A Cornered Iran Could Build a Nuclear Bomb

As the long-running rivalry between Iran and Israel enters uncharted waters with an increasingly violent feud now manifesting into direct attacks, the Islamic Republic is at the crossroads of what may be the most consequential decision in its 45-year history.

Iranian lawmakers and experts are, for the first time, openly discussing the prospect of revising the country’s nuclear doctrine to pave the way for producing nuclear weapons.

Such a move has long been forbidden by fatwa, an Islamic legal ruling issued by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but recent events have tested Tehran’s confidence in its capability to effectively deter a major attack from Israel, much less one backed by the United States.

Over the past year, the war between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas has expanded far beyond the Gaza Strip, with growing participation from the Axis of Resistance, a coalition of primarily non-state actors in which Tehran has invested heavily to provide strategic depth to its deterrence. The coalition now faces potentially its most formidable challenge yet as Israel deals significant blows, particularly to the Lebanese Hezbollah movement.

Iran most recently responded to attacks on its personnel and allies in the region by conducting its largest-ever series of missile strikes on Israel last week. Israel has vowed to respond, spurring new debates in Iran about the direction of its nuclear program, which has already been accelerated in recent years following the U.S. abandonment of a multilateral nuclear agreement in 2019.

“Whether it takes a few weeks or a few months for Iran to obtain a nuclear warhead will not make a decisive difference in the outcome,” Seyed Hossein Mousavian, a former Iranian diplomat who served on Iran’s nuclear negotiations team in the mid-2000s and is today a specialist at Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security, told Newsweek.

“In the event of a military attack,” he added, “there will be no guarantee for the continuation of Iran’s peaceful nuclear program.”

An Evolving Debate

Mousavian argued that former President Donald Trump’s decision to exit the 2015 nuclear deal, known formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and the ensuing campaign of U.S. sanctions “led Iran to also develop its nuclear capabilities, turning it into a nuclear threshold of state.”

He said that Israel, which is widely known to possess a covert nuclear arsenal, would not be capable of defeating Iran on its own without the aid of its U.S. ally and that such an outcome would only galvanize Iranian reconsiderations of its nuclear stance.

“Israel alone is not capable of a broad military confrontation with Iran unless the U.S. participates,” Mousavian said. “In such a scenario, Iran will likely become a nuclear state.”

The analysis aligns closely with that recently shared with Newsweek by two Tehran-based analysts, Alireza Taghavinia and Amir Hossein Vazirian.

Taghavinia argued that “any attack on Iran’s territory will strengthen the position of those who want to change Iran’s nuclear doctrine and build nuclear weapons, and making nuclear weapons is technically possible for Iran and depends only on Ayatollah Khamenei’s political decision.” Vazirian asserted that an Israeli attack against Iranian nuclear facilities means “Iran will accelerate nuclear activities.”

As Newsweek previously reported, discussions about rethinking Iran’s nuclear position first appeared to gain serious momentum in April. The trend coincided with Iran’s first missile attack against Israel, titled “Operation True Promise,” conducted in response to the killing of Iranian military officials in an airstrike against an Iranian diplomatic facility in Syria.

Among the notable voices at the time to openly float the possibility of revising the nuclear doctrine, particularly in response to Israeli threats, include senior Khamenei adviser Kamal Kharrazi and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Brigadier General Ahmad Haghtalab, who serves as commander of the Nuclear Protection and Security Corps.

Even earlier, in February, former Iranian Foreign Minister and Atomic Energy Organization of Iran Director Ali Akbar Salehi hinted during an interview that Iran had everything necessary to produce a nuclear bomb should it choose to do so.

Israel has a long history of utilizing its vast espionage network to target Iran’s nuclear program, with assassinations of scientists, cyberattacks and other forms of sabotage being tied to the Mossad. Ultimately, Israel did not explicitly strike Iran’s nuclear program in response to the Iranian attack in April. However, it reportedly did carry out a limited strike against an air defense site near Iran’s Natanz enrichment facility in Isfahan province.

The following month, the Iranian Mission to the United Nations reiterated Iran’s formal ban on pursuing nuclear weapons but also warned of potential changes should Iran’s nuclear sites come under attack in the future.

“As we know, Iran’s nuclear doctrine remains unchanged,” the Iranian Mission told Newsweek at the time. “Iran will continue to adhere to the Supreme Leader’s fatwa, which unequivocally prohibits the production, procurement, stockpiling, and use of any form of weapons of mass destruction.”

