The risk of a nuclear breakout by Iran has increased
Dec 28, 2024
The Donald Trump-JD Vance victory marks a repudiation of the post-Cold War neoconservative Washington playbook of militarised responses to foreign policy challenges. Tulsi Gabbard, the director of National Intelligence-designate, shares their anxiety over America’s addiction to intervening in foreign conflicts not of vital interest to the US, whose net effect has been to destabilise countries and entire regions.
Yet the second Trump administration may well repeat the mistake of a hardline stance against Iran.
In May 2018, President Donald Trump pulled out of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that had contained Iran’s suspected nuclear weapon program. The decision to walk away from an international agreement that had been multilaterally negotiated, unanimously endorsed by the UN Security Council and was being faithfully implemented by all other parties, was egregious. The robust dismantlement, transparency and inspections regime had drastically cut back sensitive nuclear materials, activities, facilities and associated infrastructure. It had also opened Iran to unprecedented international inspections by the IAEA which, to the end, continued to certify Iran’s compliance with the deal.
Having earlier broken unilateral assurances to Russia on NATO’s geographical limits, the breach of the JCPOA added to US global reputation for untrustworthiness. This damaged US credibility with its major European allies, China and Russia. It undermined Trump’s efforts to reach a deal on North Korea’s denuclearisation as Pyongyang understandably demanded major and irreversible US concessions upfront and ironclad guarantees downstream.
By jettisoning the JCPOA and imposing tough new sanctions on Iran and secondary sanctions on anyone dealing with Iran in prohibited items, Trump also freed Tehran of JCPOA restrictions.
In successive decisions thereafter, Tehran increased its uranium stockpile, limited inspections, acquired the more advanced IR-6 centrifuges and increased the quantity and purity of its highly enriched uranium (HEU) to 60% instead of the 3.67% limit under the JCPOA.
In May, the IAEA reported that Iran had increased its stockpile of 60% HEU to 142kg and to 165kg by August. In an interview with Izvestia published on 17 June, IAEA director-general Rafael Grossi conceded that the JCPOA now “exists only on paper and means nothing“. SIPRI’s 2024 Yearbook, coincidentally published the same day, noted that under the impact of rising geopolitical tensions, the salience and role of nuclear weapons have increased in recent times.
Against this backdrop, Israel’s military successes this year have proven that Iran’s strategy of relying on its proxies Hamas and Hezbollah to contain and deter Israel is flawed, that its arsenal of conventional ballistic missiles lack accuracy and punch, but that Israel can strike any target inside Iran with the probable exception, if acting without US collaboration, of hardened uranium enrichment plants that are buried deep underground. Israel has been careful not to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities thus far.
Iran is the world’s only non-nuclear country producing uranium to this level of purity. Sixty per cent enrichment is within touching distance of weapons-grade 90% HEU, but still just this side of the threshold.
The setbacks vis-à-vis Israel have opened up space in Iran’s domestic discourse to raise the prospect of crossing the nuclear threshold. As well as fear of pre-emptive or post-breakout Israeli and US strikes to destroy the rudimentary capability, Iran may be hesitant also because its breakout would very likely be followed by regional proliferation with Egypt, Turkey and Saudi Arabia perhaps joining the club.
As the year comes to a close, the imminence of Trump’s return to the White House cannot but concentrate Tehran’s mind on this critical policy decision. On 7 December, BBC News reported that after military and diplomatic setbacks in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria, Iran had decided to produce significantly more 60% HEU. The Fordow nuclear plant south of Tehran is estimated to be able to produce 34kg of 60% HEU per month. Grossi confirmed that groups in Iran had become ‘very vocal’ in demanding that Iran travel down its own path on nuclear weapons, even if this was not yet the government’s “path of choice”. He described this as a “very worrisome” development.
US intelligence estimates show Iran already has enough fissile material to produce more than a dozen nuclear weapons. The Wall Street Journal reported on 13 December that Trump’s aides have begun to weigh options for preventing an Iranian nuclear breakout, including, if necessary, through preventive airstrikes that take advantage of Israel’s degradation of Iran’s air defences. An alternative would be to bolster military pressure alongside tough economic sanctions by sending more US forces, warplanes and ships to the Middle East and to sell advanced weapons to Israel to boost its offensive firepower to destroy Iranian nuclear facilities in Natanz, Fordow and Isfahan.
It is worth remembering, too, that intelligence officials in the Biden administration released the news that Iran was actively engaged in efforts to assassinate Trump, who by instinct is combative and tends to counter-punch hard and fast.
Still, are Americans really keen to have millions more Muslims seeking revenge for mass deaths caused by American military and arms? And does the American foreign policy establishment really believe that against all known history and against common sense, Israel can retain nuclear weapons indefinitely, but no other country in the region will ever be permitted to acquire any? Not to mention the complete hypocrisy of those with the biggest nuclear arsenals that they have had for the longest time claiming the right to stop anyone else from aspiring to and getting them?
The international community’s views on the questions raised in the previous paragraph are readily gauged by the reality of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons that was adopted by the UN General Assembly on 7 July 2017 and came into force on 22 January 2021.