The crisis between Israel and Iran, which began on June 13th, took a qualitative leap with the American decision to strike three uranium enrichment sites just ten days later. The attacks were carried out with cruise missiles and strategic bombers and, at the Fordow site, which is buried under more than 100 metres of rock, four teen of the so-called MOABs (the mother of all bombs
) were used. This is the most powerful conventional weapon in the US arsenal. In 2017, Donald Trump authorized its use in Afghanistan against an Islamic State base. American military doctrine also provides for the use of tactical nuclear weapons for the same type of mission.
In any case, writes the Beijing-based Global Times, Washington has set a dangerous precedent
by attacking nuclear sites in a country that is a signatory to the NPT, the Non-Proliferation Treaty, with repercussions for the deterrence doctrines of other nuclear powers or aspiring ones. Israel, an undeclared nuclear power, has already applied its doctrine of preventive counter-proliferation
in the past, but never on such a scale and with the ambition of destabilising a State of almost 90 million inhabitants and in a strategic position, in terms of both geography and energy, like Iran.
Gambles and the fog of war
According to Jonathan Eyal, a commentator for Singapore's The Straits Times, Tel Aviv has skilfully exploited the strategic window
provided by the weakening of Iran's deterrence capacity, particularly in Lebanon. However, he notes that while Israel excels at tactics
, it often clashes with strategy
, being unable to win the game with Tehran by itself. After the American action, some believe that Tel Aviv scored a strategic victory
, prompting Trump to take a gamble
: decapitate Iran's nuclear programme and, perhaps, obtain a political surrender or something similar. In a recent comment, Ehud Barak, former Israeli prime minister and political rival of Benjamin Netanyahu, concluded that even the US would not be able to stop Tehran's nuclear ambitions
without entering directly into war
, and considers such a scenario unlikely.
Others recall the formula of known unknowns
and unknown unknowns
, used by Donald Rumsfeld, secretary of defence in the Bush administration during the 2003 Iraq War. This evokes the fog of war and the unintended consequences that accompany military conflict: from regional expansion to the possibility that Washington could find itself in a new Middle Eastern quagmire
; up to a spiral of nuclear crisis if, as Le Figaro speculated, a cornered Tehran decided to conduct a test, even with a rudimentary device.
At the time of writing, Iran has responded with pre-announced demonstrative strikes on American bases in Qatar and Iraq, and Trump has declared that a truce has been reached, although its durability is uncertain.
The pillars of Iranian strategy
According to Vali Nasr [Iran's Grand Strategy: A Political History, 2025], an expert on Iranian affairs at Johns Hopkins University, the real subject of the negotiations concerns the main cornerstones of Iran's political-military strategy
. Not only that of the Islamic Republic, but also of the Iran of the Pahlavis. The Shah had embraced the Nixon doctrine
in the Gulf, assuming the role of protector of American and Western regional interests
in the region, as a framework through which to assert a Greater Iran
, the hegemonic power
of the Middle East, most likely equipped with a nuclear arsenal.
Seyed H. Mousavian, a former Iranian diplomat and negotiator of nuclear agreements for the Khatami presidency, recalls how, thanks to its oil rents and the accelerated modernisation policies of the Shah's White Revolution
, Iran represented an attractive market
for American, German, French, British, and Canadian nuclear power companies, which also provided substantial know-how to Iranian engineers [The Iranian Nuclear Crisis, 2012].
From 2019 to the present, Tehran's response to the American withdrawal from the JCPOA agreement has been to remain within that framework, but applying, for negotiating purposes, a gradual acceleration towards the nuclear threshold
condition. For Mousavian, this is a sort of Japanese option
: Tokyo has the entire nuclear production chain and the capacity, in extraordinary circumstances
, to withdraw from the non-proliferation treaty by invoking Article X. Tehran is staking a claim to equal treatment with the other signatories to the treaty, and to a discussion with Washington about their respective regional strategic interests; in this context, it would also be willing to redefine its doctrine of advanced deterrence
. This is a divisive issue between Iranian reformists and conservatives: for the latter, a nuclear programme with military potential, a ballistic arsenal, and Iranian spheres of influence over various Shiite communities and their militias are part of the sacred defence
of the Islamic State.
For Nasr, this is the legacy of the national trauma of the 1980-88 conflict with Iraq, in which the Islamic republic found itself isolated internationally, relying only on military supplies from China and Israel and the development of its own arms industry. Conversely, Saddam obtained $200 billion in loans from the petro-monarchies and military assistance from major European countries and the USSR. Ironically, Benjamin Netanyahu, then ambassador to Washington, was a staunch advocate of military support for Tehran to balance Baghdad. Tel Aviv supplied weapons and spare parts worth around $2.5 billion, and Beijing $5 billion [Pierre Razoux, La guerre Iran-Irak 1980-1988, 2013].
