To B(2) or not to B(2): A nuclear question

Move aside, Hamlet, and give way to the decisive deal-maker. The recolonisation of West Asia is now in full swing, with Trump's bombing of Iran's nuclear sites on the night of 22 June.

It took him some time to decide whether or not to send in the B2 bombers with their payloads of 15 tonne bunker busters, or the MOABs (Mother of All Bombs). And he did it, as usual, with the MOAL (Mother of All Lies), having announced just the day before that he would wait two weeks for diplomacy to play out.

As with Israel's surprise attack on 13 June, diplomacy was once again knifed in the back.

Trump and Netanyahu are the Genghis Khans of our benighted times and will probably never be made to pay for their serial war crimes and genocidal actions, but that is just a sign of the times we live in.

Their game plan is now clear: regime change in Iran and joint hegemony over West Asia and its oil — though M/s Modi, Jaishankar and Doval cannot see it through their transactional, Islamophobic hoods.

The story was never about Iran's nuclear weapons programme; it doesn't have one (as numerous testimonies have made clear).

Trump rejects intelligence assessment on Iran nukes

But then Saddam Hussain didn't have any weapon of mass destruction, either — that myth was created by the other two B2s (Tony Blair and George Bush) to serve their purposes. A similar myth has now been created by the two leading thugs of our times about Iran's nuclear programme, to green light another invasion and another war.

Trump on Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei:

“I SAVED HIM FROM A VERY UGLY AND IGNOMINIOUS DEATH, and he does not have to say, “THANK YOU, PRESIDENT TRUMP!” pic.twitter.com/sWCrdo9L19

— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) June 27, 2025

Which begs some obvious questions that very few in power in other countries, or even in the media, are asking.

Why should Iran not have a nuclear programme, even a nuclear weapons programme?

Why is it asked to submit to IAEA inspections when other nuclear countries are not?

Why does it not have the right to go nuclear when it is surrounded by none-too-pacific nuclear countries — Russia, Pakistan, India and, of course, the biggest terrorist threat in the world, Israel?

Israel does not even officially acknowledge that it has nuclear weapons capability, has not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty, does not subject itself to IAEA inspections or protocols.

Iran claims it took Israeli nuclear files

And yet, the sanctions are against Iran, not Israel.

The West has created another myth — that Iran cannot be trusted to have a nuclear weapons programme because it's a rogue regime and exporter of terrorism.

This, about a civilisation which dates back to a time when the ancestors of today's Americans were still living in caves in a miserable island in the North Sea. From two countries least qualified to make these charges.

The USA is the only country in history to have actually used a nuclear munition against another country; it has started (and lost) more wars and bombed and destabilised more countries (30 at last count) by military force than any other power since the end of WW2.

Iran doesn’t have a single nuclear weapon.
Israel has hundreds.

Iran signed the NPT.
Israel never did.

Iran has never used a nuke (because it doesn’t have any).
Israel has threatened to, and America dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Iran is not the problem here.

— sarah (@sahouraxo) June 22, 2025

And Israel, with its voracious appetite for land, is the biggest terrorist power in the Middle East, the quintessential rogue nation which has, in Gaza, killed hundreds of UN workers, medical personnel, journalists, aid workers, more than 100,000 Palestinians and is currently engaged in starving the remaining ones to death.

Both have repeatedly cocked a snook at institutions established to promote the international rules-based order — the United Nations, the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court — and have even banned, threatened and sanctioned its functionaries and assassinated political leaders and scientists they take a dislike to.

In all likelihood Trump may bomb the Nobel Prize headquarters if he is not given the Nobel Peace Prize and sanction the Israel Supreme Court if Netanyahu is not discharged from the criminal cases against him!

And we are led to believe that Iran is a threat to global peace? 

The ironies keep mounting, and would be farcical if they were not so sinister and dangerous in their implications.

Pakistan nominates Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize the day after he drops the largest bombs ever made, without any provocation and in the face of all international laws!

Trump himself, after practically triggering World War III, tweets: It's now time for peace!

Our own Prime Minister rings up the Iranian President after the bombing of the latter's main nuclear facilities by the US and advises de-escalation! Pardon me if I'm exceptionally stupid, sir, but shouldn't the party doing the escalation be the one asked to do the de-escalation?

And, in the grandest gesture of hypocrisy and two-facedness, the EU fixes a meeting in the middle of July to 'consider' sanctions against Israel — note, dear reader, the word "consider" and not "impose".

By then, of course, another 1,500 Palestinians would have been murdered in Gaza and the West Bank by a country they are all supporting, financing and arming.

But hey! What's the hurry, in the long run, we're all dead anyway, aren't we?

I am sick to my stomach with the stench of all this posturing, deceit, barbarism, lack of any compassion or feeling of humanity, and evil power play.

Maybe I'm being too naive or am a bit of a simple Simon. But as I get along in years I find, in the words of Meryl Streep, that the funny thing about getting older is that while your eyesight starts getting weaker, your ability to see through people's bullshit gets much better.

Now, is that a blessing or a curse? Over to the Prince of Denmark to figure that one out.

Avay Shukla is a retired IAS officer and author of The Deputy Commissioner’s Dog and Other Colleagues. He blogs at avayshukla.blogspot.com. More of his writing can be read here