This week’s Economist is reporting about the growing danger of armed conflict between the United States and Iran:
- The brewing conflict between America and Iran
- As America and Iran act tough, the risk of conflict is growing
President Donald Trump’s fixation with undoing “Barack Obama’s signature diplomatic achievement” in the form of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal was worrisome and counterproductive enough, in a world where nuclear weapon proliferation is a growing threat and where proliferation in the Middle East is especially likely if any new nuclear weapon powers emerge.
It’s terrifying to think what a new profusion of nuclear powers in the region could mean. Among other things, I think it would greatly increase the risk of accidental or unauthorized use of nuclear weapons. There were enough US-Soviet close calls in the Cold War, and that was two powers that were far apart, in communication, and well-informed about each other’s capabilities. A nuclear crisis among a larger set of tightly-packed states is a truly fearful prospect.
A conventional American or Israeli attack on Iran is also a fearful prospect, and one that seems almost certain to be less effective at curtailing Iranian nuclear ambitions in the medium term than multilateral diplomacy. Again Trump’s recklessness and the incompetence and ideological drive of his officials like John Bolton is threatening the peace of the world, such as it is holding up these days.
Related:
The IAEA on military nuclear activity in Iran
Cyber warfare between the US, Israel, and Iran
The Stuxnet worm
Consequences of nuclear weapon proliferation
Russia and the Iranian bomb
Iran, international law, and the bomb
Brief comment on Iran
Trump Is Building Toward War While Alienating All Our Allies
The rising tensions with Iran are getting very alarming.
Israel and Saudi Arabia: What’s shaping the covert ‘alliance’ – BBC News
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Saudi Arabia pledges to create a nuclear bomb if Iran does – BBC News
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In an interview conducted on the day he was sworn into office, Netanyahu warned that, “You don’t want a messianic apocalyptic cult controlling atomic bombs. When the wide-eyed believer gets hold of the reins of power and the weapons of mass death, then the entire world should start worrying, and that is what is happening in Iran.”[3]
An Israeli Preventive Attack on Iran’s Nuclear Sites: Implications for the U.S. | The Heritage Foundation
https://www.heritage.org/middle-east/report/israeli-preventive-attack-irans-nuclear-sites-implications-the-us
What happens if Iran and Israel go nuclear? We aren’t prepared | MSNBC
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Iran After the Bomb: How Would a Nuclear-Armed Tehran Behave? | RAND
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What Would Happen if Israel Nuked Iran – Mother Jones
PREVENTIVE ATTACKS AGAINST NUCLEAR PROGRAMS AND THE ‘‘SUCCESS’’ AT OSIRAQ
Dan Reiter
Advocates of the preventive use of force against emerging nuclear, biological, or chemical
programs often look to the allegedly successful 1981 Israeli airstrike against Iraqi nuclear facilities
at Osiraq. According to the conventional wisdom, this attack may have prevented Iraq from going
nuclear before Operation Desert Storm in 1991. This article assesses the claim that the 1981 attack
substantially delayed Iraqi acquisition of nuclear weapons, both by revisiting older debates and by
introducing new evidence from Iraqi scientists. The article casts doubt on the conclusion that the
attack was successful for three reasons: (1) the reactor itself was not well equipped to generate
plutonium for a nuclear weapon; (2) illegal plutonium production would likely have caused a
cutoff in the supply of nuclear fuel and an end to weapons activities; and (3) the attack may have
actually increased Saddam’s commitment to acquiring weapons. These conclusions have
implications for the Bush Doctrine, as the lack of suc
As people have been saying all along Trump might want to start a war purely as a distraction from domestic troubles and as a way to further seize unconstitutional power.
Petraeus said he actually developed the plan to destroy Iran’s nuclear program over 15 years ago when he was the commander of the US Central Command.
“It’s publicly known that we actually rehearsed that plan one time inside the United States, with all the planes flying all the distances that they would have to fly, the refuelers, all the command and control, the jammers that drop, the munitions that we would drop, and so forth. And it all worked.”
https://www.iranintl.com/en/202504059237
“We were prepared one time actually, to set the theater, in other words, to identify all the locations from which the planes would fly, where they would be based. The munitions were in place, the food, fuel, water, etc. All was set. We thought there was a likelihood of this. We told the White House we probably should get more prepared than we were.”
The global nuclear watchdog’s board of governors has formally declared Iran in breach of its non-proliferation obligations for the first time in 20 years.
Nineteen of the 35 countries on the board of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) voted for the motion, which was submitted by the US, UK, France and Germany.
It says Iran’s “many failures” to provide the IAEA with full answers about its undeclared nuclear material and activities constitutes non-compliance. It also expresses concern about Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium, which can be used to make reactor fuel but also nuclear weapons.
Iran condemned the resolution as “political” and said it would open a new enrichment facility.
It follows a report from the IAEA last week which criticised Iran’s “general lack of co-operation” and said it had enough uranium enriched to 60% purity, near weapons grade, to potentially make nine nuclear bombs.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce3v6w2qr12o
Trump warns of ‘massive conflict’ soon if Iran nuclear talks break down
Fears of possible Israeli strike against Iran and retaliation after IAEA issues strongest rebuke of Iran in 20 years
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/12/un-watchdog-finds-iran-failing-comply-nuclear-obligations
A raid by Israel in October took out a large tranche of Iran’s air defenses. Israel’s military said Friday that it had destroyed dozens of radars and surface-to-air missile launchers in strikes by fighter jets on aerial defense arrays in western Iran. The Iranian atomic energy agency confirmed that the nuclear enrichment facility at Natanz had also been damaged, but it’s not yet clear to what extent.
