With Netanyahu, there can be no stability in West Asia: K.C. Singh

The US has used B-2 bombers to drop bunker busters on Iran’s nuclear facilities and fired Tomahawk missiles. Iran has hit back with missiles attacks on Israel. The US signals these strikes were limited and restricted in scope, that Iran should come to the table. Iran says it never left the table, that Israel and the US attacked before talks could proceed. How do you see this unfolding?

We have to look at the objectives of different countries involved. Yesterday, the President of Israel gave an interview to the BBC: When asked if he was ready for a ceasefire now that the primary objective of destroying the Iranian nuclear programme is over and Americans have participated, he immediately dodged it. He said, no, there are still many missiles available with Iran, and we have to go to all those missile sites. So the Israeli objective was partly the nuclear programme, but the main objective is regime change. They made no bones about it and they believe Americans have been drawn into it. The best-case scenario for them is if Iran attacks American facilities and gets into direct combat with America, because then they believe Americans will cause so much damage, including probably killing the Supreme Leader or other top leadership, that regime change may become possible.

They convinced themselves that the average Iranian is opposed to the regime. And that is a serious mistake because they don’t understand the Iranian civilisation. The very ancient civilisation dominated the entire region. In 550 BCE, when the Achaemenid Empire was formed, their influence went exactly where it is now, what is called the Shia Crescent, all the way to Greece. So to assume that they will just give up—one is Shia faith, which depends on martyrdom. Martyrdom is ingrained into it. And second, is their pride in their civilisation. So the minute Iran is attacked, the country, the nation will line up behind the leadership, however much they despise them.

They have already done that, I think.

Yes, because they see it as an attack on their civilisation, on their faith, on their sense of history. And that is what is happening. So Israel is deluding itself. It believes people are going to rise up and overthrow the regime.

Iranians can be emotional, but when they take a decision, they are calculating. There is a phrase which is used, which is inherent to the Shia faith, which is called taqiyyah, which is dissimulation. That was allowed because when Shias were persecuted, you were allowed to even lie about your faith as long as it was necessary for survival. And this dissimulation is very intrinsic to the way Iran approaches subjects. So at the moment, they understand that this is what Israel wants. That’s why they’ve not attacked the Americans.

They will do an analysis to see how much damage has been caused. The attack on Natanz and on Isfahan is just a bogus thing. They were not bunker busters. They’ve fired missiles from a submarine. But those were already emptied out. Israelis had already attacked them. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said that at Natanz, the 400-plus kg of enriched uranium, uranium enriched to 60 per cent was at Natanz. But the Iranians have removed that. And that’s what they’re saying, that we managed to empty out these places.

As far as Fordow is concerned, there is a question mark. Did it succeed? Did it not? There are contradictory reports coming in. So you’re getting one extreme view from Iran that there’s zero damage and you’re getting the other extreme view from Trump, it’s completely demolished. So probably the truth lies in between.

There are also reports from the IAEA that there is no radiation over these sites. So they have not really achieved the goal of destruction. So you are saying Iran will now double down on nuclear weaponisation and might decide on talks with the US?

Which means Natanz didn’t have those 400 kg of enriched uranium, which Iranians claim they have moved elsewhere. Now, that is the uranium they need to quickly turn into weapons. Because from 60 per cent to 90 per cent is a fairly quick progress. If they moved that, they might even have moved some of the latest version of the equipment for enriching uranium elsewhere. Then you’ve got complications, with North Korea saying they will give nuclear weapons to them. You don’t even know if Iran has produced a weapon or somebody else has given it.

So the non-proliferation regime is ready to now completely get disrupted because Iran has a justification, a moral justification for going that way. Because they’ll say, look at North Korea. They’ve continued to possess weapons and nobody dared touch them. And Trump went and tried befriending them, walked into North Korea. So if that is the way you treat a country that has nuclear weapons, then Iran is justified in possessing those weapons, because otherwise you come and dump bunker busters on them.

The negotiation was still on. The talks were to be the fifth round of talks for June 15 and the Israelis go and attack on June 13. To assume the Americans didn’t know or the Americans were not in the picture would be a mistake. I think they were working side by side, Americans playing the good cop, engaging, talking, but they knew that their demand of Iran completely packing up their nuclear enrichment programme and having zero enrichment was not acceptable to Iran.

