Despite bombs, backlash: Why Iran's nuclear programme matters to it

Targeted airstrikes by the United States and Israel over the weekend aimed to neutralise Iran’s uranium enrichment capabilities.

While senior US officials and US President Donald Trump have declared the operation a strategic success, conflicting assessments from the American intelligence community and historical context suggest a far more nuanced picture.

Did the US strikes achieve their objective?

According to sources familiar with a preliminary US intelligence assessment, the American strikes on key nuclear sites in Iran — including Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan — have caused damage that might delay the programme by only a few months.

Three individuals with access to the classified findings indicated to Reuters that the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA), which produced the initial report, assessed that Iran could resume uranium enrichment activities within as little as one to two months.

These estimates stand in stark contrast to statements from the Trump administration. While addressing reporters at the NATO summit in The Hague, Trump acknowledged the ambiguity in the intelligence — “The intelligence was … very inconclusive” — but asserted, “I think we can take the ‘we don’t know.’ It was very severe. It was obliteration.”

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He went further to claim, “Iran’s nuclear deal had been set back basically decades, because I don’t think they’ll ever do it again.”

This position was echoed by White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt, who responded to reports about the assessment by stating: “Everyone knows what happens when you drop fourteen 30,000-pound bombs perfectly on their targets: total obliteration.”

Despite these pronouncements, officials involved in the intelligence review have pointed out that the report includes several uncertainties, conditions and is expected to evolve as more data becomes available.

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A US official, speaking anonymously to Reuters, confirmed that even now, Washington does not fully grasp the scale of the impact on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.

Evaluating the destruction of highly fortified sites like Fordow, located deep underground, remains technically difficult, especially if assessments rely on satellite imagery.

The DIA is also not the only agency responsible for the damage assessment.

What if Iran had a bomb?

Debates about Iran’s nuclear capabilities inevitably raise the question: what happens if Tehran crosses the threshold and becomes a nuclear-armed state?

Analysts hold divergent views — ranging from alarm over regional instability to cautious recognition of nuclear deterrence dynamics.

While fears of Iran sharing nuclear material with non-state actors or extremist groups exist, history offers limited precedent for such scenarios.

According to the Arms Control Association, only one known case — the Soviet Union’s transfer of uranium-235 to China in the 1950s — ever involved a state transferring bomb-grade material to another actor.

More relevant is how a nuclear Iran would reshape its security calculus in West Asia. Nuclear weapons, particularly for a country like Iran, are seen less as tools of aggression and more as strategic deterrents.

These weapons could serve multiple deterrence objectives: dissuading conventional military aggression from regional non-nuclear states, forestalling nuclear threats from powers like Israel, India or Pakistan, and deterring interventions by external powers such as the United States or Russia.

Analysts often reference the doctrine of “proportional deterrence,” a concept initially crafted in Cold War-era France. It proposes that a relatively less capable nuclear state can still effectively deter stronger nuclear adversaries by threatening to destroy high-value targets, even while absorbing significant damage itself.

This form of second-strike capability ensures that any country contemplating an attack must reckon with irreversible consequences.

This logic, however, cuts both ways. Iran itself remains vulnerable to deterrence by Israel’s nuclear arsenal, and even its missile advancements may not necessarily indicate nuclear ambitions.

Some experts argue that Iran’s precision missile development could be aimed at bolstering conventional deterrence — targeting strategic sites in Israel or elsewhere without resorting to nuclear arms.

While a nuclear-armed Iran would not automatically destabilise the region, the psychological and political implications would be profound. The sheer perception of a shift in power dynamics could alter regional alignments, defence planning and diplomatic engagements.

Most crucially, however, it is unlikely that regional or global powers will allow Iran to acquire such a capability uncontested.

How did Iran’s nuclear programme come about?

Iran’s nuclear journey began not in defiance, but under American sponsorship. In 1957, the US and Iran launched a civil nuclear partnership as part of the “Atoms for Peace” initiative.

By the 1970s, under the pro-Western Shah, Iran was planning an ambitious programme that included building 23 nuclear reactors. Washington, including then-US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, raised no objection.

Iran’s nuclear development was envisioned as a symbol of modernity and a tool for regional leadership, with plans to export electricity to neighbouring states.

But the Iranian Revolution of 1979 transformed the landscape entirely. The ousting of the Shah and the rise of the Islamic Republic introduced a new political order driven by anti-imperialist rhetoric and religious ideology.

Western fears of weaponisation of Iran’s nuclear capabilities began almost immediately. Iran’s insistence on the right to enrich uranium has been a flashpoint in every round of nuclear negotiations since.

To many in Washington, this insistence is incomprehensible if Iran’s aims are purely peaceful. As US Vice President JD Vance remarked: “It’s one thing to want civilian nuclear energy. It’s another thing to demand sophisticated enrichment capacity. And it’s still another to cling to enrichment while simultaneously violating basic non-proliferation obligations and enriching right to the point of weapons-grade uranium.”

Iran, however, has consistently maintained that its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes. It remains a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), under which it has pledged not to develop a nuclear weapon.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has issued multiple fatwas condemning nuclear arms as “un-Islamic.”

So why is Iran’s nuclear programme so important to it?

The roots of Iran’s nuclear intransigence run deep — far deeper than its centrifuges. One of the revolution’s founding principles, as handwritten by Ayatollah Khomeini in a 1979 declaration, was “independence.”

This idea, grounded in a long history of colonial subjugation, remains central to the Islamic Republic’s identity.

Iran’s experience of foreign domination stretches back centuries: squeezed between Russian and British imperialism in the 19th century, subjected to the exploitation of oil resources by British corporations in the 20th, and politically undermined by direct foreign interventions.

In 1953, the US and UK orchestrated a coup to remove then-Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh after he sought national control over Iran’s oil. This episode is widely regarded as a defining national trauma.

Author and analyst Vali Nasr, in his work Iran’s Grand Strategy, traces Iran’s emphasis on nuclear self-sufficiency back to this legacy of external coercion. He argues that the drive for civil nuclear power and the right to enrich uranium is not just about energy — it is about reclaiming sovereignty.

“Before the revolution itself, before the hostage crisis or US sanctions, before the Iran-Iraq war or efforts to export the revolution… the future supreme religious guide and leader of Iran valued independence from foreign influence as equal to the enshrining principles of Islam in the state,” Nasr notes.

Khamenei himself once explained the significance of the revolution by stating, “now all decisions are made in Tehran.”

This desire for autonomy — manifested in Iran’s refusal to rely on imported enriched uranium from countries like Russia — has consistently obstructed nuclear agreements.

Yet, from Iran’s perspective, conceding on enrichment would be tantamount to surrendering the very ideals upon which the Islamic Republic was built.

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With inputs from agencies