NATO states would have joined ‘like vultures’ if US succeeded in Iran – expert

America is not prepared for a second round of attacks on Tehran, Zorawar Daulet Singh has told RT India.

The NATO states would have joined the US and Israel in their war on Iran “like vultures” if Washington had succeeded in the initial days, an Indian strategic affairs expert has said.

The European nations did not want to “get caught in the crossfire,” Zorawar Daulet Singh told RT India in the latest episode of the podcast India, Russia, and the World.

“They’re seeing the US has really played a hand, which has backfired very badly,” Singh said, adding this does not mean a breakdown in the “US-European unity.”

Pakistan tried to play a mediating role by urging “the Iranians to accept the American kind of framework,” Singh said. “I think the Iranians have kind of reached a dead end with that.”

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Singh spoke of the importance of Moscow for Tehran. “Iran knows that it needs bigger partners, it needs a stable long-term partnership,” he said, citing the recent Moscow visit of its foreign minister as a step in this direction. “Russia sees Iran as, in a sense, a second front of its struggle with the West.”

Russia, India, China, and Iran are emerging as “the stabilizing players for the next 100 years,” Singh added.

There is an impression in Iran and elsewhere “that the Americans are not prepared for a second round,” he said, adding that the US knows it will also get battered in such a scenario.

The US mainstream media and former administration officials, who are part of the American establishment, now admit “that Iran holds strong cards and they can’t be wished away,” Singh said.

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He suggested that Indian policymakers should reconcile themselves to the fact that the US policies are undermining New Delhi’s interests at every level.

“Whether it’s your trade, tariffs, energy security, geopolitics, Pakistan…on every aspect, the facts and the empirical evidence suggests that the US approach to India is not what it was, let’s say, 20, 25 years ago,” Singh said.

“We have a misplaced sense that these are transient trends, that ultimately America will go back to what it was after Trump,” he added, terming it as “a completely naive and a delusional perspective.”

The US-India relationship simply cannot go back to what it was, Singh noted.