In a new three-part series, Ramesh Thakur examines dimensions of the Iran war. In part two, he analyses how the US-Israeli war may affect Iran’s nuclear capacity and ambitions.

In the gloaming jungle of international geopolitics, the Iran war offers lessons on the liberal illusions of peace, the limits both of military force detached from post-hostilities political vision and of international law and diplomacy, the seductive trap of appeasement of a bully, and the laws of unintended and perverse consequences. The tandem Israeli-US wars on Iran have seen multiple, often mixed messaging on justifications, objectives, progress and timelines. The alleged nuclear threat from Iran is the glue binding Israel and the US in this war. Both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Donald Trump have obsessed over this for decades.

To Israel, a nuclear Iran is an existential threat that cannot be allowed to emerge. To Iran, the bomb is the one guarantee of survival. The US-Israeli efforts to destroy Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, facilities, materials and ambition may yet produce the paradoxical outcome of degrading but not crippling Iran’s capabilities to acquire nuclear weapons while simultaneously hardening its political resolve and accelerating clandestine efforts to do so.

Netanyahu has form in crying WMD wolf, assuring the US Congress in 2002: “There is no question whatsoever that Saddam is seeking, and is working, and is advancing toward the development of nuclear weapons.”

Barack Obama described the 2013 interim nuclear deal as “the most significant and tangible progress” with Iran during his presidency. But Netanyahu rejected the agreement as a “dangerous” and "historic mistake". On 3 March 2015, Netanyahu took his Obama critique directly to the US Congress in “ political theatre at its most distasteful".

The final........

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