Remaking the nuclear order in West Asia

There is hardly any political leader who understands the laws of political survival better than Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Realising that he is in a morass with respect to Gaza, as Hamas has not yet been dismantled even though its leaders have been killed, and all hostages have not been brought home resulting in growing domestic pressure, Mr. Netanyahu employed an old tactic — distract attention from an ongoing crisis by creating another one.

Israel’s surprise strikes on Iran, launched on June 13, created a new and larger crisis. The military action has been successful, with the U.S. finally coming on board. For the moment, PM Netanyahu is firmly back in the driver’s seat. But this has also opened a Pandora’s box of what next.

Israel’s calculations

Mr. Netanyahu wants to keep Israel as the only nuclear power in the region. He is convinced that the Libyan model, where the nuclear programme was completely dismantled, is the only acceptable option, preferably with a change of regime. In 2015, he opposed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) primarily because it conceded a limited uranium enrichment right to Iran.

Since mid-April, five rounds of talks took place between U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Aragchi, with a sixth round due on June 15 in Muscat. After stumbling over the issue of Iran insisting on its right to enrichment as a party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), some progress was registered on the idea of a regional nuclear fuel consortium to provide fuel for the reactors in the region. Its location remained under discussion, making Mr. Netanyahu nervous.

On June 11, Mr. Netanyahu barely survived a motion in the Knesset tabled by the opposition seeking to dissolve parliament, leading to early elections that are currently due in October 2026. PM Netanyahu has been facing domestic opposition since early 2023 due to his attempts at pushing though controversial judicial reforms that were widely seen as curbing judicial independence. The Hamas attack on October 7 had provided him a reprieve that has lasted nearly two years. Given Mr. Netanyahu’s multiple domestic legal challenges, a continuing war is his “get-out-of-jail” card.

During the 20-month war, the leadership of Hamas and Hezbollah has been decapitated, and a change of regime in Damascus last December has doused Iran’s “ring of fire.” On two occasions in 2024, Israel directly engaged with Iran and, in the process, knocked out its air defences around Tehran and other critical installations.

Having buried the two-state-solution, and with Iran at its weakest, Mr. Netanyahu must have felt that this was the ideal time to neutralise Iranian nuclear and missile threats. The Iranians are known for their frustratingly convoluted negotiating style and given U.S. President Donald Trump’s impatience, Mr. Netanyahu was able to convince him that a little military pressure would make them more accommodating.

Iran’s miscalculations

As recently as March 26, U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard in her annual intelligence threat assessment to Congress stated, “the Intelligence Community continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorised the nuclear weapons programme that he suspended in 2003”. This gave Iran’s leadership a misplaced confidence that as long as the negotiations continued on the idea of a regional enrichment facility, the U.S. would block any military strike by Israel.

However, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report in May criticising “Iran’s general lack of cooperation” and the near doubling of its stockpile of 60% enriched uranium to over 400 kgs since February proved to be more damaging that Iran anticipated. This heightened Iranian concerns about the threat of a sanctions-snapback by the UN Security Council, which was waived in 2015 following the adoption of the JCPOA.

Iran knew that given its ageing air force, it was dependent on its stocks of drones and missiles. Despite the debacles with Hamas and Hezbollah leaderships, Iran underestimated the extent of Mossad’s penetration of its systems, evidenced by the targeted assassinations of its key military leaders as well as nuclear and missile scientists.

The entry of the U.S.

When the U.S. began to withdraw non-essential staff from its embassies in the region in early June, it was anticipating Israel’s likely military action. In the past, U.S. reluctance to get involved had prevented Israel from military strikes but this time, Mr Netanyahu took a gamble and it paid off. Impressed with the success of Israel’s military actions, Mr. Trump ordered supportive strikes on June 22, with B-2 bombers dropping GBU-57 ‘bunker-busters’ on Fordow and Natanz, and Tomahawk cruise missiles on Isfahan. Following the token retaliation by Iran the following day, Mr. Trump declared an end to the “12-day-war”.

Israel thus claimed victory, Mr. Trump declared the underground sites “obliterated,” the Gulf states heaved a sigh of relief, and for Iran’s Supreme Leader, regime survival was a victory. Iran suffered over 600 casualties, and all its air defences and half its stock of missile launchers, were destroyed. It failed to take down a single Israeli aircraft though it did bring down some drones. Of the 500 missiles that Iran fired, over 30 were able to get through causing 30 casualties.

While Mr. Netanyahu’s suggestion that sustained military pressure may bring about a regime change in Tehran has some support from Iran-hawks in Washington, it is anathema to Mr. Trump’s MAGA support base, who are wary of entanglements abroad. The U.S. interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq in 2001 and 2003 respectively, were messy and costly, leaving behind a legacy of instability. Iran is three times larger, and Iranians are a people with a deep sense of nationalism based on their civilisational history. The current theocratic regime may be weak and its replacement may be less religious, but not less nationalist, and it would therefore push ahead with the nuclear deterrent.

Mr. Netanyahu may not be averse to a forced regime change but the U.S. and the Gulf Arabs would not want to open this Pandora’s box.

Iran’s nuclear capability

Iran has had an ambitious civilian nuclear programme going back to the 1950s. It joined the NPT in 1970. Initially, the Islamic regime was uninterested in the nuclear programme, seeing it as a part of Western influence. This changed after the Iran-Iraq war and in the 1990s, it began developing a clandestine enrichment capability. The 2002 disclosures by a group of Iranian exiles, followed by the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, led the Supreme Leader to shift direction and aim for threshold status rather than develop a full-fledged nuclear weapon. The centrifuges and higher levels of enrichment also provided for bargaining space as Iran could negotiate for sanctions relief with the U.S.

Today, the situation has changed. Iran’s proxies (except for the Houthis) have been decimated and its missile and drone capabilities found wanting. The threshold state is no longer a safe place. Therefore, a nuclear deterrent assumes greater importance, even if there is a change of regime.

Questions remain about the extent of damage to the underground centrifuge sites as well as the fate of the 400 kg of the 60% enriched uranium stockpile. While the scale of the attacks makes resumption of Iran-U.S. talks tricky, Iran has raised the stakes by terminating the IAEA inspector’s access to its nuclear sites. Mr. Trump would like to conclude a deal with Iran to build on his success with the ceasefire. He would do well to remember the U.S. scholar Thomas Schelling’s advice that successful coercion requires both a credible threat as well as credible reassurance, if Iran is to be ‘persuaded’ during any future talks.

There has always been a difference between the U.S. and Israeli positions. While both agree that Iran cannot be allowed to have a bomb, Mr. Netanyahu goes one step forward to deny Iran any nuclear capabilities. However, since Mr. Trump has obliged him with the June 22 strikes, he may find it difficult to deny Mr. Trump his Iran deal provided the Iranians play the game.

Rakesh Sood is a former diplomat and is currently Distinguished Fellow at the Council For Strategic and Defence Research.

Published – July 08, 2025 08:30 am IST