In the days ahead, Israel’s superior intelligence apparatus will search for targets of opportunity – commanders and equipment changing location, or the movement of materiel to facilitate a response – and continue to strike.
Such a wide-ranging assault was possible only because Hezbollah – Iran’s second-strike capability if their nuclear apparatus was hit – had been dismantled over a ruthless but effective months-long campaign last summer. This is beginning to look like a months-long Israeli plan to remove a regional threat.
The risks remain high. Iran could now try to race for the nuclear bomb. But its faltering defenses and clear, humiliating infiltration by Israel’s intelligence, make that a long shot. Rushing to build a nuclear weapon is no simple task, especially under fire, with your key leadership at risk of pinpoint strikes. Netanyahu may have calculated that the risk of an Iranian nuclear breakout was depleted, and manageable with yet more military might.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/13/middleeast/iran-response-israeli-strikes-intl-cmd
The most threatening possible response from Iran is one that would play out not in the coming hours or days, but over the long term. Tehran could withdraw from the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) of 1968, which is the legal basis for the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (or JCPOA), announce that it will build nuclear weapons as the only way to deter such “unprovoked” attacks on Iran, and then dare Israel, the United States, and other countries to stop it from doing so.
Iran already has enough highly enriched uranium to build several nuclear weapons. This is containerized and believed to be stored at three different locations, and it is unclear whether Israel will be able to get all of it in the ongoing military strikes. Iran also has large quantities of uranium feedstock (called “yellow cake”) that could be enriched to weapons grade. The Israelis (and the U.S. government) believe that they know about all of Iran’s functional centrifuge cascades, but the International Atomic Energy Agency believes that Iran has built many more centrifuges, the whereabouts of which are unknown. Even if they are not part of operational cascades, they could be integrated into them fairly easily, and Iran can build still more. Without IAEA inspectors in country to enforce the terms of the NPT and the JCPOA, Israeli and other Western intelligence services may have a very hard time finding new, secret Iranian nuclear sites. It may also have trouble destroying those sites even if they are identified, since Iran will likely harden them even beyond the level of its current facilities.
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/israel/real-threat-iran-tehran-most-dangerous-option-responding-israel
Israel found Iran carried out key tests for nuke design ahead of strikes — report
Israel said to believe Tehran decided to build bomb after Oct. 7 massacre; intel officials told politicians Iran could be even further along in process than previously thought
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-found-iran-carried-out-key-tests-for-nuke-design-ahead-of-strikes-report/
Ahead of its strikes on Iran, Israel discovered that the Islamic Republic’s scientists had conducted successful experiments in the design process of a nuclear weapon, bringing it weeks away from being able to produce a bomb if it chose to do so, according to a Hebrew media report Sunday.
This “golden information” was presented by intelligence officials to the political leadership before the decision was made to carry out preemptive strikes Friday, along with the concern that Israel didn’t know everything and that Tehran could be at an even more advanced stage in building a nuclear bomb than the available information showed, Army Radio reported, citing unnamed security officials.
According to the report, Iran gathered scientists and split them into several working groups to labor in secret on components of the process of weaponizing nuclear material into an actual explosive device, beginning around the end of 2023 or the start of 2024 — shortly after Hamas’s October 7 onslaught, which sparked the ongoing war in Gaza.
This aspect of designing a nuclear device ran in parallel to Iran’s enrichment of uranium to levels that have no use for civilian purposes, but are required to build a nuclear bomb. According to an International Atomic Energy Agency report at the end of May, Iran’s stockpile of uranium, if enriched further, was enough to build nine nuclear weapons.
Iran says parliament is preparing bill to leave nuclear non-proliferation treaty
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/iran-foreign-ministry-says-parliament-is-preparing-bill-leave-npt-2025-06-16/
But the defense officials who received the briefing were told that using conventional bombs, even as part of a wider strike package of several GBU-57s, would not penetrate deep enough underground and that it would only do enough damage to collapse tunnels and bury it under rubble.
Those in the briefing heard that completely destroying Fordow, which Israeli intelligence estimates to go down as far as 300ft (90 metres), would require the US to soften the ground with conventional bombs and then ultimately drop a tactical nuclear bomb from a B2 bomber to wipe out the entire facility, a scenario Trump is not considering.
The assessments were made by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), a component of the defense department that tested the GBU-57, as it reviewed the limitations of US military ordinance against a number of underground facilities.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/19/trump-caution-on-iran-strike-linked-to-doubts-over-bunker-buster-bomb-officials-say
Donald Trump’s riffing ahead of the most wrenching national security decision in either of his presidencies is nothing like the complex war-gaming and careful tilling of public opinion that most commanders in chief require before they send Americans off to fight.
Trump’s vague soliloquies and ambiguous comments, on camera and online, seem glib and even negligent given the grave potential consequences of a US attack on Iran’s nuclear sites.
But it’s how he rolls. He wants to keep friends and foes guessing. He’s shown that he believes unpredictability and volatility — factors that most presidents seek to avoid in national security crises — offer him a key advantage.
Trump loves to be the center of attention with the world hanging on his every word. His equivocating creates space for him to postpone the moment of decision and to avoid locking in definitive courses of action he can’t reverse. His fans say it’s genius. But there’s not much evidence that strategy transfers from a real estate magnate’s boardroom to complex geopolitical showdowns and global peacemaking.
Iran’s ayatollahs, Israel, US allies, members of Congress, pundits, reporters and Americans watching at home can never be certain what Trump might do next. And no modern president has ever managed the run-up to a possible war as though he is sketching a series of cliffhangers to compel viewers to watch the next episode. Trump is no JFK calmly averting nuclear war with high-pressure diplomatic chess during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/19/politics/trump-us-strikes-iran-israel-analysis