Iran has been deeply at odds with the United States and its allies since its 1979 revolution. However, its aggressive attitude toward the West and sponsorship of terrorism pale in comparison to the potential threat of a nuclear-armed Iran.Today we’re exploring what we know about the current status of Iran’s nuclear weapons program and what could happen if they get one. 

Key Points

• Iran’s nuclear program has accelerated since the collapse of a 2018 agreement to slow its development.
• Iran might take advantage of closer ties with Russia and chaos in the Middle East to make a breakout run for nuclear weapons in the not-so-distant future. 
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The Iranian Difference

The Iranian people are ethnically Indo-European Persians, not Arabs. They are Muslims, but they follow the Shia sect, unlike the Sunnis who rule every other Islamic country. And they are the only Islamic theocracy in the world, with national policies under the sharp eyes of conservative Shiite clerics. All of this makes them quite different from their neighbors and resentful of the fact that the holy places of Islam are under the control of one of their greatest rivals: Saudi Arabia. Their religious convictions also make them keen to take radical leadership in opposing Israel and Israel’s main sponsor, the United States, to show that they are more authentically zealous for Islam. 

Confronting the “Great Satan”

Iranian leaders like to refer to the United States as the “Great Satan:” a corrupt world’s most serious threat to Islam. During the revolution, staff members of the U.S. embassy were held hostage for over a year. During the Iran-Iraq War, Iran attacked oil tankers of the Persian Gulf states that supported Iraq and placed sea mines in the Gulf. That ended only with American military escorts and U.S. attacks on Iranian forces and facilities that caused them to back down. Iran has responded with asymmetrical warfare, including state sponsorship of terrorism. 

Confronting the “Little Satan”

Iran refers to Israel as the “Little Satan,” a puppet state that does the bidding of its masters in Washington. Israel’s Islamic neighbors have gone to war with it several times since it became an independent country in 1948. Each war has been an Israeli victory and most have expanded Israel’s territory. Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and the treatment of the millions of Palestinians who live there are inflammatory to the Arab countries and Iran. Iran has sponsored and armed the paramilitary groups Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon to harass Israel and show they are doing something about the problem. At the same time, Israel has military superiority and nuclear weapons, so Iran does not want a direct conflict it is likely to lose. 

Confronting the Arab Countries

With Israel having a decisive military edge due to generous U.S. sponsorship, the Arab countries have understood the futility of direct conflict. They also have a common cause with Israel in opposing Iranian adventurism in the region. Egypt, Jordan, the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco have all normalized relations with Israel and with the exception of Sudan, are generally aligned with U.S. foreign policy goals in the region. Iran has condemned these these countries for compromising with the enemies of Islam and has armed sympathetic groups in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen to try to gain a strategic advantage over its Arab rivals. 

Why Does Iran Want Nuclear Weapons?

Here are 3 reasons Iran might want to acquire nuclear weapons:

1. Only 9 countries have nuclear weapons. They are distinguishing displays of power for some of the militarily strongest countries in the world. Nukes would put Iran into this elite club.
2. Nuclear weapons are the ultimate deterrent to foreign attackers. Libya, Iraq, and now Syria show that dictatorships without nukes face foreign intervention and overthrow. Those with nuclear capability, like North Korea, don’t. For Iran, nuclear weapons would be a deterrent specifically to Israeli or American attacks.
3. Nuclear weapons have not been used in war since 1945, but that doesn’t mean they won’t be. If a nuclear-armed country like Israel were about to be overrun, it could flatten its enemies with tactical nuclear weapons and/or wipe out their cities to end the threat in minutes. Nukes could also be used by a country like Iran in a suprise attack on their enemies, or the technology or operational weapons could be transferred to other anti-western states or terrorist organizations.

