Whereas the U.S. navy’s strikes on Iran on June 21, 2025, are believed to have broken the nation’s crucial nuclear infrastructure, no proof has but emerged displaying this system to have been utterly destroyed. In actual fact, an early U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency assessment surmised that the assault merely delayed Iran’s potential path to a nuclear weapon by lower than six months. Additional, Rafael Mariano Grossi, director of the United Nations’ Worldwide Atomic Power Company, said that Iran may have moved its supply of enriched uranium forward of the strikes, and assessed that Tehran may resume uranium enrichment “in a matter of months.”
Others have warned that the strikes could intensify the Islamic Republic’s nuclear drive, convincing the federal government of the necessity to purchase a bomb with the intention to safeguard its survival.
As a scholar of nuclear nonproliferation, my analysis signifies that navy strikes, such because the U.S. one in opposition to Iran, have a tendency to not work. Diplomacy — involving broad and resolute worldwide efforts — presents a extra strategically efficient solution to preempt a rustic from acquiring a nuclear arsenal.
The diplomatic different to nonproliferation
The technique of a rustic utilizing airstrikes to try to get rid of a rival nation’s nuclear program has precedent, together with Israel’s 1981 airstrike on Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor and its 2007 air assault on Syria’s Kibar nuclear complex.
But neither navy operation reliably or utterly terminated the focused program. Many consultants of nuclear technique consider that whereas the Israeli strike destroyed the Osirak advanced, it likely accelerated Iraq’s fledgling nuclear program, rising Saddam Hussein’s dedication to pursue a nuclear weapon.
Jacques Pavlovsky/Sygma via Getty Images
In the same vein, whereas Israeli airstrikes destroyed Syria’s nascent nuclear facility, evidence soon emerged that the nation, underneath its former chief, Bashar Assad, could have continued its nuclear actions elsewhere.
Based mostly on my appraisal of comparable instances, the report reveals that diplomacy has been a extra constantly dependable technique than navy power for getting a focused nation to denuclearize.
The techniques concerned in nuclear diplomacy embody bilateral and multilateral engagement efforts and financial instruments starting from complete sanctions to transformative help and commerce incentives. Journey and cultural sanctions – together with bans on taking part in worldwide sporting and different occasions – can even contribute to the effectiveness of denuclearization diplomacy.
The excessive level of denuclearization diplomacy got here in 1970, when nearly all of the world signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. The treaty obliged nonnuclear weapons states to chorus from pursuing them, and current nuclear powers to share civilian nuclear energy expertise and work towards eventual nuclear weapons disarmament.
I’ve discovered that in a majority of instances since then – notably in Argentina, Brazil, Libya, South Africa, South Korea and Taiwan – diplomacy performed a pivotal position in convincing nuclear-seeking nations to thoroughly and completely relinquish their pursuit of nuclear weapons.
Case research of nuclear diplomacy
Within the instances of U.S. allies Argentina, Brazil, South Korea and Taiwan, the navy possibility was off the desk for Washington, which as a substitute efficiently used diplomatic stress to compel these international locations to discontinue their nuclear packages. This concerned the imposition of great financial and technological sanctions on Argentina and Brazil within the late-Nineteen Seventies, which substantially contributed to the denuclearization of South America. Within the South Korea and Taiwan instances, the specter of financial sanctions was successfully coupled with the risk of losing U.S. military aid and security guarantees.
South Africa represents some of the compelling instances in help of diplomatic measures to reverse a rustic’s nuclear path. Within the latter years of the Chilly Battle, the nation had superior past threshold nuclear potential to assemble a sizable arsenal of nuclear weapons. However in 1991, the nation determined to relinquish that arsenal, due largely to the high economic, technological and cultural costs of sanctions and the assumption that its nuclear program would prevent its reintegration into the international community following years of apartheid.
Finishing the denuclearization of Africa, diplomatic stress utilized by the U.S. was the first think about Libya’s determination to shutter its nuclear program in 2003, as ending U.S. sanctions and normalizing relations with Washington became a high priority for the federal government of Moammar Gadhafi.
Within the case of Iraq, the Hussein regime ultimately did denuclearize within the Nineteen Nineties, however not by way of a deal negotiated instantly with the U.S. or the worldwide group. Quite, Hussein’s determination was motivated by the damaging financial and technological costs of the U.N. sanctions and his desire to see them lifted after the primary Gulf Battle.
Within the 11 international locations wherein diplomacy was used to reverse nuclear proliferation, solely within the instances of India and Pakistan did it fail to induce any nuclear reversal.
Within the case of North Korea, whereas Pyongyang did for a time be part of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, it later left the accord and subsequently constructed an arsenal now estimated at several dozen nuclear weapons. The decades-long efforts at diplomacy with the nation can not, due to this fact, be coded a hit. Nonetheless, these efforts did result in notable moves in 1994 and 2007 by North Korea to curtail its nuclear facilities.
In the meantime, analysts debate whether or not diplomacy would have been extra profitable at containing North Korea’s nuclear program if the George W. Bush administration had not shifted towards a extra confrontational coverage, together with naming North Korea as a member of the “axis of evil” and delaying aid promised in the 1994 U.S.-North Korean Agreed Framework.
The Iran deal and past
According to the historic monitor report for diplomacy regarding different nuclear powers, Iran presents compelling proof of what diplomacy can obtain in lieu of navy power.
Diplomatic negotiations between the U.S, Iran and 5 main powers yielded the landmark Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in 2015. The so-called Iran deal concerned multilateral diplomacy and a set of financial sanctions and incentives, and persuaded Iran to position stringent limits on its nuclear program for at the least 10 years and ship tons of enriched uranium overseas. A report from the Worldwide Atomic Power Company in 2016 confirmed that Iran had abided by the terms of the agreement. Consequently, the U.S., European Union and U.N. responded by lifting sanctions.
AP Photo/Ronald Zak
It was solely after President Donald Trump ordered the U.S. withdrawal from the agreement in 2018, and reimposed sanctions on Iran, that Tehran resumed its alarming enrichment actions.
Trump signaled rapidly after the current assault on Iran a willingness to have interaction in direct talks with Tehran. Nonetheless, Iran could rebuff any settlement that successfully incorporates its nuclear program, opting as a substitute for the intensified underground strategy Iraq took after the 1981 Osirak assault.
Certainly, my analysis reveals that combining navy threats with diplomacy reduces the prospects of efficiently reaching a disarmament settlement. Nations shall be extra reluctant to disarm when their negotiating counterpart adopts a threatening and combative posture, because it heightens their worry that disarmament will make it extra susceptible to future aggression from the opposing nation.
A return to an Iran nuclear deal?
Profitable denuclearization diplomacy with Iran is not going to be a panacea for Center East stability; the U.S. will proceed to harbor considerations about Iran’s military-related actions and relationships within the area.
It’s, in spite of everything, unlikely that any U.S. administration may strike a cope with Tehran on nuclear coverage that might concurrently settle all excellent points and resolve decades of mutual acrimony.
However by signing and abiding to the phrases of the JCPOA, Iran has demonstrated a willingness to cooperate on the nuclear situation previously. Underneath the settlement, Iran accepted a extremely restricted and low-proliferation-risk nuclear program topic to intrusive inspections by the worldwide group.
That association was helpful for regional stability and for buttressing the worldwide norm in opposition to nuclear proliferation. A return to a JCPOA-type settlement would reinforce a diplomatic strategy to relations with Iran and create a gap for progress with the nation on different areas of concern.