Not at the moment. I think at the moment they are in a position to punish Israel more. There’s censorship. We are not being told how much damage is being done to the Haifa port. But there are reports coming in that Iranian missiles are still going through the Iron Dome and hitting Israeli cities. Being a small country, it’s easier to target than Iran, which is a huge country with multiple cities and huge vacant ground mountains. So it’s much more difficult to target.

So Israel may have found itself in a corner. If they want a regime change, I think Iranians would want a regime change in Israel. And I think they’re also taking revenge for what Israel has done in Gaza, what they’ve done against Hezbollah. So they’ve got an opportunity now, and nobody is telling them to stop firing missiles. They’re taking revenge.

This face saver is not going to come about for some time because they first want to teach Israel a lesson. But that also plays into Israel’s hands, does it not? So it can keep appealing to the US and drag it further into its war with Iran. This could be protracted then.

I think Trump has a problem. His base is already split. You’re already seeing dissension within the Republican Party and the Make America Great Again (MAGA) groups, and his two strong MAGA supporters have been opposing it. They said, look, we said we will not enter wars. One-time hitting of nuclear facilities is fine. But if before Iranians attack American facilities, America re-enters it, Trump will find it difficult to justify domestically. The dissensions will grow. They’ll say, why are you going in a second time? You’ve gone and done what you said you had to do. Now you’re provoking Iran. Now you’re looking for a war. So it’ll be difficult to market it domestically.

So I think the Iranians may be smart enough to realise that let’s not target American facilities directly. In any case, Americans have removed, they’re emptying out their bases in the immediate vicinity of Iran. And also Iran would not want to spoil its whatever kind of relationship it has with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries or with Qatar. Qatar was unhappy because Iran’s large gas field, which the Israelis bombed at the Iranian end, is shared with Qatar. It’s the largest gas field in the world. It stretches literally from Qatar all the way to Iran.

You spoke about regime change. But some say the objective is regime collapse, something similar to Syria, where you install some puppet regime and let it play out in chaos. In Iran, the Supreme Leader has already appointed successors to all important posts. If regime change happens, what would it look like?

The Supreme Leader has not nominated his successor. What he’s done is he’s put up three names for consideration by an organisation called the Assembly of Experts. These are 88 clerics who are elected for eight years. They were elected last year, so they’ll be there till 2032. Those three names will be before the Assembly of Experts. There will be an interim arrangement with a president and somebody else till the Assembly of Experts picks one out of those three names. So he’s cleared a line of succession, but he is using an institutional arrangement for that.

The principal difference between Saddam Hussein and this place is Saddam was a Sunni dictator ruling a Shia majority country [Iraq]. Assad in Syria was a Shia minority ruling a Sunni majority country. Iran doesn’t have any such problem. And because it’s an alliance between the military authority and the Shia clerics, they have their reach all the way to the village. So the clerical approach goes all the way to the village. It’s like a huge political party.

And also they allow this limited democracy. They have elections. There is an elected President. They allow people to let off steam. You’ve got the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), you’ve got other structures, paramilitary forces, which go all the way down to the village level. So it’s a whole power structure which will be difficult to overturn. We’ve seen Americans have failed in bringing really liberal democracy in Iraq. They definitely have failed in Afghanistan. So change of regime does not always get you what you want.

Iranians also know that if they can keep up the attack on Israel, the pressure will build up within Israel of changing Netanyahu. And elections should be held there. And he’s not that popular. He got popular once these attacks took place. But if the killings go on and the missiles keep firing, I think the opinion will change in Israel itself.

You spoke about how China and Russia have condemned the US attack on Iran. But both are quite far away. What can they give Iran besides tea and sympathy?

They’ll say that Iran has a right as signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) unless Iran leaves NPT. As signatories to the NPT, they are allowed to have nuclear programme under the supervision of IAEA. The problem was that the Iranians have started enriching to 60 per cent. They had also embedded some of their nuclear facilities deep in a mountain. Now, that reflected lack of trust.

Their argument is that if Israel, which is a non-signatory to the NPT, can have nuclear weapons and you are not asking them any questions, then where is the nuclear regime? What are we talking about? So that is their moral argument in the Islamic world. And the average person at the street level will agree with them. So essentially they make a moral issue, not a legal issue. Legally they realise they are not in the right.

Is this going to start a nuclear race among other states in the region?

That argument is already there. Can nuclear weapons save you from intervention of a foreign power in your domestic affairs? Well, it seems it can, provided it has enough weapons. But if you’re at a threshold power, it can be risky. We saw Saddam Hussein attacked, we’ve seen Iran attacked, but Iran is not finished.