How Other Countries Might Respond 

If Iran did test a nuclear device, it might face a range of international repercussions:

• It would become even more diplomatically isolated and face more severe economic sanctions.
• Other regional powers, like Saudi Arabia or Egypt, might seek their own nuclear deterrents, and might be able to acquire the technology, weapons components, or complete weapons from Pakistan or North Korea. 
• It’s possible an international coalition would try to destroy the Iranian nuclear program with some combination of heavy bombing, insertion of strike teams, or even using tactical nuclear weapons. 

Iran’s Nuclear Capabilities to 2015

Although Iran’s energy needs are more than met by its petroleum production, it claimed its nuclear research was for the purpose of energy generation. However, by 2015 Iran had installed thousands of centrifuges at multiple deeply entrenched underground sites. This gave it the potential to enrich uranium to weapons grade rapidly if it chose to make a breakout to a functioning weapon. Iran had a stockpile of uranium exceeding the limits and grades of enrichment permitted by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It also was developing facilities to produce so called “heavy water” that is used to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons. 

Four Approaches to Stopping Iran

In the past two decades, foreign powers have used four approaches to try to slow down or stop Iran’s nuclear program:

1. International sanctions to restrict Iranian access to dual-purpose technology and weapons components.
2. Cyber attacks to sabotage the program, including one that caused centrifuges to malfunction and become irreparably damaged.
3. At least five Iranian nuclear scientists were assassinated. Israel is widely assumed to be responsible.
4. Diplomatic negotiations resulted in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in 2015 that was intended to slow down Iran’s nuclear program significantly. 

The 2015 Nuclear Deal

The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action placed limits on the number of centrifuges Iran could have and limited the enrichment levels they could reach for 15 years. Iran also agreed to reduce its enriched uranium stockpile by 98%. This agreement was to be monitored with on-site inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency. In return, some of the crushing economic sanctions on Iran would be lifted. However, it did not address issues like Iran’s ballistic missile stockpile that could be used as nuclear payload delivery systems. 

What Happened in 2018

President Trump believed the JCPOA would not be enough to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons, so in 2018 he withdrew the United States from it and reimposed sanctions. This inflicted significant damage to the Iranian economy. Iran responded by increasing its use of advanced centrifuges to grow its enriched uranium stockpiles and began restricting full access to international nuclear monitors. 

Iran’s Nuclear Capabilities Today

Here is a summary of where experts believe Iran’s nuclear capabilities stand today:

• Intelligence experts think Iran has the foundational knowledge and engineering expertise to build a functioning nuclear device. 
• The Iranians are now operating newer centrifuges that are as much as 3 times more efficient as the ones they were using just 6 years ago.  
• Since the U.S. left the JCPOA, Iranians have increased their U-235 enrichment levels to about 60%, far more than the 3.67% required by the agreement. 
• They have an estimated 5,800 kg of enriched uranium. About 182 kg of that is enriched to 60%, but needs further enrichment to about 90% to build a bomb. 
• Experts believe Iran could produce enough uranium for up to 16 nuclear weapons in anywhere from 1-5 months. 

2024: Middle East Chaos

The Middle East is going through a multilevel crisis this year that will affect Iran’s calculus of the risks and benefits of breaking out to nuclear status:

• A brutal terrorist attack by Iranian-sponsored Hamas on Israeli civilians touched off a war that has claimed tens of thousands of lives. 
• This in turn sparked a second war in Lebanon between Israel and Hezbollah, another Iranian proxy. 
• Yemeni rebels (again sponsored by Iran), began firing missiles at Israel and Red Sea shipping, provoking a military response from the United States and the United Kingdom.
• Iran and Israel have exchanged airstrikes and ballistic missile and drone attacks that have stopped short of provoking a full-scale war. 
• As of Dec. 10, the Syrian government has collapsed and Israeli ground forces are operating in southern Syria to degrade the country’s military capabilities. 

