The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action — the Iran nuclear deal negotiated in 2015 — was the most complex and consequential arms control agreement of the post-Cold War era. It imposed strict limits on Iranian uranium enrichment, required intrusive international inspections, and blocked the pathways to a nuclear weapon in exchange for sanctions relief. For its duration, it worked: Iran’s uranium enrichment capacity was substantially curtailed and monitored.
In May 2018, the United States withdrew from the JCPOA. Iran began systematically unwinding its own commitments. By 2021, Iran was enriching uranium to 60% purity — well above the 3.67% permitted under the deal and close to the 90% required for weapons-grade material. By 2023, the International Atomic Energy Agency estimated that Iran had enough highly enriched uranium that, if further enriched to weapons grade, could be used to build multiple nuclear weapons. The IAEA also found evidence that Iran had conducted experiments at Parchin related to nuclear weapon design.
The JCPOA is functionally dead. Negotiations to revive it or create a successor agreement have repeatedly stalled. Iran’s nuclear program has advanced to a point where the breakout time — the time required to accumulate enough weapons-grade material for a single bomb — has shrunk from roughly 12 months under the JCPOA to estimates of a few weeks.
The question is no longer whether Iran will have the capability to build a nuclear weapon. It is what will happen when it does — or when Israel and the United States decide the cost of allowing it has become unacceptable.
Iran’s Nuclear Logic
Understanding Iran’s nuclear program requires understanding it on its own terms, not only through the lens of Western non-proliferation preferences.
Iran’s leadership — both clerical conservatives and pragmatic technocrats — has operated from a strategic logic shaped by several experiences. Iraq, which abandoned its nuclear program in response to international pressure and invasion, was invaded and its leadership destroyed. Libya, which famously dismantled its nuclear program in 2003 and normalized relations with the West, saw its leader killed and its state collapse following a NATO-backed uprising in 2011. North Korea, which refused to abandon its nuclear program, survived American pressure and remains, however impoverished, an independent state. The lesson that nuclear weapons, or the credible pursuit of them, provides survival value against regime-change-inclined outside powers has been drawn explicitly by Iranian strategists.
Iran also operates in a threat environment that includes: a hostile relationship with Israel, which has conducted covert operations killing Iranian nuclear scientists, sabotaged nuclear facilities, and repeatedly threatened military action; ongoing tensions with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states that have an interest in preventing Iranian regional dominance; the US presence in adjacent countries and waters; and occasional Israeli-American exercises that have included scenarios for strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.
Iran has not formally announced a decision to build a nuclear weapon. Some analysts argue — credibly — that its leadership seeks a “threshold capability”: the ability to build a weapon quickly if needed, without having crossed the line that might trigger preemptive military action. This “hedging” strategy keeps options open while providing deterrence value from the ambiguity.
Israel’s Red Line
Israel has stated, across multiple governments and prime ministers, that it considers an Iranian nuclear weapon an existential threat and that it will take military action to prevent Iran from crossing the threshold to a weapon.
These are not empty words. Israel has demonstrated willingness to conduct unilateral military strikes against nuclear infrastructure — it destroyed Iraq’s Osirak reactor in 1981 and Syria’s Al-Kibar reactor in 2007. In both cases, it acted without American authorization and presented the international community with a fait accompli.
The operational challenge of striking Iran is vastly more difficult than either of those previous strikes. Iran’s nuclear infrastructure is not concentrated at a single location. It is distributed across dozens of facilities — Natanz, Fordow, Isfahan, Arak, and others — some of which are buried deep underground in hardened facilities specifically designed to resist aerial attack. Fordow, buried approximately 80 metres under a mountain, is assessed by multiple analysts as essentially immune to conventional bunker-buster bombs available to Israel.
A comprehensive Israeli military strike would require hundreds of aircraft, multiple rounds of strikes, suppression of Iran’s air defenses, and either American logistical support (tanker aircraft for refueling) or American non-interference in using American-supplied munitions. The United States has provided Israel with several specialized bunker-buster bombs (GBU-28s) but has reportedly withheld the most powerful versions (GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators) on the grounds that Israeli delivery aircraft cannot carry them and because of concerns about Israeli strike planning.