The Iranians will keep the Strait of Hormuz threat on the table. They’ve got the Parliament to do it, but their Supreme National Security Council has not taken a decision. They are holding out the threat because if that is blocked, then the global economy is affected. Even in America, the price of oil and the consumer will end up paying $5 or $6 per gallon. And that is what will affect Trump’s popularity. And the common man will say, what the hell have you gone and done in Iran?

Coming to India: Prime Minister Modi spoke to Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and urged immediate de-escalation. But should India not be addressing that message to the Israelis and the US?

The relationship between the BJP government and Netanyahu’s party is entirely different. It’s ideological. It’s the old link from Savarkar’s time between Zionism and Hindutva. This is not the normal reaching out to Israel, which was done in 1991. I was the director of West Asia and North Africa at that time, and [Jyotindra Nath] Dixit was the Foreign Secretary. I wrote the Cabinet note where we established diplomatic relations. That was a diplomatic outreach because the whole Arab world had moved on. They were already talking to Israel. The peace process was already on. So we were getting left out of it.

That’s why no Prime Minister, including Vajpayee, went to Israel. So we kept up our relationship, but we did not want to cross a certain line. Now that line has been crossed by Prime Minister Modi. So it’s not a normal relationship of closeness. I think it’s an ideological sort of attraction to each other, which goes beyond friendship. So that is why on any resolution about Gaza, we were abstaining from. We’ve not come out openly to condemn Israel or the killing of civilians there. So India had moved away from its neutral stance between Israel and Iran. And Iran knows it.

What is the point coming out with platitudes and making general statements? What are you willing to do? In this, we don’t have leverage. Are you going to tell Israel to stop? They’re not going to listen to you. And certainly, why should the Iranians listen to you?

And then the Pakistanis have got an opportunity. The fact that Trump is hosting the Chief of the Army Staff, a few days before all this happens, was part of their strategy of weaning Pakistan away, making sure that if this worsens and tomorrow they need the air bases in Pakistan, they would already be using Pakistani intelligence. And if they need an overland attack, at some stage they think the regime is crumbling, then Pakistan is critical.

But the embarrassment for India was obvious when Trump invited Prime Minister Modi to come to Washington, DC, while the Pakistani Army Chief is getting feted there and given a lunch. So that itself indicated that there’s a geopolitical shift that has occurred in the region. And India is now a part player in it. We are not a major player because we have put everything in the American corner.

Pakistan added insult to injury by nominating Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize. Two days before he throws bunker busters at Iran, what kind of a peace prize would he get? But the Pakistanis don’t care. So they managed to create a fissure between you and US, which is not visible yet.

Is there not some value to balancing, to being neutral? It gives you autonomy of action. In the Ukraine conflict, India was able to buy energy supplies from Russia at cheaper rates.

There is, but then you go back to old non-alignment. Then you stop having a special relationship with the US. That’s all right when you have a normal President in the White House. But somebody like Trump, who is completely upending the global trade order, the global security order, the America First approach, disrupts the engagement.

There’s already a move in the US Congress for sanctions against countries buying Russian oil, stronger sanctions on Russia. And they mentioned India in the same sentence as Russia and China. Now, if that is going to happen, India is counting on Russian oil if there’s disruption from the Gulf. So it’s going to become more difficult to do this balancing as the countries you’re balancing between, their differences increase and some of them are at each other’s throats.

How bad will it be if Iran blocks the Strait of Hormuz? About 21 million barrels a day of oil and natural gas from Qatar come through that passage. Almost two-thirds of our energy requirements and our reserves will last only 10 days.

The Emirates may be still able to supply something because they have a pipeline to Fujairah, which is outside the Gulf. But then that pressure would come from China also. Saudis may be able to supply some, but the oil fields are all on the Gulf side. Iran said they’ll disrupt the shipping through the Red Sea too. So even the other entrance point to Suez Canal will have disrupted supplies.

Simply put, the price will go up. The Russians are not running a charity. So even if you’re buying from Russia, if the global price goes up to $150, the Russians will not be selling at $70. You may get your oil, but there is an international supply line. They may give you a little discount, but they are not going to be running a charitable organisation. So you will have to pay more. Even if you get the oil, the higher amounts that you’re paying will start disrupting your economy. You can do it for a week, 10 days, 15 days, but you can’t do it for six months.

What about Chabahar port, which we had hoped to develop and connect to the north-south corridor?

