1. It’s early days yet, but people are already trying to work out what any Israeli attack on Iran would mean for Pakistan. (The idea that Israel might attack Iran to damage or destroy its nuclear programme gained currency this week when former U.S. ambassador John Bolton predicted in an interview with the Daily Telegraph that it would do so after the November U.S. presidential election but before the next president is sworn in.)

Pakistan defence analyst Ikram Sehgal paints an alarming, and perhaps deliberately alarmist, picture in The News of what this could mean for Pakistan: ”Could Israeli or (US) planners afford the risk of leaving a Muslim nuclear state with the means of missile delivery intact if there is war with Iran? Can they take this calculated risk in the face of a possible Pakistani nuclear reaction because of military action on a fellow Muslim nation and neighbour…?” he writes. ”Should one not be apprehensive that India as the ‘newly U.S. appointed policeman of the region’ takes the opportunity … for launching all-out Indian military offensive….?”

Sounds like a prescription for the Apocalypse? Maybe, but perhaps worth taking apart to see whether this is a serious risk for Pakistan.

The nightmare scenario would require that Israel really was capable of taking out Iran’s nuclear installations and it is by no means clear that its air force has the size and reach to deal with Iran’s dispersed and well-hidden defences and targets.  The Americans, with their huge air strike capacity and firepower could have a go, but even then this would just give an excuse to Iran to leave the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and embark on a crash course to develop the bomb. (Both India and Pakistan developed their nuclear weapons while refusing to sign the NPT.)

You would also have to build in the fact that India has a ‘no first strike’ policy and that Pakistan has made clear it will use its nuclear weapons only if it feels its very existence is threatened. Pakistan also has a history of difficult relations with Iran, driven in part by rivalry over Afghanistan, by Sunni dominance over Pakistan, and by the sheer competitiveness of two countries which see themselves as the standard-bearers of Muslim glory in an earlier era. So it is not obvious that Pakistan would come to the rescue of Iran even if it were to be attacked by Israel.

Perhaps the fall-out of the sabre-rattling over Iran will be more mundane.

Pakistan is heavily touting a gas pipeline from Iran to India as a “pipleline of peace” that might bring Islamabad and Delhi together.  Yet at the same time the United States is leaning heavily on India not to agree to the pipeline project in order to put pressure on Iran over its nuclear programme, as this article in The Telegraph from Calcutta the makes clear.

It is not at all clear how all this will fit together in what appears to be a very unpredictable world. Views please?
 

So what’s this dance with Iran, accused by the United States of sponsoring terrorism and seeking to develop nuclear weapons ? Some of it is down to economics : Iran holds the key to India’s energy  insecurity, as a piece in the Asia Times argues.

With oil prices skyrocketing, India’s thirst for cheaper imported gas has acquired a greater urgency than before and if this means jumpstarting the 15-year-old proposal to pipe gas from Iran through Pakistan, now estimated to cost $7.5 billion, so be it. Pakistan too needs the natural gas to meet its growing energy demand, as also the millions of dollars it will earn in transit fees.

And if history is any lesson, the “pipeline of peace” could promote security in the region with the costs of a conflict between India and Pakistan that much higher.

But is there also a desire to assert or rather be seen to be asserting independence of action in hosting Ahmadinejad at a time when tensions are rising again over its nuclear ambitions ?

Pakistan has a new civilian government which has pledged to pursue a more independent course, including in the fight against al Qaeda, than followed by President Pervez Musharraf.

India’s government is under pressure from its communist allies who think it has gone too far in seeking warmer ties with America and risks losing its independence of action. In any case, New Delhi has been acutely sensitive of being seen as anything other than a fiercely independent nation.  

What of Sri Lanka ? Perhaps the island has had enough of lectures on human right violations and veiled threats to hold back assistance if it continues to seek a military solution to the insurgency by Tamil Tiger rebels. Iran will probably abjure such admonitions.