Arun Vishwanathan

Iranian Nuclear Agreement: Understanding the Nonproliferation Paradigm

The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was successfully negotiated between Iran and the P5+1 comprising United States, Russia, China, France, United Kingdom, and Germany on July 14, 2015. The result of multilateral diplomacy spanning over a decade, the agreement resolved international concerns about the military nature of the Iranian nuclear program. The agreement expands the scope and nature of international safeguards and verification of the Iranian nuclear program. It physically blocks both the plutonium and the uranium route that Iran can pursue to build nuclear weapons. These measures increase the lead time available to the international community in case Iran decides to build nuclear weapons any time in the future. In sum, the agreement successfully alleviates global concerns about Iran building a nuclear weapon, builds trust between Iran and the West, and opens up the possibility of collaboration to tackle the challenges faced by the region as a whole.

Pakistan’s Nasr/Hatf-IX Missile: Challenges for Indo-Pak Deterrence

On November 5, 2013 Pakistan conducted its fourth test of the Hatf-IX (Nasr) short range battlefield ‘nuclear’ missile. To date there have been four flight tests of the missile system. After the first three tests (April 19, 2011, May 29, 2012 and February 11, 2013) Pakistan’s Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR) had put out identical press releases.1 These statements claimed that the missile had a range of 60 km and carried ‘nuclear warheads (sic) of appropriate yield’. The ISPR statement following the fourth flight test of Nasr, a salvo firing of four missiles, was worded differently and did not repeat the claim that Nasr carried a nuclear warhead. Curiously, it referred to the missile’s nuclear capability in a roundabout sort of way. The statement claimed that the missile ‘contributes to the full spectrum deterrence against threats in view of evolving scenarios’.2 This then begets three questions. Firstly, what is Pakistan trying to signal by way of the Nasr and what is the significance of the change in wording of the ISPR statement following the fourth Nasr test flight? Secondly, can Pakistan actually fit a nuclear warhead into the Nasr? Thirdly, how credible would Nasr be in Indian eyes and how will it impact the Indo-Pak deterrence relationship.

Book Review: Aftermath of a Nuclear Attack: A Case Study of Post-strike Operations

Chauhan, Anil, Aftermath of a Nuclear Attack: A Case Study of Post-strike Operations (New Delhi: Pentagon Press, 2010). Pp. ix + 203, Price INR 545.

Storming the world stage: the story of Lashkar-e-Taiba

cally’ (269). Leadership failure, Spodek argues, appears to be the main reason for Ahmedabad’s declining governability which has turned it into a ‘capitalist city out of control’ (246). Lucidly written, beautifully illustrated and meticulously supported with facts and figures, this is an important addition to the academic literature on Gujarat. But, in terms of its design, the book hangs uncomfortably between biography of a city (as in Peter Ackroyd’s London: the biography, London: Vintage, 2001) and an analytic narrative anchored to a city (Simon Schama’s Citizens, London: Viking, 1989, where Paris tells the story of the French Revolution) – two different genres of city-based writing. In places, poor copy editing stymies the scholarly character of the text. Fire, the evocative film directed by Deepa Nair has been mistakenly attributed to Shabana Azmi (266); two futuristic ‘anthropologists’ exploring a destroyed city on the site of Ahmedabad in the year 4003, turn out a few lines later, to be archaeologists, after all (266)! This book is an enlightening and invigorating narrative, but, in the final analysis, a missed opportunity. There are few authors who can match Spodek’s five decade long engagement with Gujarat. Regrettably, after a promising start, the author lets the narrative run away from the firm grip of engagement with a city into an intellectually insipid lamentation of the loss of Indian secularism. By the time one reaches the final chapter on ‘Godhra, the Gujarat pogrom and the consequences’ the singularity and resilience of Ahmedabad are lost in lurid accounts of a Kulturkampf (265).