“However, in the event of an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, all of which are subject to monitoring and inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency,” the Mission added, “there exists a possibility of Iran reconsidering its collaboration within the Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement with the IAEA.”

Newsweek reached out to the Iranian Mission to the U.N. for new comments.

Today, observers have predicted a potentially more forceful Israeli response to Iran’s recent “Operation True Promise II,” conducted last week in retaliation for the unclaimed killing of Hamas Political Bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in July, the killings of Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah and IRGC General Abbas Nilforushan in Israeli strikes in Beirut and other actions tied to Israel across the region.

The tensions have prompted new discussions in support of a doctrinal shift in Iran.

In a widely viewed interview on Sunday, prominent cleric Hassan Khomeini, the grandson of Khamenei’s late predecessor, Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini, called for “enhancing the level of deterrence” against Israel. He declined to specify precisely what he meant, though Iranian media widely interpreted his comments as alluding to nuclear weapons.

Lawmaker Ahmed Naderi, who represents Tehran and surrounding constituencies, also took the remarks as such, expressing approval in a post published to X, formerly Twitter. Last week, he delivered an address explicitly stating that “the time has come to revise the nuclear doctrine.”

Such rhetoric has been the subject of numerous Iranian news articles as well, including a commentary published by conservative outlet Alef that explored the potential necessity of Tehran shifting its position in response to Israeli threats. Recent attention to the issue even fueled widespread rumors surrounding an earthquake recorded last weekend in Iran that experts ultimately concluded did not bear the hallmarks of an underground nuclear test.

Iranian media also reported Tuesday that a new draft legislation appeared in the Islamic Consultative Assembly toward expanding Iran’s nuclear industry without detailing the steps it would entail.

“Since the start of the war in Gaza, there has been an increase in the mentions by current or former Iranian officials to the possibility, and more recently, the necessity, actually, to revise the nuclear doctrine and go for weaponization,” Hamidreza Azizi, a visiting fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, told Newsweek.

“To my understanding,” Azizi said, “it has to do directly with Iran’s changing threat perception and the growing sense of insecurity that the Iranian leadership feels as a result of what’s going on in Gaza and the broader region.”

The Axis in Crisis

Before the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Iran was widely regarded as possessing one of the world’s most powerful militaries. But shortly after Khomeini came to power, neighboring rival Iraq, led by President Saddam Hussein, sought to capitalize on the chaos and international sanctions surrounding Tehran to conduct a large-scale invasion that would lead to a grueling war from 1980 to 1988.

Iran’s “holy defense” ultimately reversed the incursion and fought Iraq to a stalemate, with the nascent Islamic Republic’s conventional forces augmented by the newly formed Iranian IRGC paramilitary and support for Iraqi Kurdish militias and Shiite Muslim insurgents. Iran would go on to expand its network of aid to fellow Shiite Muslim parties across the region, particularly the Lebanese Hezbollah, as it battled an Israeli invasion amid a multisided civil war.

“Iran’s military doctrine is based on the concept of forward defense, whose main pillar is asymmetric deterrence,” Azizi said, “asymmetric in the sense that Iran sees itself facing adversaries much more powerful in terms of conventional military capabilities, and as a result, it has felt the need to develop the kind of tactics and measures to confront and overcome this asymmetry.”

He identified three main elements to this doctrine, the first being the Axis of Resistance, which today counts partners from as far away as Yemen, Afghanistan and Pakistan. The second and third are Iran’s massive missile and drone arsenals, considered to be the largest in the Middle East.

With the success of Hezbollah emerging as the most powerful faction in Lebanon by the end of the last century, Tehran also took advantage of Hussein’s ultimate downfall in Iraq following a 2003 U.S.-led invasion by forging new ties with Baghdad. Iran-backed Shiite Muslim militias would go on to clash with both U.S. troops and Sunni Muslim militant groups such as Al-Qaeda.

The effectiveness of what would come to be known as the Axis of Resistance—a play on former President George W. Bush’s infamous reference to Iran, Iraq and North Korea as an “Axis of Evil”—was again demonstrated a decade ago in response to the rise of the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) in Iraq and Syria.

Iran-supported militias in both countries, along with Lebanon’s Hezbollah, came to be called “holy shrine defenders” as they waged war against the jihadis’ self-proclaimed caliphate, which ultimately crumbled at the hands of overlapping campaigns waged by local, regional and international forces.