What an Israeli Strike Would Trigger
The scenarios for what follows an Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear facilities are analyzed extensively in defense policy communities, and they are not reassuring.
Iran’s most likely immediate response would involve activation of its “axis of resistance” — the network of proxy forces it has built across the region: Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, the Houthis in Yemen, Shia militias in Iraq and Syria. A coordinated attack from multiple directions simultaneously would create a multi-front military crisis for Israel while spreading American military resources thin. Iran would also likely target shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, through which approximately 20% of global oil passes.
Regional escalation is the central risk. Saudi Arabia and the UAE, while opposed to Iranian nuclear weapons, would face difficult choices about their exposure if Iran responded to an Israeli strike by activating regional proxies. American forces in Iraq, Syria, and the Gulf would likely come under attack from Iranian-backed militias. The prospect of a broader regional war with potential global economic consequences — primarily through oil supply disruption — is real and widely war-gamed.
Whether an Israeli strike would succeed in significantly delaying Iran’s nuclear program is also uncertain. Most assessments suggest it could set the program back by one to three years — but that Iran would reconstitute it, likely with greater determination and less willingness to tolerate inspections, having learned which facilities need deeper hardening.
The Diplomatic Alternative That Keeps Not Materializing
Every serious analysis of the Iranian nuclear problem concludes that the only durable solution is a negotiated agreement — one that provides Iran with sufficient security guarantees and economic normalization that the strategic logic for nuclear weapons loses force, while providing verification mechanisms that give international confidence in Iranian compliance.
The obstacles are formidable but not insuperable. They include: deep mutual distrust between the US and Iran rooted in the 1979 Islamic Revolution and decades of subsequent conflict; domestic political constraints in both countries that make concessions politically costly; Israeli and Saudi opposition to any deal that the opposing side considers too favorable; Iran’s growing relationship with Russia and China, which reduces its economic incentive to prioritize normalization with the West; and the simple fact that each cycle of deal-collapse-and-violation has narrowed the space for a subsequent agreement.
The Abraham Accords — the normalization agreements between Israel and UAE, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco brokered in 2020 — created a new regional dynamic that makes the Iran nuclear file more complex. Saudi Arabia’s prospective normalization with Israel, discussed intermittently since, would be the most significant regional realignment since Egypt’s peace treaty. Its fate is linked, in various configurations, to progress on Palestinian statehood and to the Iranian nuclear file.
The honest prognosis is uncertain. The window in which the Iranian nuclear program could be addressed diplomatically at acceptable cost has been narrowing for years. Whether it has closed entirely, whether military options can achieve more than temporary delay at unacceptable regional risk, and whether a negotiated framework remains achievable — these are among the most consequential open questions in international security.
Also explore:
The Return of Great Power Competition
The Biggest Global Risks of the Next Decade
Cyberwarfare: The New Battlefield
Southeast Asia: The Next Great Geopolitical Battleground (coming September 7)
Related Articles
- Israel–Hamas: Why a Middle East War Is Reshaping Latin American Geopolitics
- The Middle East in 2026: Power Maps, Alliances, and the Fault Lines Shaping the Future
- Iran: Between Regional Power, Internal Repression, and the Nuclear Question
Weekly Geopolitical Briefing
Go Beyond the Headlines
Analysis of the forces shaping the world - delivered every week. No noise, no bias, just depth.
Subscribe Free ?No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
About the Author
António Monteiro
Engineer by profession, geopolitical analyst by conviction. I believe responsibility for the planet's future doesn't belong only to governments and institutions - it belongs to all of us. Knowledge about geopolitics, international conflicts, and the forces shaping the world is the most powerful tool for becoming more conscious, informed citizens. You don't need to be a diplomat to understand what's at stake - you just need to want to go beyond the headlines. At Outside The Case, I analyze conflicts, power dynamics, and global trends with rigor and accessible language, so you can understand what's really happening in the world.
Read more about the author →