Opinion | A Nuclear Iran Has Never Felt More Possible

The uncertainty ushered in by the death of Iran’s president, Ebrahim Raisi, in a helicopter crash, just weeks after an unprecedented exchange of military attacks with Israel, has brought a chilling question to mind: Is 2024 the year that Iran finally decides it can no longer take chances with its security and races to build a nuclear bomb?

Up to now, for reasons experts often debate, Iran has never made the decision to build a nuclear weapon, despite having at least most of the resources and capabilities it needs to do so, as far as we know. But Mr. Raisi’s death has created an opportunity for the hard-liners in the country who are far less allergic to the idea of going nuclear than the regime has been for decades.

Even before Mr. Raisi’s death, there were indications that Iran’s position might be starting to shift. The recent exchange of hostilities with Israel, a country with an undeclared but widely acknowledged nuclear arsenal, has provoked a change of tone in Tehran. “We have no decision to build a nuclear bomb but should Iran’s existence be threatened, there will be no choice but to change our military doctrine,” Kamal Kharrazi, a leading adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, said on May 9.

In April, a senior Iranian lawmaker and former military commander had warned that Iran could enrich uranium to the 90 percent purity threshold required for a bomb in “half a day, or let’s say, one week.” He quoted the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, saying that the regime will “respond to threats at the same level,” implying that Israeli attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities would cause a rethinking of Iran’s nuclear posture.

Iran’s relationship with nuclear technology has always been ambiguous, even ambivalent. Both during the regime of the pro-western Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi in the 1960s and 1970s and the anti-American Islamic Republic that has held power since 1979, Iran has kept outside powers guessing and worrying about its nuclear intentions. But it has never made the decision to fully cross the threshold of weaponization. There are several important reasons for this, ranging from religious reservations about the morality of nuclear weapons to Iran’s membership in the global Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). But the biggest reason has been strategic.

Historically, Iran’s leaders have repeatedly concluded that they have more to gain from “playing by the rules” of the international nonproliferation order than they do from racing for the bomb. To do so, they would have to first withdraw from the nonproliferation treaty, which would immediately signal their intentions to the world and could invite American military intervention. At the same time, the revolutionary government has been reluctant to cave into Western demands and dismantle their program altogether, as that would demonstrate a different kind of weakness. Iran’s leaders are no doubt keenly aware of the example of Libya’s Muammar el-Qaddafi, who agreed in 2003 to abandon his country’s nuclear program, only to find himself overthrown eight years later following military intervention by a NATO-led coalition.