It’s a bipartisan mantra: “We can all agree that Iran should never possess a nuclear weapon,” says U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, D-WA. But wait a minute. Should all of us really agree? I for one do not fully concur.
There are at least two reasons we should question this mantra. One is academic, based on well-established International Relations theory. The other is ethical, based on a simple notion of fairness.
Israel currently enjoys a nuclear monopoly in the Middle East, which has undermined the region’s balance of power and led to instability. Israel launched military attacks on neighbors to preserve its monopoly in 1981 (Iraq), in 2007 (Syria), and earlier this month (Iran). In a piece for Foreign Affairs, Kenneth Waltz, the father of neo-realism, argues that a nuclear Iran would deter Israel, restoring balance and stability to the region.
That piece rattled some students in my introductory course on international relations. Especially the ending, where Waltz suggests that perhaps all countries should possess such awesome, destructive power. “When it comes to nuclear weapons, now as ever, more may be better,” he concludes.
Popular opinion holds that some states are honorable, meaning they can be trusted with technology able to incinerate thousands in a single blast, while others are “rogue” and unreliable. By contrast, realists like Waltz believe that all states are “rational,” meaning that they want to survive. These scholars note that nuclear weapons have been used just twice in human history — both times by the U.S., which dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II. They believe America would have refrained from those attacks if Japan had had a nuclear deterrent.
Consider the case of North Korea, long regarded as one of the “rogue” states that could never be trusted with such weapons. A Fox News reporter once asked if this totalitarian regime was “insane or simply diabolical,” as though no other characterization could capture it. And yet North Korea now commands as many as 50 nuclear warheads. Are we doomed? Apparently not.
This “insane, diabolical, rogue” state is no more threatening today than it was in the past, when it was frantically but secretly reprocessing plutonium and enriching uranium in its bid to acquire nukes. In fact, Pyongyang now appears relatively quiet, focusing as much on rural development as on military confrontation with Seoul or Washington. Unlike Iran, it has acquired some protection from invasion.
North Korea is the only state to ever withdraw from the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Under that 1968 pact, non-nuclear states agreed to refrain from developing these weapons. In exchange, nuclear states (the U.S., U.S.S.R., U.K., France, and China) promised to share the technology to build light-water reactors for electricity, and they further agreed to gradually eliminate their own stockpiles of warheads. Three states (India, Pakistan, and Israel) never signed the deal, and they have become nuclear powers — meaning there are nine altogether today, including North Korea.
Here’s the fairness rub. The nuclear states have mostly not fulfilled their pledge to disarm. This leaves the world divided between the dangerous have-states and the dangerously exposed have-not-states. Some critics have called this “nuclear apartheid.” They wonder why have-not states should put their faith in the supposed restraint and good will of have-states, when the latter have failed to fulfill their obligations in the treaty.
For years, Iran has been one of those critics. In the 1970s, the Shah (or monarch) of Iran began chafing under U.S. limits on the development of a nuclear energy program that Washington had helped the country launch a decade earlier. This quest for greater autonomy surprised American officials at the time because they had helped install the Shah as leader in a military coup that toppled the country’s democratically elected prime minister. The 1953 coup was orchestrated by the U.S. and U.K., which opposed a popular plan to nationalize Iranian oil production. The Shah proclaimed a national “right” for Iran to develop its own nuclear capability, and began negotiating with other countries for know-how and raw materials.
He didn’t get very far. In 1979, the Shah was ousted in an Islamic revolution, and Iran’s new religious rulers initially showed little interest in the nuclear program, which they associated with a corrupt West. That changed, however, after a protracted war with Iraq. By the end of the 20th century, Iran was importing centrifuges from Pakistan to enrich uranium. The U.S. and its allies began accusing the clerics of trying to build a bomb. Tehran then promised it would only pursue peaceful energy, not nuclear weapons. That pledge came in 2003, the same year the United States invaded Iraq to uproot a weapons program that, as it turned out, Saddam Hussein had already abandoned.
There is considerable debate over what Iran has been doing at Fordo, Natanz, and Isfahan. In December, 2024, the International Atomic Energy Agency reported that Tehran was using advanced centrifuges to enrich uranium at a higher level, but it stopped short of saying Iran was making a bomb. In March, the U.S. director of national intelligence told Congress that her team “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon.” Although uranium stockpiles are high, she acknowledged, the government in Tehran has not renewed its program for weapons-grade enrichment.
