Will Iran Respond to Israeli Attack by Developing Nuclear Arsenal?

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So far, publicly, at least, Iran does not possess nuclear arms and has not attempted to build them. That seems unlikely given the amount of resources Iran has put into uranium enrichment, but let’s assume that’s reality for a moment. In Foreign Policy, Sina Azodi wonders if Israel’s recent strikes on Iranian targets will be the catalyst that pushes Iran into a full-fledged pursuit of nuclear arms. Asodi concludes:

Israel’s strikes on the Iraqi and Syrian nuclear programs, in 1981 and 2007, respectively, were successful because of their centralized nature—and the fact that both programs were relatively in their nascent stages. The Iranian nuclear program, meanwhile, is far more advanced and widely dispersed around the country. An Iranian nuclear scientist with an intimate knowledge of the nuclear program told me that Iranians specifically dispersed their nuclear facilities and created multiple sites so that, in the case of an attack, other facilities could continue the work.

More importantly, while Israel can destroy the facilities, it cannot bomb the institutionalized knowledge that Iranians have acquired over the decades. Science simply cannot be bombed away. Iran could, if necessary, reconstitute the program at any time, and since it can rely on its own technological capacity to enrich uranium, it will always remain a nuclear threshold state. Iran’s nuclear crisis has no military solution.

It seems that in considering its response to Iran’s bombing, Israel is ceding to pressure from the United States and leaning toward a limited strike, although it is not clear where and how. Nonetheless, the assault on the Iranian consulate building signifies the dawn of a perilous era in Iran-Israel hostilities, breaching a tacit understanding between the countries to keep their conflict in the shadows. Iran is inching its way closer to a nuclear weapon. The decision of whether it will weaponize its nuclear program remains intricately tied to the regional threat perceptions of its political leadership. And the perceived advantages of nuclear forbearance have outweighed the associated costs—until now.

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