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The Israeli Nuclear Reactor in Dimona

Today, 30m Indian rupees would translate roughly into 2.4m Israeli new shekels, which equals about 6.5bn Iranian rials. That is loose change going by the percentages handed out to middlemen in, say, a minor oil deal with Iran or the comfort money involved in talks presaging an arms deal with Israel.

Arguably, if they had their way, both sides — Iran and Israel — could have handed out far more to the MPs than they were apparently offered to influence Tuesday’s verdict which, as the final numbers indicated, became a comfortable margin for the prime minister from a close call that it was. Whether the money did change hands is not the issue here.

Why these two countries and not any other were the biggest winners and losers in the 275-256 verdict for the Singh government is the question to ponder. For lost in the din of corruption charges was the essence of the debate, which centred on the India-US nuclear deal but carried far wider implications for the Iran-Israel stand-off. Most of the Left Front deputies focused their ire on the United States whose laws the civilian nuclear cooperation deal is really tied with.

That it took a Dalit politician, known better for her battles against India’s caste apartheid than for her perspicacity in international affairs, to present an astute perspective was a critique of the two-day debate. Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati told a news conference that the innocuous-looking India-US deal would enable Israel to attack Iran, in all probability with nuclear weapons.

 
“If something unfortunate happens to Iran, which will inevitably have an impact on the world, the region and us, then India would not be able to shake off its complicity,” she charged. She wondered why the Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline had taken forever to materialise and whether it was prudent to target Tehran by voting against it at the IAEA.

For the record, Ms Mayawati cannot be mistaken for any dyed-in-the-wool Muslim rabble-rouser playing the Iran card. In her day she has canvassed support for the right-wing Hindu Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi in elections he would have otherwise found difficult to win. Mr Modi and the BJP are strong supporters of strategic ties with Israel. On another occasion Ms Mayawati may even have supported close relations with Israel. But this week she chose to speak about an issue the media and the political parties alike have all but obfuscated.

Her alert about the looming catastrophe was nearly lost in the din of the trust vote. Their focus was on the number of convicted MPs bailed out to cast their vote, and on convalescing MPs wheeled in on hospital stretchers to help clinch a narrow decision. Much of the discussion was pegged on the unprecedented brazenness of horse-trading.

The big picture about the global involvement in the controversial deal was blurred in the excitement of live images of corruption in action. Ms Mayawati, who is not an MP, ran a separate sideshow to drive home her point.

What is the basis for the Indian Dalit leader’s fears of cataclysmic events in the Gulf? Ms Mayawati is probably aware that the departure of senior Indian diplomats has been on hold in Tel Aviv and Washington, who had otherwise been transferred out months ago. The veritable standstill is believed to be linked to the deal, and perhaps rightly so. What is brewing is lethal.

Israel is the only undeclared nuclear weapons state the world knows of. This has its advantages, which explains the Israeli intelligence making an example of the nuclear whistle-blower Mordechai Vanunu. However, the nuclear ambiguity poses a problem in a larger strategic architecture in the Middle East. Given a choice, the United States would want Israel declared the region’s only nuclear weapons state, just as it chose India for South Asia.

To do this, Washington first needs Israel to declare it possesses nuclear weapons! Israel’s current ambiguity was a handicap in the sabre-rattling contest it recently had with Iran. Should war break out, as is frequently feared by the world’s better analysts, an Israeli nuclear attack on Iran would become the first one to be carried out by a notionally non-nuclear state. In other words, there would be no legal support even if Israel’s indulgent godfathers in the West overlooked the immorality of it. No one, not even the United States, could give approval to the use of weapons that do not exist!

It is this existentialist dilemma that the India-US deal may help end. There is no other way to understand the tearing hurry to send the deal signed and sealed by the IAEA and the NSG to the US Congress for approval before the presidential elections get under way. Neither Barack Obama nor John McCain is going to kill the deal. It could have waited. The prime minister was safe with the Left Front supporting it till the very end of the government’s tenure, or as long as it was politically feasible for the two sides to remain together. The fact that a lobby led by BJP ideologue and former security adviser to the prime minister Brajesh Mishra has supported the deal in its present form is as good an indication as any that the India-Israel-US axis he advocated is active and working overtime. 

Whether the India-specific deal with the United States will be extended to Israel is no longer the question. When it will happen is what matters. With the world’s eyes focused on Iranian culpability, the time is ripe for frazzled Arab governments to be made to accept a country with a de facto nuclear stockpile as a de jure nuclear weapons state. India says its deal with the United States will legitimise it as a nuclear weapons state even if it does not fetch the status of the Big Five. Israel should be happy with similar status.

But has the deal ended the nuclear apartheid, as India had once described the NPT regime that it is now about to break? For Ms Mayawati that may not be an important question. As a Dalit leader who is best equipped to break the glass ceiling of caste apartheid she has to prepare for the next battle for India’s top job. Which means another round of the rupee-shekel-rial nexus to come into play, provided, as she feared, something more catastrophic does not occur before that.

First published in Dawn, a leading English-language newspaper in Pakistan. The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi and may be contacted on: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it