President Trump listened instead to hardliners in Washington and Jerusalem. Without congressional approval, he ordered a massive attack on Iran’s nuclear sites.
Even with 15-ton bunker busters, the U.S. strikes may not have “obliterated” Iran’s program, as the President suggested. Although the IAEA believes the Fordo centrifuges suffered “significant damage,” U.S. intelligence officials offered a preliminary assessment that the military attack slowed the nuclear program by only six months, at most. Independent observers suspect that enriched uranium was removed and restored before the attack.
Like almost everyone else, I’d prefer to live in a world without nukes. But Iran lives in a different world, one in which recent events may have generated a perverse lesson — namely to be more like North Korea, less like Iraq. Restart the stalled program and don’t stop until you have a nuclear deterrent. It might be safer. Overall, it might even be fairer.
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The same logic would apply to encouraging everyone in America to have a gun; that it would make us all safer. No, the world is better off if Nations having nuclear weapons continue to REDUCE, not add to their stockpiles. The first move would be to have China join the U.S. and Russia in new SALT negotiations that would further limit the number of warheads. Then those three Nations could use their collective will to pressure Pakistan, India and North Korea to halt their growth of weapons at current levels. Overtime, all Nations could then move toward an eventual ban on all nuclear weapons, which should be a long term goal of human society on our planet.
Even if there’s no way to get nukes out of the hands of Israel et al., the point is still well taken – nukes are not a must-have tool that needs to be in every nation’s gun closet so we’re all even. If this is neo-realism, no thanks, I guess I’m just a paleo- type.
The international agreement that I’m thinking of here, would be that any nation that resorts to a nuclear first strike, would by universal agreement become a pariah nation that is cut off from any trade or assistance, to be released only after governance of that country is taken over by UN observers.
A wonderful and brave piece Walter, thank you. On this topic, I expect fear, stoked by years of Western propaganda, nearly always overwhelms clear reasoning. I say that because, of course nations and their leaders are most likely rational actors, from their perspective, and do not in fact have a death wish for their country. In this analysis, leaders of countries are completely different and not analogous to every American having a gun, as one commenter opines. America, of course, is filled with actors who are decidedly NOT rational.
Hatch deserves credit and thanks for providing some logical reasoning for why Iran should be able to possess a nuclear weapon. He identifies two main reasons, one being the simple concept of fairness.
The idea of fairness is most clearly seen when it is linked to respecting another nation’s sovereignty. This often involves a leader appealing to national pride to rally their people around a policy that protects their honor and is fair internationally. Remember Hitler demanding an end to paying tribute to France for Germany “starting” WWI? Today, Iran’s fundamentalist autocrat is standing up for his nation’s right to have a nuclear weapon. Fairness isn’t what countries want for other countries when they have the advantage.
The second reason Hatch brings up is the International Relations theory. Theories are helpful tools, but they have limitations when applied to the political realities that shape our world.
Hatch’s position stems from Kenneth Waltz, who in a 2012 Foreign Policy article, argued that a nuclear Iran would deter Israel, restoring balance and stability to the region. He correctly points out that in the 70 years since the acquisition of a nuclear bomb, there has been a very slow expansion, not a proliferation of them.
Most importantly, it has led to a silent resignation in adopting the MAD theory, which involves mutual assured destruction if they initiate a nuclear conflict. Examples like Pakistan and India, North Korea and the U.S., and even China and the U.S. demonstrate that no country wants to be annihilated. A rational conclusion has been reached in each case.
However, there is a primary obstacle that by allowing Iran and any other country to have a nuclear weapon, there will be less armed conflict; this is not a rational world. It never has been. History has abundant examples of a country entering a conflict and assuming it would win quickly. Russia would conquer Poland in two weeks, the U.S. would remove our military advisors from Vietnam once the rebels were eliminated, and Italy would defeat Greece in the blink of an eye. Finally, Israel would defeat Hamas in a matter of a month. The instigators in each case were not crazy; they were rational leaders with “experts” assuring them that their technology could overcome their opponents’ defenses.
Building iron domes to stop ballistic missiles hasn’t proven to be a solution for avoiding MAD. Yes, Israel may be destroying 95% of Iran’s missiles. However, it only takes one nuclear bomb getting through to trigger an unstoppable chain reaction. It only took a single bullet to start WWI.