PERHAPS the least discussed and also the most worrying dimension of the Obama raid on Osama's hideout was the potential it had to trigger a nuclear incident between India and Pakistan. That the US Navy SEALs commandos could carry out the secret operation with relative ease may give Hollywood a theme to regurgitate for the next 10 years.

And now we are given to understand that President Obama had in fact taken into account the possibility of an interdiction by Pakistani security. There could be a firefight. There would be casualties. Incognito? This possibility too was provisioned for, it seems. What if the Pakistanis had mistaken the raid for an Indian attack is a possibility not yet discussed by the White House.

Perhaps the only way such a misunderstanding could have been safely ruled out would be by letting someone in authority in Pakistan be given the plan in advance. But that we are told did not happen. On the contrary, those that believe or claim to know it was a joint operation with Pakistan are scorned as conspiracy theorists. So be it.

Given the credibility deficit that American administrations have accumulated over a large swathe of their history, there is reason to speculate over another sinister possibility. It concerns the net worth of the much-advertised Navy SEALs against the state's compulsions to appease the American people with blood and gore abroad, particularly when their president is saddled with poor popularity grades.

Didn't the cavalier former vice president Dick Cheney mull the idea of deploying the same Navy SEALs to stage a false flag attack against Iran in what would be a suicide mission for the commandos?

Journalist Seymour Hersh did share details of a plan that was at least cursorily considered by Mr Cheney on how to provoke a war with Iran. “There was a dozen ideas proffered about how to trigger a war,” Mr Hersh said in reference to the discussion at a meeting held at Mr Cheney's office.

“The one that interested me the most was why don't we build — we in our shipyard — build four or five boats that look like Iranian PT boats. Put Navy SEALs on them with a lot of arms. And next time one of our boats goes to the Strait of Hormuz, start a shoot-up,” he revealed.

“Might cost some lives. And it was rejected because you can't have Americans killing Americans. That's the kind of — that's the level of stuff we're talking about. Provocation.”

The false flag idea was pondered because of a roaring reception a tense standoff between some Iranian speedboats and a US warship had generated in the Persian Gulf.

There were other cynical suggestions too. In one of his memos, former British envoy to Washington David Manning described a prewar meeting between George Bush and Tony Blair. President Bush admitted that weapons of mass destruction were unlikely to be found in Iraq and then mused about some possible options for justifying a war anyway.

“The US was thinking of flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in UN colours,” the memo says, attributing the idea to Mr Bush. “If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach.”

Given the degree of plain perfidy involved in these nightmarish calculations, it would be fair to ask what was the backup plan had one or several of the SEALs commandos been caught by Pakistani forces. Would they be found disguised as Iranians perhaps in the fashion that Mr Cheney's team considered? What then?

In his unique insights that Prof Noam Chomsky has shared over the Osama affair, the Americans seem to have killed a man they could have secured alive from the Taliban, who had only asked them to provide evidence that the Al Qaeda leader was involved in the 9/11 attacks.

That evidence, I was startled to know, remains still unshared. This has spawned cynicism. Celebrating South Asia's greatest peace activist and poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz in Delhi this week, the loved and hated Mani Shankar Aiyar quipped that the only picture of Osama bin Laden released by the CIA looked uncannily like popular Sikh writer Khushwant Singh watching TV.

Mr Obama's impulse to go for the kill on a moonless night might not have been too different from the expediency that prompted fellow Democrat Jimmy Carter to plot an equally sensational mission in April 1980. President Carter too was faltering in an election year with poor grades while his Republican challenger Ronald Reagan had surged ahead.

The Iranian revolution was bad news but additionally now 52 American captives holed up in Tehran's US embassy compound had to be rescued.

A mission comprising multi-skilled commandos from the Delta Force was dispatched to the salt flats of Iran's Dasht-i-Kavir desert. Soon things went wrong. Suddenly flames illuminated the night sky, then gradually flickered out. And there lay the burned-out hulk of a US Air Force C-130 aircraft. Nearby rested the scorched skeleton of a US Navy helicopter. And in the wreckage were the burned bodies of eight American military air crewmen.

The Iranians not only ensured that Carter lost the elections, they struck a deal with the Republicans that the hostages would be released only after the elections. The unlikely cooperation led to the much commented on Iran-Contra affair. Despite the failed Iran mission, Republican congressmen kept up a façade of praising Mr Carter's heroic effort. Then they joined his foes to defeat him.

It's of course early to say if Mr Obama has accumulated enough antibodies like Jimmy Carter in his country and abroad despite an apparent triumph in Abbottabad. In his zeal to have his way though, did he neglect the nuclear nightmare that always lurks in the region where his commandos got away with clean heels and a dead body?

The writer is Dawn' s correspondent in Delhi.

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