Iran’s grievance, moral or legal, against Israel and the United States over the bombing of nuclear sites is not assisted by the fact that Israel itself is an outlaw with nuclear bombs produced outside the system.

Nor by the fact that Israel itself has not submitted itself to any international supervisory regime or subscribed to non-proliferation pacts. These may be bad things — worthy of condemnation — but they do not create a licence for counter-terror.

In Iran’s neighbourhood, Pakistan and India built nuclear weapons outside the system, and so, effectively, did China 60 years ago. No-one could stop them, before or after. Whether any of them, or Israel’s, Russia’s or America’s, make their nations safer is a matter for debate, if only because the actual use of weapons seems unthinkable. They haven’t been used for 80 years, despite very serious local conflicts.

Although there are international non-proliferation treaties, and inspection regimes, the world has little control over nuclear weapon development or use. The only external control is the raw power of very big nations, not exercised by any rulebook, or by agreement. Moral pressure has no effect at all.

That Israel’s holdings could be said to be illegal might one day provoke some bigger and stronger nation to attack it to disarm it. Good luck with that. The very existence of such weapons is a substantial disincentive. No nuclear nation has ever been involuntarily detached from its nuclear holdings, though Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan, and separately South Africa, voluntarily gave up their holdings. The three former Soviet Union nations handed over their weapons to Russia, after inducements and security guarantees from Russia, the US and Britain; South Africa did so after dropping apartheid. Ukraine may now regret losing its arsenal.

According to Iran, of course, it was not building nuclear weapons at all but attempting to develop its own peaceful nuclear power systems. There was widespread doubt about the purity of its intentions, given the secrecy involved and the levels of radiation it was refining, and Israel has long insisted that it was attempting to build a weapon, possibly with help from Pakistan and China. Israel’s pre-emptive strike, with the claim that Iran’s development of a weapon was imminent, and America’s supporting strike, with bunker busters, were both illegal under international law, but neither nation acknowledges United Nations authority.

Australia’s lame and late, but ill-judged and unnecessary endorsement

After a bit of a pause, Australia intoned its standard grovelling phrases about Israel’s right to defend itself, and endorsed America’s follow-up attack on the basis that Iran should not be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon. It has yet to be established that Iran was actually doing this. Likewise, it has yet to be established that the airstrikes destroyed Iran’s capacity to continue on its merry way, wherever and whatever that is. There was clearly great damage done at the identified test sites, several deep underground, but some evidence that the nuclear fuel had been moved before the strikes.

Australian ministers said they had no advance notice of the airstrikes, but seemed to succumb to demands from the Murdoch newspapers, and their local subsidiary, the Liberal Party, that they hail the attack, and accept all Trumpian assertions about its alleged success. Indeed, the Murdoch press seemed to think that a certain lack of speed and enthusiasm had been noted in Washington, only confirming rumours that Labor was unsound on national security matters.

There was a time when Australia was pressing Iran to buy our uranium

I seem to remember a time about 50 years ago when Australia’s deputy prime minister, Dr Jim Cairns, visited Iran to try to encourage the then Shah about the development of a nuclear industry, using Australian uranium. This was before the Labor left realised that anything involving atoms was intrinsically immoral. Cairns said the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, which the Shah had signed, would prevent the use of our uranium other than for peaceful purposes. He pooh-poohed the idea that there was anything intrinsically unstable about the governing regime.

Our continuing enthusiasm for the not-very effective non-proliferation treaty aside, Australia had, or ought to have had, no dog in the fight this month. Continual media suggestions to the contrary, Israel is not one of our allies. Nor is Australia currently engaged with the US in any relevant Western alliance adventures in the Middle East, least of all unilateral Israeli attacks on its neighbours. Nor do we have any quarrel with Iran. We do have arrangements in relation to the Russia-Ukraine war, and disapprove, I suppose, of Iran’s assistance to Russia, but we have not made any great demonstration of this, given that Iran’s help is minor compared with China’s, India’s and North Korea’s.

Just why Australia felt it had to signal its support for the attacks was far from clear. Australia has been involved in a number of interchanges with the US in recent months, including, at international conferences, about our defence spending as a proportion of GDP, the future of NATO, and the future of Ukraine. Despite efforts by Australia’s own war-hawks to verbal us about the state of America’s defence relationship with Australia, there has been no occasion in which high-level visits, or American declarations, have affirmed the alliance, or even the AUKUS agreements.

Top Australian and US politicians have been dodging each other at international jamborees, perhaps realising that the future of the relationship, and submarine contracts, are in question, both here and in the United States. Over the past week, Donald Trump appears to have resolved some of his differences with NATO and European nations (at a conference attended by Australia’s defence minister, Richard Marles, (but Australia or Marles, or both) who was not important enough for any discussion with Trump. NATO nations have agreed in principle to increase defence expenditure by 150% within 10 years, but no binding commitments were made about timing or about planned achievements within this Trump term. Australia, meanwhile, has not committed itself to any increase, let alone one based on a formula about proportion of GDP. The NATO conference is far from some affirmation that the disputes are over, and that we are all friends again.

