AMERICA`S Operation Midnight Hammer, targeting three nuclear facilities in Iran, saw two unhinged nuclear weapons states jointly attacking one that had shunned the bomb by a religious edict. Was it then a mistake for Iran to persist with its opposition to nuclear defence? Part of the answer lies in pictures from Singapore in 2018, showing a boyish, chubby strongman from Pyongyang wrapping Donald Trump around his little finger in a memorable encounter with the US president. Sunday`s bombing of Iran makes it hard to think of North Korea ever giving up the nuclear weapons that have protected his country so well. In Iran, too, there is a growing chorus within the regime to annul the anti-bomb edict and withdraw from the NPT.

Besides, if Iran does get the bomb, (unlikely under Ayatollah Khamenei`s watch) would Saudi Arabia or Turkey be far behind? Trump may be flashing victory signs to TV channels.

The fact is, he has run a free jingle to encourage the desire for nuclear weapons among too many worried countries. While details are awaited about the extent of damage from the so-called bunker-buster ammunition dropped on the Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan nuclear facilities, Iranian officials seem sanguine the damage is minimal. Besides, and crucially, the enriched uranium and possibly also critical components from Fordow had already been spirited out to secret locations; not necessarily to make a nuclear weapon, but to assert Iran`s sovereign right to persist with a decades-old quest for peaceful nuclear power.

In a characteristically well-informed column on June 19, three days before the B2 bombers carried out the deadly mission on Saturday night, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh revealed that the deed was going to be done as early as `this weekend`, thereby avoiding panic at the bourses. Seymour explained why the attack was not carried out earlier in the week.

`The delay has come at Trump`s insistence because the president wants the shock of the bombing to be diminished as much as possible by the opening of Wall Street trading on Monday.

Hersh was writing on Thursday.

Given his insights into the US attack, the likely next steps in the assault on Iran can be readily discerned. A key aspect pertains to theperennially discussed American quest for regime change. All will be `under control` if Iran`s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei `departs`, according to an unnamed, longtime US official in Washington Hersh says he relies on. He expressed his doubts about the quest.

`Just how that might happen, short of [Khamenei`s] assassination, is not known. There has been a great deal of talk about American firepower and targets inside Iran, but little practical thinking, as far I can tell, about how to remove a revered religious leader with an enormous following.

A brief dive into the history of the 1979 revolution and the regime that has sustained it for 45 years reveals a mixed outcome for the idea ofassassinating Khamenei. Neocon lobbyists led by John Bolton have praised the B2 raids and are now hoping for the CIA and Mossad to step up with the help of what are seen as disgruntled ethnic minorities, the Azeris, Kurds, Baloch among others, to wage a civil war. Police stations would be bombed according to the script to create a law-and-order crisis. However, it`s equally true that Iran`s ruling clerics have been through far worse, not at the hands of any ethnic minority, but through Persian opponents such as the late Maoist leader Masoud Rajavi and his Mojahedin-e-Khalg (MEK) group. They had staged stunning attacks, including the blowing up of parliament in 1981.

The attack resulted in the deaths of several high-ranking officials, including president Mohammad Ali Rajai and prime minister Mohammad Javad Bahonar. An earlier bombing killed the charismatic chief justice AyatollahBeheshti, considered second to Ayatollah Khomeini. I was in Tehran in 1981 the day the MEK blew up the country`s tele communications building at the Nasir Khusro Square. All contact with the outside world came to a standstill for days. Remember, Iran was fighting an Americanbacked Iraqi attack at the time, its troops enduring Saddam Hussein`s chemical weapons. That experience makes Israel`s decapitating blitzkrieg of June 13, again with the help of MEK, not quite a jolt Iran was unprepared for. The assassinated military chiefs were quickly replaced, and there is a plan according to reliable Iran watchers for a new Supreme Leader when needed.

A far more worrying prospect for the world, not just for Iran, features in a book Seymour Hersh wrote in 1991. The Samson Option derives its name from the powerful Biblical hero who, though blinded by his enemies, brings down a massive temple filled with his tormentors, smashing its pillars with bare hands. Samson, too, succumbs in the bargain. The idiom implies that, cornered by devastating missile attacks from Iran on extremely critical targets, Israel would take the nuclear route. The reckless urge would grow should Trump, under pressure from his MAGA supporters (and possibly President Vladimir Putin), tell his Zionist supporters that he had done what they had expected of him: defanging Iran by destroying its nuclear weapons hopes. Iran`s foreign minister is expected to discuss the terrifying possibility with Putin in Moscow and explore the hope of ending the war instead of escalating it by attacking US bases.

As for the prospect of regime change, Rajavi`s widow, Maryam, and the late Shah`s son are jockeying to take charge. The MEK is intensely hated as a traitor. And Raza Pahlavi is opposed by Israel. Why? The Shah of Iran had famously slammed the Israeli lobby`s control of the media, banks and financial institutions in the US. It was he who started Iran`s search for nuclear capabilities. The Khamenei leadership thus would seem the best bet against an Iranian bomb. However, that will require a fair and durable resolution of the Palestinian question. • The writer is Dawn`s correspondent in Delhi.

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