Why Iran may still not build a nuclear bomb

Iran knows full well that even a retaliatory nuclear strike on Israel could endanger the holy city of Jerusalem, the Palestinian population, and even the Shia population in southern Lebanon, after which even the Muslim world would support obliterating the nation of Iran. Thus, the Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) deterrence doctrine won’t work in this instance.

While US President Donald Trump emphatically claims that recent US airstrikes dealt “final damage” to Iran’s nuclear programme, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Rafael Grossi believes that Iran still has the infrastructure to restart uranium enrichment “within months”.

The fact that the IAEA and nuclear experts around the world did not raise alarm over the US directly bombing Iran’s nuclear sites, purportedly enriching vast amounts of uranium, is bizarre, to say the least. Even if these experts believed that the US bombings would not breach containment structures nor release radioactive material into the environment, the fact that nuclear sites were attacked in war sets an incredibly dangerous precedent.

Then again, Trump’s claim that Iran’s nuclear programme has been “obliterated” helps Iran’s case for the US’ immediate lifting of the “maximum pressure” sanctions regime on it, now that the nuclear programme has purportedly been incapacitated.

No wonder supporters of Trump’s airstrikes appear to be making an about-face on their earlier claims of substantially harming Iran’s nuclear programme. According to a press report, the US Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Dan Caine recently said at a “classified” Senate briefing that the US military deliberately avoided using bunker-buster bombs on Iran’s Isfahan nuclear complex (which reportedly stores 60 per cent of Iran’s enriched uranium) because the site’s extreme depth rendered even the bunker-buster explosives ineffective. If the statement is true, it means the US purposely carried out a phoney attack to hide from the world the limitations of its bunker-busting explosives.

Internal debate in Iran

Amidst all this incredulity, speculation is rife even among Iran’s supporters that after the US airstrikes the country would build a nuclear bomb and thereby develop an effective North Korea-like deterrent.

In fact, many Iranian officials are now openly debating whether the acquisition of nuclear weapons would help or hurt Iran’s national security. Even last year (October 18, 2024), nearly 40 members of Iranian parliament sent a letter to the country’s Supreme National Security Council, the top security policymaking body, requesting it to revise Iran’s defence doctrine in order to allow development of nuclear weapons.

However, writing for the Stimson Centre, Javad Heiran-Nia writes that many “reformists and moderates in Iran still oppose such a shift as contrary to national interests. Some see it as an emotional decision that could have heavy costs for the Iranian people, who are already contending with economic sanctions.”

But the strategic reasons for not building nuclear weapons could be more than are explicitly stated by Iran thus far. In fact, Israel’s intelligence cannot be entirely discounted for warning the US and the international community about Iran’s growing uranium enrichment capabilities that Iran has purposely withheld below the weapon’s grade level, even after the revocation of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) agreement.

Iran’s alternative deterrence: Threat to Strait of Hormuz

It can be argued that one of the reasons that Iran has not built a nuclear weapon already, in spite of having capabilities for doing so for decades, is that it has developed alternative means for effectively deterring Israel and the US from posing an existential threat to the regime. By funding and arming its proxies in the region and constantly upgrading its airspace (particularly hypersonic missile systems and drone power), Iran has shown it can pose a credible threat to Israeli security and even hurt vital US interests in West Asia.

This was in evidence during the recent “12 Day War”, when Iran targeted key Israeli strategic and infrastructure sites as well as civilian areas after piercing through the Israeli Defence Forces’ multi-layered air defence system.

In addition, Iranian spokesmen like Prof Marandi brazenly threatened to bring down the global economy by striking oil refineries and US air bases in Gulf states.

Even towards the end of the war, even the Iranian parliament unanimously approved the closing of the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20 million barrels of oil (over 20 percent of the global oil consumption) pass through daily.

The Iranian missiles fired at the US Al-Udeid military base eventually led to the present ceasefire between the warring sides. This proves that Iran does not depend on the nuclear option as a deterrent against Israel or even the US from attacking it.

Nuking Palestinians and Jerusalem to ‘save’ them?

However, the other more important reason for not developing a nuclear weapon is that the option raises the unimaginable yet possible scenario of the entire Palestinian nation, which might even include the Shia population of southern Lebanon, being blown up in a nuclear explosion between Israel and Iran. Even this slim prospect of annihilating the Palestinian nation in the supposed process of defending it against Israeli occupation would forever ruin the legitimacy of the Iranian Islamic Revolution.

Again, ‘Al Quds’ (the Islamic name for the city of Jerusalem) holds a special sanctity in Shia messianism, which views the city as being central to Imam Al Mahdi’s mission against the Anti-Christ. A nuclear reprisal attack by Iran in a MAD doctrine runs the risk of turning the holy land’s area and adjoining regions into a radioactive dump. As the MAD doctrine works on a prospective basis, where two nuclear states might not hesitate in taking out the people or territory of the enemy state on facing an existential nuclear attack by the other, it does not apply in the case of Iran’s equation of deterrence against Israel.

Even Israel is fully cognisant of the dangers posed by the nuclear weapons option to its relatively small territory when a junior Israeli minister, Amichay Eliyahu, proposed dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza as “one way of dealing with the threat of Hamas” just after the October 7 attacks. In a swift response, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu instantly shot down the proposal and took the unusual step of suspending the far-right minister.

Thus, former Head of Verification and Security Policy at the IAEA Tariq Rauf told the news outlet IDN, “Any use of nuclear weapons by Israel, or any other state in the Middle East, would undoubtedly have transboundary transport of fallout”. This, he warned, would include radioactive debris and airborne radioactive particles and could pollute water bodies and soil.

Even if a lower-yield bomb explodes, weighing less than 2 or 3 kilotons, the threat of a higher-yield nuclear escalatory reprisal by the other side cannot be discounted.

Nuclear issue isn’t the real deal?

Perhaps, these and other complications were studied in depth by Iran before the present Supreme Leader issued a fatwa against the use of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons in the mid-1990s, which remains extant. In any case, being the weaker military side, Iran is using the moral and legal diplomatic weapon of staying within the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) framework and by claiming it is Israel, a non-NPT member, that is the chief violator of international nuclear agreements.

However, Iran is increasing its uranium enrichment to show off its scientific advancement in spite of being a theocratic state and to use its nuclear technological development and know-how as a bargaining chip to secure concessions from the West, such as sanctions relief.

Even the US and Israel understand the nuclear weapons threat is not a credible threat at present, but they hype it mainly because it allows them to take punitive action against Iran’s aggressive policies against Israel and the West. The greater immediate concerns of Iran’s stockpiles of hypersonic missiles and support for violent non-state actors against Israel might not draw international opprobrium and punitive actions as violations of uranium enrichment issues might.

Scant support from Russia, China

Meanwhile, Iran might never develop a nuclear weapon, as it is also wary of Arab states like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the UAE entering the race in West Asia, which might blunt its plans to become the regional hegemony. In addition, Russia and China (Iran’s close allies) also do not seem keen on allowing the Islamic Republic to enter the league of nuclear weapon states.

In conclusion, Iran has carefully cultivated an image for itself in the Arab street and the larger Muslim world as being a morally upright nation fighting for Islamic causes without resorting to the indiscriminate takfiri violence carried out by its rival Sunni Wahhabi jihadists. It is for these reasons, among others, that it seems unlikely for Iran to rescind Khamenei’s fatwa against CBRN (chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear) weapons.

Adil Rasheed is a research fellow at the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA). Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.