Chabahar is outside the gulf. It is outside the Strait of Hormuz and that is the whole justification of Chabahar. What we can ensure [is] that the Israelis won’t attack it. I’m sure they will not because the Chinese investment is also there. So if the Israelis don’t attack it, Americans will not attack it. If shipping in the Indian Ocean is safe, then at least Chabahar can be functional. So connectivity to Central Asia may not be fully disrupted at this stage. And if the infrastructure is not destroyed, then whenever normalcy is restored, we can pick up wherever we left off.

All projects will get delayed. It doesn’t mean they get cancelled, including the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor, the IMEC, which is a non-starter at the moment. Till you have normalcy in the area, you’ve got Iranian bombs falling on Israel. Haifa was supposed to be the port where the IMEC ended. If Haifa is so badly damaged and destroyed, it’ll take many months for it to be repaired.

Netanyahu has managed to hang on for two years by the simple act of the war in Gaza. If Iran keeps up attacks on Israel, rather than regime change (in Israel), it could be Netanyahu entrenching himself more?

Not if the destruction goes on and you can’t see any benefit in it. In Gaza, you would say, okay, we are killing Hamas, we finished Hamas. But if you caused all the damage you could cause by air attacks on Iran, you don’t have your land forces going in there. So you’re not able to enter Iran. Unless you enter Tehran and go and occupy Tehran and say that we have overthrown the government, the government is not going to get overthrown.

So then the damage caused, and it’s a small country, its economy cannot take this kind of damage beyond a stage. Their interceptor missiles, they were running low on them. And also Iranians, they’re saying each missile they’re firing may be worth $20,000. The counter missile that Israel is firing is worth a few million dollars. So the interceptors are bleeding them. Some are saying it’s costing them $200-250 million a day. So, how many days can you sustain it?

And Iran has shown that they have enough missiles tucked away. Iran can do it through the Caspian Sea, over land over water coming directly into Iran. All they need to supply are launchers. And if enough missiles are there and Iran is claiming they even have missile production facilities underground. So far they’ve been able to up the ante by going to hypersonic missiles, missiles which cannot be intercepted by the Iron Dome.

Iranians will use taqiyyah. They’ll dissimulate, they’ll ignore America for the time being. They’ll just lump it [with] what Americans have done. They will claim the damage is limited. And if they don’t say that there has been major destruction, Iranian public opinion doesn’t compel them to go after the Americans. So I think there’ll be some dissimulation going at the moment. And Iran will act with cunning and dissimulation, and they may have Israel exactly where they want it.

Where do we see the international order? Israel attacked Iran unprovoked. The US launched an illegal attack that breaks every international law. The Security Council held a meeting and the IAEA will hold a board meeting. What can they do?

I think the international order was finished the day Trump was sworn in on January 20. It was clear he came in saying that he’s going to disrupt trade, he’s going to have “America first”. International order post-WWII depended on American leadership. But if it’s going to be America first, and you can see that if he just walks out of a G7 meeting, he doesn’t even meet any other leader there. The other invitees, the Brazilian President, the Mexican President, the Indian Prime Minister, the Ukrainian President, if he just ignores all of them and walks back home simply to pay attention to the fight between Israel and Iran, you can see where his priorities lie.

That is what Germany etc. are saying: That Europe will have to look after themselves. There’s a new order emerging. The Canadian Prime Minister is just going to Europe to sign a defence deal. So if the old connection between even Canada and the US is gone and Canada is looking for a new defence structure, then we are looking at a new world order. And I think India will also have to rethink because we put too much in the US corner and this game of playing along with the US as well as the other countries will become more difficult as long as this war goes on.

India has the Quad foreign ministers meeting in Washington, DC, and BRICS leaders meeting in Brazil coming up. How do you see India participating in those discussions (held in these meetings) on the West Asian conflict?

I would find it difficult to imagine Prime Minister Modi going if by then this is not settled or there’s at least a ceasefire. As it is, Trump is targeting BRICS because BRICS is no longer what it was. Originally, it was just Brazil, Russia, India, and China. And then South Africa came in and then many other countries have come in, including Iran. So Trump has targeted BRICS saying, if they attack the US dollar, Chinese and the Russians will push that issue.

Many of these groups were contradictory. The minute they became large, they became like a mini-Non-Aligned Movement and balancing American influence. Now, if you are with the US and there’s somebody like President Trump there, who immediately gets upset if anything contradictory to US interests is perceived by him. It’s not a normal President. With Trump, it’ll be more difficult.