Roving Periscope: “If Israel nukes Iran, Pakistan will nuke Israel!”

Virendra Pandit

New Delhi: Amid volatile situation worsening by the hour in the Middle East, Iran has warned Israel that Pakistan will attack the Jewish state with nuclear weapons if Tel Aviv did likewise in Tehran, the media reported on Monday.

Interestingly, this “warning” came five weeks after New Delhi effectively called Islamabad’s own nuclear bluff in Operation Sindoor, and amid speculations that Pakistan’s Kirana Hills, also hit by India in May, actually hid the US’s nuclear arsenal.

After three days of a relentless tit-for-tat missile and drone attacks by Israel and Iran on each other, reports said that US President Donald Trump vetoed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s alleged plan to assassinate Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader, who may have shifted to a bunker to escape escalating Israeli strikes.

“We’re not involved in it. It’s possible we could get involved. But we are not at this moment involved,” Trump said, who even boasted that he could bring the two adversaries on the business table the way he “did” between India and Pakistan last month. However, Netanyahu called reports about Trump rejecting plans to assassinate the Iranian leader as “fake.”

According to the media reports, Israel even claimed that Iran was planning to assassinate US President Donald Trump.

Trump is eager to de-escalate, wary of becoming bogged in another Middle East war amid the ongoing Gaza conflict, and highly attuned to the changing politics of his party.

Even as the conflict escalated, Washington said it was open to continuing nuclear talks with Iran — hoping that, despite impossible odds, they could salvage a peaceful solution, CNN reported.

While Trump hopes to avoid a prolonged conflict that could further destabilize the Middle East, some in his administration recognized that American military assistance may help Israel conclude its objectives more quickly.

Since Israel launched its first attack last weekend, the US has offered defensive support to Israel intercepting an onslaught of Iranian reprisal strikes.

But Trump has stopped well short of joining Israel’s military in its attempts to dismantle Iran’s nuclear facilities, resisting pressure from other Republicans to join the fight. He has been fervently trying to portray himself as a ‘global peacemaker,’ to stop the conflicts raging across the world- for example, Russia-Ukraine and the Middle East. But none of his attempt have succeeded so far.

Meanwhile, the Iranian foreign ministry on Monday said that Iran’s parliament is drafting a bill to leave the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), adding that Tehran was still opposed to the development of weapons of mass destruction.

Earlier, President Masoud Pezeshkian said that Iran did not intend to develop nuclear weapons but will pursue its right to nuclear energy and research, reiterating Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s religious edict against weapons of mass destruction.

This move comes amid Israel and Iran escalating their conflict with daytime attacks deepening fears of a broader regional war. Israel warned residents near Iran’s weapons facilities to evacuate with an official saying a long list of targets remained to be struck soon.

The two adversaries continued to exchange missile strikes on Sunday night and Monday morning, ignoring international appeals for a ceasefire as their hostilities are deepening the crisis.

Iran’s nuclear program has progressed rapidly since 2018, when the US withdrew from a deal to limit Tehran’s capacity to enrich uranium, which is necessary to assemble a nuclear weapon. Iran maintains that its program is peaceful, but the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) repeatedly warned that Tehran has enough enriched uranium to make several nuclear bombs if it chooses to do so.

The media reported Netanyahu as saying on Sunday that Iran’s Islamic regime had pinpointed President Trump as a threat to its nuclear program and was actively working to assassinate him.

“They want to kill him. He’s enemy number one,” Fox News quoted him as saying.

“He’s a decisive leader. He never took the path that others took to try to bargain with them in a way that is weak, giving them basically a pathway to enrich uranium, which means a pathway to the bomb, padding it with billions and billions of dollars,” Netanyahu said.

“He took up this fake agreement and basically tore it up. He killed Qasem Soleimani. He made it very clear, including now, ‘You cannot have a nuclear weapon, which means you cannot enrich uranium.’ He’s been very forceful, so for them, he’s enemy number one.”

Netanyahu said that he was also a target of the Tehran regime after a missile was fired into the bedroom window of his home. He also called himself Trump’s “junior partner” as he threatened to strike at Iran’s ability to weaponize nuclear arms.

He said Israel was facing an “imminent threat” of nuclear destruction and was left with no choice but to act aggressively in the “12th hour.”

“We were facing an imminent threat, a dual existential threat,” he said.

“One, the threat of Iran rushing to weaponize their enriched uranium to make atomic bombs with a specific and declared intent to destroy us. Second, a rush to increase their ballistic missile arsenal to a capacity of 3,600 weapons a year…. Within three years, 10,000 ballistic missiles, each weighing a ton, coming in at Mach 6, right into our cities, as you saw today… and then in 26 years, 20,000 (missiles). No country can sustain that, and certainly not a country the size of Israel, so we had to act.”

Netanyahu reiterated that by doing so, Israel is not only protecting itself but also the world.

Netanyahu told Fox News he believes Israel’s offensive measures have set back the Iranian nuclear program “quite a bit,” sharing that negotiations with the terror-sponsoring regime were clearly “going nowhere.”

He described Operation Rising Lion as “one of the greatest military operations in history.” Addressing the Iranian people directly, he said they had been oppressed for 50 years by the same Islamic regime that has long threatened to destroy the State of Israel.

Meanwhile, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) General and Iranian National Security Council member Mohsen Rezaei, in an interview to Iranian state television, claimed that Pakistan will attack Israel with nuclear weapons if Tel Aviv deployed nuclear arms against Iran.

According to Turkiye Today, Rezaei said, “Pakistan has told us that if Israel uses nuclear missiles, we will also attack it with nuclear weapons.” However, no Pakistani official has publicly supported the use of nuclear weapons in the ongoing Israel-Iran conflict.

Turkiye Today also reported that Rezaei hinted at undisclosed military strategies Iran has yet to reveal: “Iran has hidden tactics and capabilities that the country has not revealed yet.”

Pakistan, which attacked what it claimed were ‘terror camps’ inside Iran a few months ago, has reiterated strong support for Iran.  Defense Minister Khwaja Asif, addressing the National Assembly on June 14, stated, “Israel has targeted Iran, Yemen, and Palestine. If Muslim nations don’t unite now, each will face the same fate.”

Asif urged Muslim countries with diplomatic ties to Israel to sever them and called for an urgent meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to formulate a united response. “We stand behind Iran and will support them at every international forum to protect their interest.”