Advanced deterrence
and sacred defence
According to Alain Frachon of Le Monde, the concept of advanced deterrence
aimed to prevent a new conflict on the territory of the republic, preserving the integrity of the political gains of the 1979 revolution. For Nasr, the condition of quasi-autarchy or self-sufficiency, imposed first by the war and then by sanctions, made it possible to develop economic, financial, and industrial sectors. Particularly under the aegis of religious foundations and the Pasdaran (the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps), favourable to protectionist measures and also to a shift towards the Russian and Chinese markets. The formula negative balance
(movazaneh and manfi), used by Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq in the 1950s, was taken up by conservatives as a formula for Iranian non-alignment
(neither East nor West
).
Complementary to the sacred defence
is the ring of fire
, the network of pro-Shiite militias in the region, created by the Pasdaran general Qassem Soleimani who was eliminated by Trump in 2020, which serves to deter both the US and Israel asymmetrically. This entire architecture was disrupted following the Hamas terrorist attack on October 7th, which was not endorsed by Tehran but was certainly triggered by the attempts, through the Abraham Accords, to isolate Iran and marginalise Palestinian nationalism. The setback to deterrence suffered by Tel Aviv led the Jewish State first to annihilate the enclave of the Gaza Strip and then to launch a series of campaigns to reduce the power of Hezbollah and the Houthis. The fall of Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria, along with Russia's military disengagement, has provided Tel Aviv with an opportunity to target the head of the Iranian octopus
.
Although Israel does not identify the collapse of the Tehran regime as its main objective, it certainly cherishes it – perhaps with the idea that weakening Iran's military forces and damaging its nuclear programme could strengthen the more pragmatic factions within the regime. Trump may have aligned himself with this option. Being undeniably gifted with political instinct and opportunism
, writes Le Figaro, Trump may have seen the possibility to achieve an easy military victory
that would allow him to be feared
, despite the poor results of his confused international diplomacy
. This is plausible, even if both Netanyahu and Trump seem to be operating on the basis of improvisation or strategic gambles.
All the paths of nuclear proliferation
In his book Seeking the Bomb [2022], Vipin Narang, a former senior Pentagon official and editor of Washington's 2024 nuclear doctrine review, provides a historical overview of the proliferation strategies of various powers, identifying four possibilities: sprint
, caution
, sheltered development
, and hiding
.
The first group includes States that developed a nuclear arsenal in a short period of time – the USSR, China, and France – thanks to internal political consensus, the possession of necessary resources, and reduced vulnerability to external intervention. The strategy of caution, i.e., acquiring a nuclear threshold while remaining protected by an external guarantee, has been practised by countries such as Germany and Japan.
Israel, Pakistan, and North Korea are successful examples of sheltered development: exploiting the collusion and tolerance of other nuclear powers, which consider this to be in their strategic interests. The States in this group are often skilled at finding new protectors: Israel's nuclear capability was developed in technical cooperation with France and with financial support from Germany. Cooperation with Paris was suspended by Charles de Gaulle in 1958 but continued until 1960. By 1963, Israel had already conducted subcritical (very low yield) tests and by 1967 had assembled at least two devices. Tel Aviv was adept at frustrating the Kennedy administration's efforts to subject it to inspections; the Johnson presidency accepted the inevitability of the Israeli arsenal, which in 1969 was producing about nine devices per year.
That year, Richard Nixon and Golda Meir reached an agreement on Tel Aviv's nuclear opacity: Israel pledged not to be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into the region
and not to declare their possession in any form. In the words of Henry Kissinger, the American position was to pretend not to know
. For Narang, Israel's arsenal replaced a formal security treaty between the two countries, committing the US to selling sophisticated weapons as a guarantee that Tel Aviv would keep its bomb in the basement
; indeed, Israel was not required to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Brzezinski's nuclear Pashtun
The same logic was followed by the Carter and Reagan administrations with Pakistan. As then US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote in a memorandum, the Russian invasion of Afghanistan on December 25th, 1979, prompted the Carter administration to review its non-proliferation priorities
, allowing Pakistan to develop nuclear weapons to protect the Gulf's energy artery and support the Afghan Islamist resistance. Narang calls it the Afghan Christmas gift
to Islamabad, whose nuclear ambitions dated back to 1972, after its defeat in the war with India, and to the peaceful nuclear test
conducted by New Delhi in 1974. The agreement with Islamabad, reconfirmed by the Reagan administration, was identical to that with Israel: Washington would look the other way if Pakistan promised not to embarrass the US
with visible tests, and continued to arm and train Pashtun guerrillas and various Islamists. American tolerance continued throughout the conflict. According to Narang, several sources have suggested, albeit without proof, that the Pakistani military services deliberately sought to prolong it for as long as possible.
In 1987, Islamabad had operational weapons. From 1990-91, with the American presidency unable to block Congress's initiatives for sanctions against Pakistan, Islamabad strengthened its relationship with China, which had approved of the choice of tolerance towards the Pakistanis. Islamabad's Islamic bomb
was partly financed by Saudi Arabia and served as a model, in conjunction with Pyongyang, for Tehran's ballistic and nuclear programmes. Similarly, North Korea exploited the position of buffer State
attributed to it by Beijing to obtain its protection.
Iran's decision to follow Libya, Iraq, and Syria down the path of a hidden
programme was determined by the absence of a patron-protector. It opted for a threshold status – in Narang's view – by virtue of the JCPOA's offer of an economic alternative
to remain a virtual nuclear power.