While ISIS continues to conduct attacks in the Middle East and far beyond, the group’s weakening was followed by a new uptick of U.S.-Iran tensions, particularly as the JCPOA unraveled without Washington and Axis of Resistance rhetoric toward the U.S. and Israel hardened. Today, emboldened by the war in Gaza, Israel has expressed a determination to break the so-called “ring of fire.”

“What Iran has been witnessing since the start of the war in Gaza has been Israeli determination and now also action, actual moves towards, if not dismantling, at least significantly weakening, the network of Iranian proxies and allies in the region,” Azizi said.

After battling its way into Gaza, Israel has shifted much of its focus toward Hezbollah. The Israeli campaign has featured covert operations to infiltrate and disrupt the group’s command and control, an intensifying air war that has killed longtime Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah and other senior commands, as well as a cross-border ground offensive, the limits of which remain uncertain.

Israel has also conducted multiple strikes in Syria, a vital hub for the Axis of Resistance, and in Yemen, where another powerful faction, Yemen’s Ansar Allah, also known as the Houthi movement, has launched missiles and drones against Israel and international vessels accused of supporting it. The U.S., meanwhile, has also struck Ansar Allah and allied militias operating in Iraq and Syria.

“In Iran, the strategic decision makers, as far as I can see, they really have concluded that Israel is not going to stop in Lebanon. They are coming front by front,” Azizi said. “Now they are already intensifying their attacks in Syria, then it would be Iraq’s turn, probably next, the Houthis and finally, Iran.”

“It’s a matter of when, not if, for Iran,” he added. “And so, with that pillar of their military doctrine in jeopardy, they may see the most immediate or most available option to be weaponization of the nuclear program.”

Risky Endeavors

With speculation rife about the seriousness in which Iran is evaluating a revision of its nuclear doctrine, Nicole Grajewski, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Nuclear Policy Program, told Newsweek that “it is too early to tell what this revision would look like.”

“It could include certain terms on Iran’s status in the NPT (Non-Proliferation Treaty) or could include pathways at accelerating its program,” Grajewski said. “But all of these activities related to weaponization are hard to completely evade detection.”

The visibility and messaging associated with any movement in Iran’s nuclear program could prove crucial in determining the subsequent response by Israel and the U.S., both of which have vowed to prevent the Islamic Republic from obtaining a weapon by any means necessary.

“Iran hasn’t made the decision to acquire nuclear weapons, but this continued animosity with Israel—combined with U.S. emboldening of Israel’s more escalatory actions—might push Iran to make this decision out of desperation,” Grajewski said. “That does not mean it will be immediate or without detection. It might even put Iran in a more vulnerable situation. So, none of these options are optimal at the moment.”

Some Israeli officials have previously called for a preemptive joint strike alongside the U.S. against Iranian nuclear sites amid a conflict that has pushed the Middle East to the brink of an all-out war.

But as Grajewski pointed out, “strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities won’t eradicate the knowledge Iran has gained from working with advanced centrifuges. Moreover, this is not just one facility.”

Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, as with much of its prized missile hardware, is housed within a sprawling network of heavily fortified underground facilities.

As Israeli and U.S. officials continue to consult on a response to Iran’s latest missile strikes, President Joe Biden has said he would not support an attack on Iranian nuclear sites. The U.S. leader later revealed that attacks on oil sites were the subject of discussions but did not decisively weigh in on whether or not he would support such an attack.

Meanwhile, Iranian officials vow to reply with an even more intensive strike to any Israeli attack. At the same time, they have said they do not seek a wider war in the region, a position also expressed by the White House, even as it continues to express support for Israel’s campaigns in the region.

Israel, for its part, has said it reserves the right to strike at Iran defensively and preemptively in the course of the current conflict.

Responding to Newsweek‘s question regarding the possibility of Israeli operations in Lebanon and potentially against Iran fueling an acceleration of Tehran’s nuclear capabilities, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani asserted, “We take Iran very seriously.”

“They have publicly said their goal is to wipe the State of Israel off the face of the Earth, and we take that seriously,” Shoshani said. “We’ve been fighting them and their proxies for a year now, a year plus a day, and we are tracking their activity in different areas, in different arenas.”

“And we are ready to protect ourselves, both with our aerial defense system and also have active defense or preemptive attacks or act in response to their attacks on us, and we’ve said that publicly,” he added, “and most recently, we’ve seen their unprecedented attack of 180 plus ballistic missiles towards Israel, which is unacceptable and will have consequences.”