The Russian Factor

Russia is under severe international sanctions for its ongoing invasion of Ukraine. While it has a numerical advantage over Ukraine, western countries have provided Ukraine with increasingly lethal high tech weaponry and training. Russia has begun purchasing Iranian-made drones and North Korean missiles and ammunition, as well as introducing some 10,000 or more North Korean troops to the front lines in Russia’s Kursk Oblast.

Russia’s relative weakness works to Iran’s favor, giving them the opportunity to bargain for trade agreements and potentially even nuclear technology that could help them break out as a nuclear power. It could also create the impression that Iran is within Russia’s sphere of influence and that any who would attack it may or may not be inviting a Russian military response. 

The American Factor

The election of Donald Trump to a second term is another wild card in an already wildly chaotic situation. On the one hand, Trump is a staunch supporter of Israel and was responsible for tearing up the nuclear agreement with Iran. This suggests he would not be interested in a diplomatic approach to stopping Iran. 

On the other hand, while Trump’s diplomatic rhetoric has been bombastic, he has emphasized more pulling the U.S. back from its overseas commitments rather than expanding them and starting new wars. So it is unclear what his policy might be if Iran did test a nuclear weapon. One possibility is that he might give a green light to Israel to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities with limited American support without committing ground troops or in other ways getting the U.S. entangled in another long Middle East War. 

Ramifications of a Military Response

If the U.S. and Israel and their allies undertake a strong military response intended to deny Iran nuclear weapons and technology, here are some potential outcomes:

• Conventional missile, drone, and airstrikes could be insufficient to destroy deeply-buried facilities. Making sure they were destroyed might require deployment of ground troops to raid suspected sites. 
• If Iran already has one or more weapons at the time of the attack, they might succeed in using them, or transferring weapons or radioactive materials for a dirty bomb to terrorists. Any hostile use of nuclear materials by Iran could invite an Israeli or American tactical nuclear response against remaining nuclear sites. 
• If, as in neighboring Iraq, an international coalition expands their mission to depose the government, this would create an unbroken arc of instability from Lebanon and Syria on the Mediterranean Sea to Afghanistan’s border with China. 
• Any use of nuclear weapons by any party could lower inhibitions against their use in other conflicts. There would be an increased possibility of Russia using battlefield nukes to try to force a Ukrainian surrender. 

Ramifications of a Containment Response

The risks of a military strike are huge, but what is the alternative? The U.S. could use a containment response, as it did with the Soviet Union, China, and North Korea. Some elements of this are diplomatic and economic isolation through sanctions, building up American and allied military forces in the region to deter expansion, and negotiations to reduce tensions and control the parameters of a local arms race. 

• If Iran were to get away with establishing its own nuclear arsenal, as North Korea did, this could embolden other countries to pursue nuclear weapons as well. Saudi Arabia would be highly likely to do so. 
• Iran would develop its ICBM capabilities to be able to reach targets around most of the globe, including mainland North America. 
• Iran may be emboldened to take even more aggressive actions in its support of terrorism and direct military involvement in unstable countries like Iraq and Syria. 

The Bottom Line: There Is No Bottom Line

Like so many of the problems in the Middle East, there just aren’t many good options for solving the Iranian nuclear crisis. Ultimately, in an ideal world, Iran would have an ideological change that would allow them to approach the world in a less combative way. This is what happened in the Soviet Union: the reality of economic decline and political corruption caused a collapse of the communist worldview and the systems it built. In the case of Iran, perhaps such an economic collapse could happen with adoption of affordable sustainable energy technologies that led to a catastrophic devaluation of oil and cut off Iran’s main source of income. But such a scenario amounts to waiting things out and hoping for the best. 

In the near-term, the world has to make an assessment of the danger not only that Iran will test a nuclear weapon, but that they will use it. And if the determination is made that they will use it, either imminently or inevitably in the future, then that moves our calculus decisively into the realm of military strategy. At that point, we must decide not whether there will be military conflict, but when and how it will take place with the least loss of life and property, and the most decisive defeat for Iran’s nuclear objectives.

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