The lesson that Tehran will take away from this conflict is that it needs an ironclad deterrent in the form of a nuclear weapon.

The primary objective of the war now unfolding following the attack by Israel and the United States on Iran is clear: preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Regime change is but the means to achieving this goal. Paradoxically, the conflict is likely to produce precisely the opposite outcome. The strategic logic unleashed by war may push Iran toward the very decision the war was meant to prevent. 

Three dynamics explain why the war may push Iran toward weaponization: the harsh lesson of deterrence, the collapse of Iran’s threshold strategy, and the political transformation now underway inside the Iranian leadership.

The most powerful lesson Iran could draw from the war concerns deterrence. States without nuclear weapons remain vulnerable to external attack, while nuclear-armed states enjoy far greater security.

Recent history reinforces this perception. Countries that abandoned or never developed nuclear weapons—such as Libya or Iraq—eventually faced military intervention and regime collapse. By contrast, nuclear-armed states have proven far harder, in fact impossible, to coerce. North Korea is the most obvious example. Despite decades of confrontation with the United States, the regime in Pyongyang has shielded itself from direct military intervention through its nuclear arsenal. For Iranian strategists, the present war may reinforce a stark conclusion: restraint does not prevent attack; in fact, it encourages it.

Iran spent decades avoiding an explicit decision to build nuclear weapons. Yet it has now experienced large-scale military strikes on its territory, including attacks targeting strategic infrastructure and senior leadership. In this sense, the war reinforces a central insight of realist international relations theory. As the international relations scholar Kenneth Waltz famously argued, nuclear weapons create powerful deterrent effects because the costs of escalation become catastrophic. In a 2012 essay in Foreign Affairs, Waltz even suggested that a nuclear Iran might stabilize the Middle East by creating a balance of power with Israel. Whether or not one accepts Waltz’s broader argument, the logic of deterrence will now loom much larger in Iranian strategic thinking.

Before the war, Iran pursued a carefully calibrated strategy of nuclear ambiguity. Tehran developed extensive nuclear infrastructure and enriched uranium to high levels, especially after President Donald Trump reneged on the nuclear agreement with Iran in 2018. However, Tehran still stopped short of openly producing nuclear weapons. This allowed Iran to remain a “threshold state”—technically capable of building a bomb but without formally crossing the nuclear line.

Strategic ambiguity offered several advantages. It preserved Iran’s nuclear option while avoiding the full consequences of overt weaponization, including severe international isolation and preventive military strikes. The Israeli-American attack has dramatically weakened the logic of this strategy. If Iran can be attacked despite remaining below the nuclear threshold, ambiguity no longer offers meaningful protection. From Tehran’s perspective, this war has demonstrated that remaining a threshold state does not guarantee security.

Under these conditions, the strategic calculus shifts. If Iran faces military attack regardless of its nuclear status, then actually possessing nuclear weapons may appear to be the only reliable way to prevent such attacks in the future. This dynamic has precedents. Israel’s destruction of Iraq’s Osirak reactor in 1981 convinced Saddam Hussein that nuclear weapons were essential for Iraq’s long-term security. Libya’s abandonment of its nuclear program in 2003 likewise did not prevent NATO intervention during the 2011 uprising—an episode frequently cited by Iranian officials as a cautionary lesson. The present war has reinforced these conclusions.

The war has also transformed Iran’s political environment in ways that may have removed one of the most important constraints on nuclear weaponization. For years, Iran’s leadership maintained that nuclear weapons were prohibited on religious grounds. The late Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, repeatedly declared that producing or using nuclear weapons was forbidden under Islamic law. This position served both ideological and strategic purposes. It allowed Iran to defend its nuclear program as peaceful, citing religious grounds, thus avoiding the political costs of openly pursuing nuclear weapons.

But the war has fundamentally altered this formula. The removal of the elder Khamenei—who was killed during the early phase of the conflict—may have paradoxically eliminated one of the most significant ideological barriers to weaponization. His successor, Mojtaba Khamenei, presides over a political system under siege and may not feel bound by the same doctrinal constraints. 

Moreover, by all accounts, it is the hard-line commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) who are calling the shots in Tehran and are expected to be much more inclined to exercise the nuclear option, particularly in light of the current war. In this sense, the war may have done more than change Iran’s strategic environment. It may also have reshaped the ideological landscape within which nuclear decisions are made.

Another reason the war may accelerate nuclearization is that Iran already possesses much of the technical infrastructure required to build nuclear weapons. Years of sanctions and international pressure failed to dismantle Iran’s nuclear program. Instead, they pushed Tehran toward mastering key elements of the nuclear fuel cycle, including uranium enrichment and advanced centrifuge technology.

Even if military strikes damage specific facilities, they cannot erase decades of accumulated expertise. Nuclear programs are resilient precisely because their most important assets are scientific knowledge and technical experience. Iran, therefore, retains the ability to rebuild key parts of its nuclear infrastructure. If Tehran ultimately decides to pursue nuclear weapons, the remaining technical barriers may be relatively limited. In other words, the war may delay Iran’s nuclear program. It is unlikely to eliminate it.

Instead of weakening support for nuclear programs, military strikes are likely to strengthen Iran’s resolve to pursue them. National pride, fear of external threats, and the desire for strategic autonomy can transform nuclear weapons from controversial projects into symbols of sovereignty. The current war can therefore be expected to unify Iran’s political factions around the idea that a nuclear deterrent is necessary.

For policymakers in Washington and allied capitals, this possibility carries an uncomfortable implication. If the goal remains to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, military pressure alone is unlikely to succeed. Durable nonproliferation outcomes emerge not from coercion alone but from political arrangements that reduce states’ perceived need for nuclear deterrence. 

Absent such a framework, the war may leave Iran’s leaders with a simple and dangerous conclusion: survival requires the bomb. And once that conclusion takes hold in Tehran, the strategic logic of proliferation with Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Egypt following suit may become almost impossible to reverse.

About the Author: Mohammed Ayoob

​​Mohammed Ayoob is a university distinguished professor emeritus of International Relations at Michigan State University and a senior fellow at the Center for Global Policy. His books include The Many Faces of Political Islam(University of Michigan Press, 2008), Will the Middle East Implode? (2014), and, most recently, From Regional Security to Global IR: An Intellectual Journey (2024). He was also the editor of Assessing the War on Terror (2013).

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