Acquiring Nuclear Weapons Will, In An Important Sense, Make It Harder For Iran to Defend Itself
🇮🇷 🇮🇱 🇺🇸 | Analysis
This post is part of the Defending Iran Project, accessible through this link.
While the Defending Iran Project will not be focusing on a hypothetical Iranian nuclear arsenal, several of the analytical dynamics that I highlighted in a (very long) recent post are highly relevant to any analysis examining how Iran can adapt to the challenges that the 2026 American and Israeli war against Iran has brought to the fore, as well as what is likely to come in the future vis-a-vis Israel, the United States, and the Gulf Arab states.
In the above analysis, I made the case that acquiring nuclear weapons—becoming a nuclear-weapon state—will likely be a bad deal for Iran itself. All things considered, an incipient Iranian nuclear-weapon state will likely face very major challenges in developing, deploying, and sustaining a credible nuclear deterrent against its primary nuclear-armed adversaries, which is to say Israel and the United States. In the above analysis, I highlighted, among other things, the major challenges that Iran faces in terms of reliability, accuracy and precision, and penetration rates when it comes to employing ballistic missiles, and perhaps other strike munitions, against Israel, the United States, and Gulf Arab states. I also highlighted the vexing challenge of warhead ambiguity, which raises serious questions as to whether a nuclear-armed Iran can deploy both conventionally-armed and nuclear-armed ballistic missiles with a range of 1000 or more kilometers (i.e., ballistic missiles with the range required to target Israel from Iranian territory).
In the above analysis, I explained that
if Iran had a large and capable air force, it could, in effect, readily place a partition between nuclear capabilities and its conventional capabilities and perhaps reduce its reliance on longer-range conventionally-armed ballistic missiles. But Iran does not have a large and capable air force and is unlikely to possess such an air force anytime soon, not least vis-a-vis the formidable air combat capabilities of Israel and the United States, as well as the Gulf Arab states.
As things stand, Iran’s longer-range ballistic missiles, namely those of the Qadr, Kheibar Shekan, and Khorramshahr design families, as well as the orphan Sejjil design, are central to Iran’s conventional strike and, as such, conventional deterrence capabilities, irrespective to how much these leave to be desired in terms of reliability, accuracy and precision, and penetration rates against Israeli, American, and Gulf Arab ballistic missile defences.
Should Iran acquire nuclear weapons,
Iran will likely have to navigate an intensely unstable nuclear deterrence relationship with Israel—and the United States—all while possessing negligible ballistic missile defences, and without the ability to credibly deliver nuclear warheads of its own to targets in Israel on account of the poor accuracy and penetration rate exhibited by Iranian ballistic missiles to date in the face of Israeli and American ballistic missile defences.
All things considered, acquiring nuclear weapons will, in multiple important respects, compound and complexify the already immense challenges that Iran faces in bolstering its defences vis-a-vis Israel and the United States. The Defending Iran Project will feature posts written as if Iran will remain at some level of nuclear latency or nuclear threshold state status. As I explained in the above analysis,
many analysts succumb to the temptation of thinking in terms of “if I were the all-powerful emperor” or “if I could choose the all-powerful emperor,” or “if I could whisper into the ears of the all-powerful emperor, then I would pursue/recommend policies x, y, z.” I am not the all-powerful emperor, do not select the all-powerful emperor, and do not get to whisper in the ear of an all-powerful emperor. As an analyst, I strive to deal with the world as it is, not as I wish it would be. The current leadership of the Islamic Republic constitute the powers that be in Tehran, and those who collectively sit upon the proverbial peacock throne in Tehran alone have full control over Iran’s nuclear file, no matter what one may think of the Islamic Republic
or, indeed, of the potential benefits of Iran’s hypothetical transition to a nuclear-weapon state in terms of defending Iran in the aftermath of the 2026 American and Israeli war against the country.