‘What’s in it for me?’ for angry and dissed allies and friends

At this stage it cannot be said that either the US or Australia knows for sure about the future of security relationships in Southeast Asia. Some may require renegotiation because of the doubts about America’s intentions and staying power caused by Trump. The “what’s in it for me?” approach might work both ways.

The demands and expectations of treaty relationships involving Japan, South Korea and Australia and America have not been settled. All are complicated, including by anger, ill-will and mistrust around Trump’s tariff declarations. Trump now seems to have come to some understanding with China. But he has not resolved his differences with old friends or with nations in the neighbourhood such as Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar, Singapore, Indonesia and India.

In recent weeks, Trump seems to have dialled down his anti-China rhetoric. He may now see China as an adversary and competitor with which he can do business without talk of war or a trade war. China, after all, is, like Russia, a big boy, a member of a club of superpowers who sort out their problems informally. A bit like New York mafia families, with whom Trump is very familiar.

On the other hand, there are sticking points which may have to be resolved. The obvious one is if China plans to invade Taiwan. Less obviously, China is attempting to build economic and trading relationships with Europe, Japan and other nations in the region, including by trading pacts that may end up excluding the US, if only because of its new tariff wall and its developing isolationism. There are ample grounds for conflicts, not only between the US and China, but also between the US and virtually all of the nations of Southeast Asia and the subcontinent. It’s little wonder that everyone is tiptoeing cautiously.

It’s in this environment that Israel represents a continuing threat to the peace in our region, one which could end up compromising local efforts to broker new relationships. Some of the ASEAN nations — Indonesia and Malaysia in particular — are strongly Muslim and have been horrified by the slaughter in Gaza, and by Israel’s arrogance in dealing with its neighbours. Attacks on Iran have the potential for trouble with Pakistan and China, and some of the -stans. Iran may lack close friends and allies, but its neighbours do not appreciate disturbances of the peace, or the unsettling of the job security of local dictators.

Many of our Asian neighbours see Australia’s history of almost automatic support for Israel as an example of our seeing ourselves as a “deputy sheriff” serving US interests, rather than our own. In recent times, Australia has turned against Israel on some issues, but hardly in such a way as to counter the idea that Australia supports Western, not Asian, interests in the Middle East.

It is particularly necessary to tread carefully because there are some clear signs that countries in our region are shifting, if slowly but definitely, towards China. A good many sit on the fence, hoping, in John Howard’s phrase, that they do not have to choose between their history and their geography. Some may not be aware of their shifting but are doing more to engage with and understand China than they are with a nation that has sharply increased tariffs, is seeking compensation for security protection, and which talks loudly about America First.

“By analysing the positions of 10 Southeast Asian countries on a welter of issues relating to China and the US, one thing becomes evident: over the past 30 years, many of these countries have gradually but discernibly shifted away from the US and towards China,” the American magazine Foreign Policy says this week.

“Some shifts are more drastic and significant than others. A few countries have indeed managed to hedge, to straddle the rift… The overall direction of travel, however, is clear.

“Many countries …would prefer not to choose at all: they want to have their cake and eat it. But both China and the US are growing frustrated with this hedging. Beijing wants to wield more than just economic influence in the region."

If the US begins military and commercial disengagement, ASEAN countries will have to increase trade with each other, with Australia, Japan and South Korea. “But that imperative will be counterbalanced and perhaps even overwhelmed by the temptation to gravitate toward China.”

None of this necessarily implies that any of these nations, including Australia, will fall into China’s economic thrall, or political domination. Some nations, including Japan, South Korea and Australia, and possibly India if it can strike a modus vivendi with China, may benefit from new trade relationships with Europe, Canada, Mexico, South America and Africa.

Loose security understandings may help keep the peace. China might be a big bully but attempts to coerce particular nations cannot but affect neighbours, who may develop understandings about common actions to resist.

Some countries, even possibly Australia, will be reconsidering nuclear weapons

The looser structures may also prompt others to consider the value of developing their own nuclear weapons, if only as a form of ultimate deterrence. Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Burma are quite capable of developing nuclear weapons. It wouldn’t be long before some of the Chinese-influence -stans joined in. Vietnam and Malaysia would want to join the stampede in due course.

At some stage, Australia, which certainly has the resources and the capacity, would consider what all of the proliferation meant to their own security environment and feel tempted as well. Even if Australia was still tightly bound to the US — which is as much a matter of choice for the US as it is for Australia — it is unlikely that existing security understandings would embrace battlefield deployment or authorise use against invaders. They’d be next to useless, of course. Except in providing an extra layer among one’s enemies of uncertainty about a nation’s thresholds for deployment and thus some deterrence.

There is no going back. It would be impossible to return to a system of relationships just as they were before Donald Trump began disturbing the peace in 2017. If America wants to recreate the security system of the Western alliance, one might think that it would be more active, and perhaps a little less dedicated to the idea that everyone else in the system has been a bludger, coasting on American effort. And perhaps a little more self-aware of how its military self-indulgences, in Iran and around Israel, are shaking confidence in its judgment and staying power. It’s America, not its allies, which needs to win its friends back.

Republished from The Canberra Times, June 2025

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.