As we look for ways to follow the current tensions between Iran and the US over nuclear arms issues, it is helpful to look at what has happened in the past. We continue from the book India's Nuclear Bomb, by George Perkovich (Univ. of Calif. Press, Berkeley, 1999). In this section, we see India, disposed to not accelerate nuclear programs, get pressured by developments in Pakistan.
One of India's options is to order a first-strike on Pakistan's nuclear facilities. Weighing the options, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi doesn't want to do that. One reason: if Pakistan believes that a first strike is imminent from India, Pakistan may order a first strike of its own. Thus India would have to beef up security at its own nuclear sites, in self-defense (cont'd).
At this point, India has internal and external problems. Internal unrest prompts India to call out the troops some 84 times to put down internal disturbances. Externally, Sikhs are incensed as a result of Operation Blue Star. Pakistan has been supporting insurgency by Sikhs in Punjab province, to form a Sikh area within Punjab province. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi brings in the military to put it down, but key religious buildings are badly damaged, and hundreds of insurgents and Indian national troops are killed in the fight. The Indian government wins the battle, but the incident four months later leads some of the Prime Minister's bodyguards to kill the prime minister.
As all of this is moving forward, the nuclear piece of it is this. India needed heavy water for its nuclear program, and got parts of the shipment needed surreptitiously (but legally) from China, and other parts apparantly illegally from Norway and the Soviet Union.
On the Pakistani side, the US was beefing up supplies of conventional weapons, hoping that by allaying fears, Pakistan would be less inclined to pursue the nuclear option. That did not prove to be the case.
Pakistan wanted more conventional weapons, and went to the US to ask for AWACs command and control electronics systems. Even the request angered India, so India shut down the border between India and Pakistan. As tensions rose, the US was monitoring the situation. Satellite photos thought they detected Indian aircraft no longer at key facilities, leading the US to worry that India had already moved the planes into position for a first-strike attack against Pakistan's nuclear facilities. The real situation, according to India, was that the air base was conducting a routine air defense drill, and the planes were merely moved off the airstrip and camoflaged in the woods, which is why the satellites couldn't detect them at the time. Net result: wrong interpretation of imagery led President Ronald Reagan to intervene with Pakistan, in order to prevent India from attacking Pakistan's nuclear facility (p. 258). A false alarm with a happy ending.