The government could not be oblivious of the many direct messages from friendly Gulf Arab states at the highest political level over the last year that they do not want a nuclear-armed Iran. In case anyone in New Delhi missed these signals, the six nation Gulf Cooperation Council led by Saudi Arabia collectively underlined its concerns about Iranian nuclear weapons programme earlier this month.

The GCC’s plans to develop its own joint nuclear power programme might be symbolic at the moment rather than substantive. GCC’s nuclear talk only serves to highlight its real fears about a nuclear armed Iran. As the first ever Shia Arab entity in post Saddam Hussein Iraq stares at them, the Gulf Arabs are apprehensive of the potential trouble that an assertive Tehran could trigger with their own Shia minorities.

Iran’s nuclear defiance is only partly about the global nuclear order. It is more about rewriting the geopolitics of the Gulf that could unleash new tensions between Arabs and Persians and between the Shia and Sunni. The government, one can only hope, is seized of the new challenges to India’s security interests and will not sacrifice them at the altar of the UP elections.