After all, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) last May revealed Iran had stockpiled 408.6 kg of 60%-enriched uranium, which with further refinement could potentially fuel nine warheads. The nation’s inventory of some 2,500 ballistic missiles—the largest in the Gulf—and support for terrorist proxies across the region added to the security migraine. Iran “can’t have nuclear weapons,” President Donald Trump said in February. “It’s very simple. You can’t have peace in the Middle East if they have a nuclear weapon.”
“For Iran, nuclear weapons are now the only thing that will guarantee regime survival,” says Ramesh Thakur, professor emeritus and director of the Centre for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament in the Crawford School of the Australian National University, who previously negotiated with Iran on behalf of the U.N. “So why wouldn’t they get them?”
But it’s not just Iranian nuclear weapons that the U.S. and world must worry about going forward. On Tuesday, North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un left little doubt he was referencing Iran when he said the “present situation clearly proves” his country was correct to hang onto its nuclear arsenal, which he termed “irreversible,” while accusing Washington of “state sponsored terrorism and aggression.”
The difference the Iran War really makes is the galvanizing effect it has on U.S. allies and neutral states pondering their own nuclear deterrent. Already, Europe was reeling from Trump’s humiliating broadsides, threats to seize Greenland, and trashing of NATO, prompting discussions toward a new protective alliance chiefly against Russia. Whether this involves French and British nukes stationed in the east of the bloc, or other members such as Germany or Poland developing their own weapons, is unclear, though the trajectory is irrefutable—not least since Vladimir Putin already claims to have moved nuclear-capable missile systems into neighboring Belarus.
Moving east, India and Pakistan are already nuclear powers, and after recent border skirmishes, neither will be dialing back. But the real change might be in East Asia, where Kim’s belligerence and rising fears regarding China’s designs on self-ruling Taiwan had already reenergized the nuclear debate.
In Japan, which remains the only nation to have suffered nuclear attacks, the picture is understandably more complicated. In December, an unnamed government security adviser told reporters they believed Japan should have nuclear weapons given heightened security risks in what was seen as an attempt to gauge and guide the national mood. (Japan’s civilian nuclear energy program is already producing so much weapons-grade uranium and plutonium that in 2014 Tokyo agreed to ship excess material to the U.S. to mitigate fears that its storage sites could be targeted by terrorist groups.)
Such suggestions are anathema to historic rival China, where a Foreign Ministry spokesman warned Japan going nuclear would “bring disaster to the world.” This is not least because of Takaichi’s recent remarks that Japan could be drawn into any conflict over Taiwan, which sent relations with Beijing spiraling.
It’s doubtful that the nuclear genie can be put back in the bottle. However, while more nuclear weapons clearly bring heightened risks of catastrophic miscalculation and misstep, there could be benefits. Relying on other nations for security guarantees warps national incentives by not forcing states to grapple with their own geopolitical reality, argues Kavanagh. It’s for this reason that the U.S. has long employed “strategic ambiguity” over its backing for Taiwan—chiefly to prevent hotheads in Taipei picking a fight with China in the steadfast knowledge that the U.S. would be obliged to finish it. “In my view, security guarantees actually do more harm to U.S. interests and stability than they do to help,” says Kavanagh.
But while the Trump Administration’s attempts to rid Iran of nuclear weapons may only hastened a new paradigm of nuclear abundance, it’s far from the greatest irony. That must surely be reserved for the fact it’s far from clear that Iran actually wanted a nuclear bomb in the first place. After all, Tehran happily agreed to the 2015 JCPOA that lifted economic sanctions in exchange for capping enrichment at 3.67%, reducing their centrifuges, and granting unprecedented access to IAEA inspectors (who all verified the deal had been adhered to until Trump pulled out).
In Tehran, Thakur recalls being told by one former Iranian President that weapons of mass destruction are theologically un-Islamic, because they are indiscriminate with civilians as primary targets. “But his point was that there is a limit to how far the Ayatollahs can control the national security forces, who are the ones who are interested in [a nuclear deterrent].” Don’t expect that interest to wane anytime soon.
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