​Nuclear spectre: on the risk of an era of nuclear brinkmanship

After a 12-day intense missile barrage and air attacks following Israel’s illegal aerial attacks on Iran, the two countries finally announced a ceasefire on Tuesday. Ostensibly conducted as a “pre-emptive” strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, the Israeli attacks graduated into a full-fledged war that also involved U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear installations. These attacks, in blithely ignoring the dangers of radioactive leakage, and their subsequent responses, point to the stark nature of a fragile international order now threatened by escalating nuclear risks from West Asia to Ukraine and even the Indian subcontinent. The attacks on Iran might have damaged its nuclear installations and, in particular, its uranium enrichment capabilities. Yet, this naked aggression was against a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and a country that had willingly subjected its facilities to international scrutiny. Iran had also signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with the P5+1 (nuclear-armed states plus Germany) to ensure that its nuclear capabilities remained peaceful, only for it to be rendered meaningless after the U.S. withdrew from it during President Donald Trump’s first term. These attacks now create a new dynamic, wherein Iran is compelled to seek nuclear weapons by withdrawing from its commitments — its parliament is now mulling a bill to exit the NPT — and use them as a deterrent. Meanwhile, any step Iran takes to do so could be used to justify further aggression by Israel and the U.S., thereby rejecting international laws and the NPT’s nonproliferation norm.

Israel’s hypocrisy is stark. It remains a non-signatory to the NPT and refuses any oversight of its undeclared, but known, arsenal. This raises the possibility that it values nuclear weapons not for deterrence but for their destructive potential. U.S. protection emboldens it to pursue destructive policies in Gaza and illegal wars in West Asia. Combined with the Russian threat to use nuclear weapons to deter conventional aggression by NATO following its Ukraine invasion, these actions reveal how the renewed “competition among the great powers” and their cynical understanding of deterrence are dismantling global stability. The idea of nuclear disarmament is in tatters as the nuclear-weapon states continue to expand and modernise their arsenals, while non-proliferation is under threat as other countries turn to nuclear weapons to safeguard themselves. Without a renewed diplomatic impetus to re-establish international norms on conflict, a stronger push for disarmament among all nuclear-armed states, and a firm commitment to uphold the NPT, the world risks sliding into a new era of nuclear brinkmanship that could prove more dangerous than the Cold War’s darkest moments.