Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs (JCFA)

Following Israel’s amputation of two tentacles of the Iranian regime’s terrorist octopus – Hamas in Gaza and Hizbullah in Lebanon – and the subsequent collapse of its Syrian satrap province – it may seem that the mullahs of Tehran have been neutralized. However, the regime still constitutes a nuclear threat.

The Islamic Republic sees these setbacks as an opportunity to establish a new nuclear deterrent against Israel. This is evidenced by a piece published on October 26, 2024, by Gholamreza Sadeghian, editor-in-chief of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps-affiliated newspaper Javan, in which he points to the growing sentiment within Iran to “go nuclear.”¹

Iran’s Supreme Council of National Security has also called to re-evaluate the Supreme Leader’s fatwa (religious ruling) against nuclear weapons “because circumstances have changed.”² On November 23, Iranian Majles National Security Committee member Ahmad Ardestani, who called for withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), suggested that Iran take the North Korean route: “The West does not mess with North Korea because it has atomic bombs.”³

These regime declarations demonstrate Iran’s accelerating efforts to achieve nuclear capability. At the same time, the regime is vulnerable after the Israeli Air Force’s (IAF) recent denuding of its air defenses, exposing highly-valued military targets to follow-on air assaults. Consequently, Tehran will likely avoid additional attacks on Israel until the Islamic Republic has achieved nuclear capability.

The operational threat is not mere conjecture. After Iran crossed red lines twice by attacking Israel directly in 2024 and enriching uranium past 60 percent, the regime is close to the nuclear finish line. Should Iran choose to “break out,” it would initially detonate a nuclear device in one of its numerous deserts, probably in the large and remote Dasht-e-Kavir (Salt Desert) in the north-central region of the country. The regime hopes that a detonation of this kind would convince foes, “friends,” and the great powers, that Iran is a nuclear player.

The IRGC, which maintains operational control of Iran’s nuclear programs, is aware that desert detonations may not deter Israel from surgically striking Iran’s principal atomic sites. The IRGC and Iranian nuclear engineers are likely rushing efforts to develop deliverable nuclear weapons capability. Attaching a deliverable core device in the nosecones of Iran’s existing substantial ballistic missile force remains complicated, but ultimately achievable.⁴ Israel infiltrated Iran in 2018 and stole the IRGC’s bomb plans. Photos and blueprints of the nuclear bomb core were made public.

The IRGC’s distinct interest is in closing this window of opportunity for Israel and the United States to strike at Iran’s nuclear targets, and in the meantime, eliciting weaponization know-how from Russia and North Korea.

The danger is real that Iran’s powerful revolutionary clique of aging theocratic zealots might invite Armageddon by seeking to launch a ballistic missile with a nuclear warhead against Israel, particularly if their regime is in imminent danger of collapse.⁵

Israeli and Western policymakers must not assume that the Iranian regime will alter its apocalyptic Shiite theological view of the world or adjust its aggressive regional actions to accommodate changing power realities. There are still enough true believers in the regime hierarchy who embrace Shiism’s medieval theorems, namely, that the apocalypse will usher in the global “Golden Age” of Shiism, to assume that the regime will not act irrationally in an existential crisis. The West needs to internalize this risk and be prepared to act preemptively.

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Notes