- As Israel continues to prepare its response to Iran’s missile barrage, one of the target sets could include Tehran’s nuclear infrastructure, including striking weaponization facilities, fuel enrichment plants, and/or research and development laboratories.
- In the event of a significant strike on Iran, the Supreme Leader may opt to pursue nuclear deterrence by developing a bomb.
- CIA Director William Burns recently reaffirmed that, while Iran has so far adhered to the Supreme Leader’s policy against pursuing a nuclear bomb, they are only about a week away from reaching the breakout time required to produce weapons-grade material for a single nuclear weapon.
- If Iran pursues a nuclear weapon, it could trigger an arms race in the Middle East, prompting other nations to follow suit in a bid to maintain regional balance.
Speaking earlier this week at the annual threat conference hosted by the Cipher Brief in Sea Island, Georgia, CIA Director William Burns was asked about the situation with Iran’s nuclear program. Burns told the assembled crowd, many of whom were veterans of the U.S. intelligence community, that “[W]e do not see evidence today that the Supreme Leader has reversed the decision that he took at the end of 2003 to suspend the weaponization program.” Burns went on to say, however, that Iran was in a “much closer position” to create a single bomb’s worth of weapons-grade material, with a breakout time now at “a week or a little more,” making Iran a threshold state. Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, allegedly issued a fatwa against the use of nuclear weapons in 2003. Still, given Iran’s history of negotiating the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2015 and then having the Trump administration withdraw from the agreement a few years later, Iran could decide to forge ahead. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, while declining to discuss the intelligence in detail, said last month that Russia was sharing technology and technical assistance with Iran regarding its nuclear program.
As Israel continues to prepare its response to Iran’s early October missile barrage, one of the target sets could include Tehran’s nuclear infrastructure, including the possibility of Israel striking weaponization facilities, fuel enrichment plants, and/or research and development laboratories. This could entail a combination of kinetic strikes and offensive cyber operations. There are multiple, well-known potential targets, including Natanz, Fordow, Esfahan, and others, although for sites that are described as “hard and deeply buried targets” (HDBTs), reinforced and dug into mountains, many doubt whether the Israeli Air Force could take these out without U.S. assistance. Israel launched attacks against Iraqi nuclear infrastructure in 1981 and against Syrian nuclear infrastructure in 2007.
U.S. President Joe Biden has warned Israel against this, suggesting that Israeli retaliation for the Iranian missile barrage should be proportionate. Yet, hardliners within Israel, including former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennet, have argued forcefully that Israel has a rare window to go after Iran’s nuclear program, what he called Israel’s “greatest opportunity in 50 years to change the face of the Middle East.” An Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear assets that fails to destroy them completely, causes Iran to move toward a workable nuclear weapon, and touches off a nuclear arms race in the region would absolutely change the face of the Middle East, though certainly not for the better. In the past, Israel has relied on other measures, including cyberattacks and assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists, to slow Tehran’s progress toward a bomb.
If Israel launches attacks across Iran’s nuclear facilities and is unable to destroy them entirely, there is growing concern that Iran will subsequently race to construct a bomb. Yet even with a breakout time of approximately one week, it would take months, perhaps as long as a year, for Iranian engineers to turn bomb-grade enriched uranium into a deliverable weapon. The military commander in charge of Iran’s nuclear sites has warned in the past that if Israel attacks these sites, Tehran could seek to reverse its nuclear doctrine. In 2023, after France, Germany, and the UK threatened to reimpose United Nations Security Council sanctions on the Iranians, Tehran retorted that it might withdraw from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) altogether, making international monitoring of its program impossible.
Even the perception that Iran is moving in that direction could touch off a nuclear arms race in an already volatile region, with countries like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) following suit to level the playing field across the Middle East (as of October 2024, Israel is the only nuclear power in the Middle East, its weapons program is believed to date back to the late 1960s, although the Israelis officially maintain a policy of ambiguity surrounding their nuclear weapons program). Speaking in March 2018, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) said very directly, “Saudi Arabia does not want to acquire any nuclear bomb, but if Iran developed a nuclear bomb, we will follow suit as soon as possible.” In September 2023, MBS reiterated this statement, saying to Fox News that “we are concerned of any country getting a nuclear weapon” and that if Iran does develop a bomb, “we will have to get one.”
In 2019, it was first revealed that Saudi Arabia had nearly finished building its first nuclear reactor on the outskirts of the capital, Riyadh. A year later, the Wall Street Journal reported that KSA was building a facility to extract uranium yellow cake, a project undertaken with Chinese assistance. Further cooperation between Riyadh and Beijing prompted the U.S. intelligence community to assess the potential for this partnership to build an industrial capacity to produce nuclear fuel. One of the carrots dangled by Washington to entice the Saudis to move forward with a normalization deal with Israel has been U.S. help in establishing a civilian nuclear program. But, if the Saudis want to move forward with constructing a nuclear program, they could also continue to work with China or seek the assistance of countries like Russia. Saudi officials have publicly stated plans to further develop the capacity to produce nuclear fuel using domestic resources. For example, in 2019, Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abd al Aziz bin Salman Al Saud declared, “even if we scale up [nuclear power] … we want to go to the full cycle, to producing the uranium, enriching the uranium.” In January 2023, the Saudi Energy Minister said that Saudi Arabia intends to use its substantial domestic uranium resources for producing low enriched uranium (LEU). While some analysts have downplayed the notion that Saudi Arabia could produce a bomb quickly, if the leadership made the decision to do so, there are still serious and credible concerns about Riyadh heading in that direction.
Such a move could prompt others in the region, including the UAE, but potentially also Egypt and Türkiye, leading to a region-wide nuclear arms race. The UAE became the first Arab country to construct and operate a nuclear power plant in August of 2020 when the Barakah Nuclear Energy Plant was established. Egypt was a proponent of the JCPOA, believing it would prevent an arms race in the region before the deal collapsed. Speaking in September 2019, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan commented, “Some countries have missiles with nuclear warheads, not one or two. But (they tell us) we can’t have them. This, I cannot accept,” when speaking to members of his AK party. Erdogan went on to say, “We have Israel nearby, as almost neighbors. They scare (other nations) by possessing these. No one can touch them.”
Israel’s current military campaign across the region—Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen, and Iran—could lead other countries in the Middle East to reconsider their stance on achieving a nuclear deterrent. While few believe a nuclear arms race to be imminent, there are legitimate worries about countries in the Middle East reacting to an Iranian pursuit, which in turn could lead others to seek a bomb as a deterrent. One of the lessons that some countries may have learned from regime change in Iraq and Libya is the consequences of not having a nuclear deterrent, which could also prompt further exploration into the capabilities needed to design such a program and acquire the components necessary. With red lines in the region continually crossed over the past year, a widespread sense of volatility has permeated the Middle East. The result could be countries pursuing policies or courses of action that they may not have otherwise, further contributing to a security dilemma that could bring the region to the precipice of all-out war, with reverberations well beyond its borders.