran-II nuclear tests, establishing what Islamabad claimed was a ‘credible minimum nuclear deterrence’ between South Asia’s two largest states. With this, Pakistan became the first Islamic nation and military with a nuclear arsenal. This was celebrated by some as the coming of the “Islamic bomb”. This narrative found many takers in the Middle East and the larger Arab world. From their viewpoint, a response to Israel’s widely accepted nuclear weapons was to develop a similar nuclear capability; it is to be noted that Israel has never officially tested nuclear weapons, or declared them publicly. This narrative was not new in the 1990s and had been prevalent in certain sections of the region since the 1960s, both with the state and its officials and with the non-state militant actors alike. “Pakistan’s possession of nuclear power is to be considered an asset to the Arab and Muslim nations,” said Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the late spiritual leader of the Palestinian Hamas, a designated terrorist group. While individuals and groups took various, largely positive, and often bullish, lines on Pakistan’s nuclear announcement, individual states supported Islamabad with more measured positions around sovereignty and deterrence.

The depth of the idea of a nuclear capability proffering deterrence was increasingly popular among states in the region amidst the geopolitical fault lines in the Middle East, specifically the perceived nuclear threat from Israel backed by the United States.

Other countries in the region with nuclear ambitions such as Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Iran amongst others, took Pakistan’s test as both inspiration and as a cue on how important nuclear-based deterrence is going to be in the future. As per some views, a Pakistani bomb meant that the Saudis could access the weapon ‘at will’, if needed, through Islamabad. On the other side of this, was then Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Gohar Ayub Khan’s claim that Israel had helped New Delhi in its nuclear test by providing electronic switches. Pro-state press in Syria hailed Pakistan’s test as a desire and right of every country that aims for security, rights, and sovereignty. The depth of the idea of a nuclear capability proffering deterrence was increasingly popular among states in the region amidst the geopolitical fault lines in the Middle East, specifically the perceived nuclear threat from Israel backed by the United States (US). Syria remains a good example of a state nursing nuclear aspirations in the region. From 1979 onwards, Damascus started efforts to acquire nuclear capability. In 1991, China supplied a neutron source reactor to Damascus, which finally culminated in Israel’s ‘Operation Outside the Box’ in 2007 as part of which the Israeli Air Force took out a nuclear facility in Syria’s Deir ez-Zor region, which was allegedly being built with the help of North Korea. And this was not the first instance of such a strike either. In 1981, Israel attacked a nuclear facility in Iraq as part of “Operation Opera”, which was being built with French assistance. Many in India also argue that such tactical action should have been pursued by India to prevent Pakistan’s acquisition of nuclear weapons, at whatever costs.

Nuclear debates now

Fast forward to the 2010s, and the issue of nuclear weapons and access to them remains at the fulcrum of regional geopolitics and tensions. Pakistan matching India, ‘nuke-to-nuke’, is often seen as a strategy that has successfully managed to thwart a full-scale war between the two sides. Exactly one year after Pokhran-II, India and Pakistan fought a war in Kargil in May 1999. Other major events such as the 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament in New Delhi, the 26/11 terror strike in Mumbai, the Pulwama terror strike in Kashmir and the retaliatory Balakot airstrikes inside Pakistan conducted by the Indian Air Force in 2019, highlight sub-conventional and conventional escalation under the nuclear umbrella, something keenly studied by regional powers in the Middle East such as Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Iran.

Israel (and others) got a break when in 2018, under the new presidency of Donald Trump, the US unilaterally withdrew from the JCPOA, renewing the powers of the anti-US constituency in Iran.

Meanwhile, over the past decade, diplomatic negotiations on Iran’s nuclear programme have become the benchmark of such debates in the contemporary Middle East. While a nuclear-armed Iran gives sleepless nights to the likes of Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the wider Arab world alike, Tehran has used its nuclear programme cleverly, both as a strategic bargaining chip when negotiating with global powers and a quasi-tactical tool which, in case of failure of diplomacy, has a high probability of acting as both a military and political deterrent in the long term. In 2015, the P5+1 group of nations and Iran agreed on an agreement (known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or the JCPOA) which would give greater oversight to the international community via the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)-led checks and in return, Iran will achieve a lowering of sanctions and mainstreaming of its economy into the international market place. This diplomatic coup was hailed as a critical first step in resolving other contentious issues in the region, however, Israel remained vehemently against the deal and tried its best to influence Washington under the then President Barack Obama to refrain from placing so much confidence in Tehran’s promises. Israel (and others) got a break when in 2018, under the new presidency of Donald Trump, the US unilaterally withdrew from the JCPOA, renewing the powers of the anti-US constituency in Iran. The moderate Iranian President Hassan Rouhani lost much of his political clout and was succeeded by the conservative Ebrahim Raisi in 2021. The diplomatic efforts to reign in Iran’s nuclear programme were ultimately unsuccessful. However, the lack of diplomacy also affected Iran’s designs of using its nuclear programme as a bargaining leverage with the diplomatic route now largely in limbo. US Undersecretary of Defence for Policy, Colin Kahl, has estimated that Tehran can make fissile material for a nuclear weapon within a 12-day period. This reality has pushed some in the region to mitigate risk. The recent détente brokered by China between Saudi Arabia and Iran on paper deescalates chances of a full-blown conflict, and by association distances Riyadh from Israel’s more existential concerns about a nuclear Iran. However, Israel has maintained that it would employ ‘all means possible’ to make sure Iran does not go nuclear. And while Saudi Arabia and Iran are attempting to make good and restart a working understanding, the issue of Iran attaining nuclear capabilities discreetly remains a very uneasy prospect regionally. Saudi columnist Rami Al Khalifa Al Ali wrote in April 2021 that a requirement for an Arab nuclear bomb is coming fast, with Arab states increasingly surrounded by nuclear powers, from India and Pakistan to Israel and potentially now, Iran. Türkiye has also hosted US nuclear weapons as part of its NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) membership. Ali goes on to claim that a movement towards such a capability has already started.

The recent détente brokered by China between Saudi Arabia and Iran on paper deescalates chances of a full-blown conflict, and by association distances Riyadh from Israel’s more existential concerns about a nuclear Iran.

Pokhran-II, indeed, renewed the debate across the Middle East on nuclear deterrence. A desire for nuclear weapons is an old aim in the region, however, with the success of North Korea and now potentially Iran, and an arguable failure of international norms to counter nuclear proliferation, attaining such capacities in the future may come with a greater sense of urgency emboldened further by an increasingly contested global security order.

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Kabir Taneja is a Fellow with the Strategic Studies programme at ORF.

• Nuclear Security
• India
• West Asia
• 25th anniversary
• deterrence
• IAEA
• NPT
• Nuclear debates
• nuclear power
• Pokhran
• proliferation

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