Iran’s Nuclear Crisis Has No Military Solution

Even before Israel bombed the Iranian consulate complex in Damascus, Syria, earlier this month, conversations in Iran around its ability to develop a nuclear weapon—and its perceived necessity—had surged to an unprecedented level. In January 2024 on live TV, Mohammad Eslami, the current head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), was asked whether it was time for Iran to acquire nuclear weapons “or at least conduct a nuclear test.” While Eslami argued against acquiring nuclear weapons, citing Iran’s defense doctrine, the very posing of the question on Iran’s state television signals the growing internal debate about the utility of nuclear weapons.

For months, there has been speculation about the trajectory of Iran’s nuclear program amid the ongoing war in Gaza and whether Iran would finally translate its nuclear threshold capacity into a nuclear weapons arsenal. The bombing of the complex, which killed several Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commanders, has now escalated the shadow war between Iran and Israel into a dangerous new phase. Although Israel never took responsibility for the attack, it did not deny the attack, either. Iran accused Israel of striking the diplomatic facility, and after some delay it responded by launching more than 300 drones, ballistic missiles, and cruise missiles at Israel, marking the first attack by a foreign state against Israel since former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s launch of ballistic missiles during the Persian Gulf War in 1991. This was Iran’s second strike against a nuclear weapons state in less than five months. (Pakistan was the first.)

Currently, Iran is the only non-nuclear weapons state that enriches uranium to near weapons-grade levels. While some experts have argued that the war in Gaza makes a nuclear Iran more likely, the latest threat assessment from the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) suggested that Iran has not taken any steps toward weaponization. So far, Iran has not seen any utility in weaponizing its nuclear program. But as tensions rise, Iran may see a nuclear weapon as a means of deterring Israel’s conventional superiority and nuclear weapons.

Iran’s technical capabilities have advanced considerably since the U.S. withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in 2018. In February 2024, shortly after Eslami’s comments, Ali Salehi, the former chief of AEOI and a strong proponent of Iran’s nuclear program, signaled that Iran had crossed all the thresholds of nuclear technology. “Imagine what a car needs,” said Salehi, an MIT graduate and nuclear scientist, on Iran’s state TV. “It needs a chassis, an engine, a steering wheel, a gearbox. You’re asking if we’ve made the gearbox, I say yes. Have we made the engine? Yes, but each one serves its own purpose.”

Given Iran now has the technical capacity to develop a nuclear bomb, the question of capability becomes a political one. Since the 1970s, when the shah began considering military applications for Iran’s nuclear program, the political elite’s threat perceptions have greatly influenced the country’s nuclear posture. When the Islamic Republic reconstituted the shah’s nuclear program in the 1980s, it did so primarily as the result of the Iran-Iraq War, Iraq’s use of chemical weapons, and Baghdad’s burgeoning nuclear program, which posed an existential threat to Iran’s security even after the war concluded in 1988. Tehran continued with its covert nuclear program until the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 prompted the Iranian leadership to halt Iran’s purported weaponization efforts. This decision stemmed from the Iranian leadership’s recognition that proliferation activities risked placing Iran on Washington’s target list. In other words: Security considerations that had motivated the Iranians to reconstitute the program forced them to halt it.

This history—of perceived security threats dictating nuclear policy—suggests that ratcheted-up tensions with Israel could encourage the political elite to abandon their hedging posture and finally cross the nuclear threshold. Even an Iranian economist and journalist close to the reformist camp, Saeed Laylaz, opined recently that Israel’s attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus “removed the last excuse for Iran not to test a nuclear device and enter the nuclear club.” From Tehran’s perspective, a nuclear arsenal could mitigate Israel’s substantial conventional superiority, as illustrated by its ability to intercept, defend, and shoot down the majority of Iran’s ballistic missiles and drones with the assistance of its allies. But the risks of regional escalation do not end here.

As Israel is considering its options to retaliate against the Iranian attacks, some former Trump officials, notably John Bolton, have once again called for an Israeli attack against Iranian nuclear facilities. This is an extremely dangerous scenario. First, an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities could have significant environmental repercussions for the region. For this reason, International Atomic Energy Agency Director-General Rafael Grossi expressed serious concern about the possibility of an Israeli attack against Iranian nuclear facilities.

Second, while any attack on Iranian nuclear facilities might set the program back in the short term, Iranians have demonstrated in the past that they can quickly rebuild and expand the nuclear program. When Israel sabotaged the Natanz facility in April 2021, Iranians quickly responded by enriching to 60 percent in a matter of days. Such an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities could very well motivate Iranians to leave the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and dash for the bomb. As Hossein Mousavian, a former nuclear negotiator and a nuclear policy specialist at Princeton University, observed, a military strike on Iran “is the only factor that can divert Iran’s nuclear program toward weaponization.” Furthermore, Brig. Gen. Ahmad Haghtalab, the commander of the IRGC unit responsible for defending Iran’s nuclear sites, warned explicitly that if Israel wants to pressure Iran by threatening an attack on its nuclear sites, it is “possible and conceivable” that Iran may “revise” its nuclear doctrine and cross its previous “declared considerations.”

Israel’s strikes on the Iraqi and Syrian nuclear programs, in 1981 and 2007, respectively, were successful because of their centralized nature—and the fact that both programs were relatively in their nascent stages. The Iranian nuclear program, meanwhile, is far more advanced and widely dispersed around the country. An Iranian nuclear scientist with an intimate knowledge of the nuclear program told me that Iranians specifically dispersed their nuclear facilities and created multiple sites so that, in the case of an attack, other facilities could continue the work.

More importantly, while Israel can destroy the facilities, it cannot bomb the institutionalized knowledge that Iranians have acquired over the decades. Science simply cannot be bombed away. Iran could, if necessary, reconstitute the program at any time, and since it can rely on its own technological capacity to enrich uranium, it will always remain a nuclear threshold state. Iran’s nuclear crisis has no military solution.

It seems that in considering its response to Iran’s bombing, Israel is ceding to pressure from the United States and leaning toward a limited strike, although it is not clear where and how. Nonetheless, the assault on the Iranian consulate building signifies the dawn of a perilous era in Iran-Israel hostilities, breaching a tacit understanding between the countries to keep their conflict in the shadows. Iran is inching its way closer to a nuclear weapon. The decision of whether it will weaponize its nuclear program remains intricately tied to the regional threat perceptions of its political leadership. And the perceived advantages of nuclear forbearance have outweighed the associated costs—until now.