Whereas the U.S. army’s strikes on Iran on June 21, 2025, are believed to have broken the nation’s important nuclear infrastructure, no proof has but emerged exhibiting this system to have been utterly destroyed. In truth, an early U.S. Protection Intelligence Company evaluation 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 Vitality Company, said that Iran could have moved its provide 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 to be able to safeguard its survival.
As a scholar of nuclear nonproliferation, my analysis signifies that army strikes, such because the U.S. one towards Iran, have a tendency to not work. Diplomacy — involving broad and resolute worldwide efforts — gives a extra strategically efficient strategy to preempt a rustic from acquiring a nuclear arsenal.
The diplomatic various to nonproliferation
The technique of a rustic utilizing airstrikes to aim to eradicate 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 advanced.
But neither army operation reliably or utterly terminated the focused program. Many specialists of nuclear technique consider that whereas the Israeli strike destroyed the Osirak advanced, it doubtless accelerated Iraq’s fledgling nuclear program, growing Saddam Hussein’s dedication to pursue a nuclear weapon.
The Osirak nuclear energy analysis station in 1981.
Jacques Pavlovsky/Sygma by way of Getty Pictures
In the same vein, whereas Israeli airstrikes destroyed Syria’s nascent nuclear facility, proof quickly emerged that the nation, beneath its former chief, Bashar Assad, could have continued its nuclear actions elsewhere.
Based mostly on my appraisal of comparable instances, the document exhibits that diplomacy has been a extra constantly dependable technique than army pressure for getting a focused nation to denuclearize.
The techniques concerned in nuclear diplomacy embrace bilateral and multilateral engagement efforts and financial instruments starting from complete sanctions to transformative support and commerce incentives. Journey and cultural sanctions – together with bans on collaborating in worldwide sporting and different occasions – also can contribute to the effectiveness of denuclearization diplomacy.
The excessive level of denuclearization diplomacy got here in 1970, when the vast majority 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 present nuclear powers to share civilian nuclear energy know-how 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 army choice was off the desk for Washington, which as a substitute efficiently used diplomatic stress to compel these nations to discontinue their nuclear applications. This concerned the imposition of serious financial and technological sanctions on Argentina and Brazil within the late-Nineteen Seventies, which considerably contributed to the denuclearization of South America. Within the South Korea and Taiwan instances, the specter of financial sanctions was successfully coupled with the chance of shedding U.S. army support and safety ensures.
South Africa represents one of the compelling instances in assist of diplomatic measures to reverse a rustic’s nuclear path. Within the latter years of the Chilly Warfare, the nation had superior past threshold nuclear potential to assemble a large arsenal of nuclear weapons. However in 1991, the nation determined to relinquish that arsenal, due largely to the excessive financial, technological and cultural prices of sanctions and the assumption that its nuclear program would forestall its reintegration into the worldwide neighborhood following years of apartheid.
Finishing the denuclearization of Africa, diplomatic stress utilized by the U.S. was the first consider Libya’s determination to shutter its nuclear program in 2003, as ending U.S. sanctions and normalizing relations with Washington turned a excessive precedence for the federal government of Moammar Gadhafi.
Within the case of Iraq, the Hussein regime finally did denuclearize within the Nineteen Nineties, however not by way of a deal negotiated immediately with the U.S. or the worldwide neighborhood. Reasonably, Hussein’s determination was motivated by the damaging financial and technological prices of the U.N. sanctions and his need to see them lifted after the primary Gulf Warfare.
Within the 11 nations by which 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 a part of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, it later left the accord and subsequently constructed an arsenal now estimated at a number of 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 lead to notable strikes in 1994 and 2007 by North Korea to curtail its nuclear services.
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 support promised within the 1994 U.S.-North Korean Agreed Framework.
The Iran deal and past
In keeping with the historic observe document for diplomacy regarding different nuclear powers, Iran gives compelling proof of what diplomacy can obtain in lieu of army pressure.
Diplomatic negotiations between the U.S, Iran and 5 main powers yielded the landmark Joint Complete Plan of Motion in 2015. The so-called Iran deal concerned multilateral diplomacy and a set of financial sanctions and incentives, and persuaded Iran to put stringent limits on its nuclear program for not less than 10 years and ship tons of enriched uranium in a foreign country. A report from the Worldwide Atomic Vitality Company in 2016 confirmed that Iran had abided by the phrases of the settlement. Consequently, the U.S., European Union and U.N. responded by lifting sanctions.
Representatives of the nations concerned in signing the 2015 Iran nuclear deal pose for a bunch picture following talks in July 2015.
AP Picture/Ronald Zak
It was solely after President Donald Trump ordered the U.S. withdrawal from the settlement in 2018, and reimposed sanctions on Iran, that Tehran resumed its alarming enrichment actions.
Trump signaled rapidly after the latest assault on Iran a willingness to have interaction in direct talks with Tehran. Nevertheless, Iran could rebuff any settlement that successfully incorporates its nuclear program, opting as a substitute for the intensified underground method Iraq took after the 1981 Osirak assault.
Certainly, my analysis exhibits that combining army threats with diplomacy reduces the prospects of efficiently reaching a disarmament settlement. Nations will likely be extra reluctant to disarm when their negotiating counterpart adopts a threatening and combative posture, because it heightens their concern that disarmament will make it extra weak 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 issues about Iran’s military-related actions and relationships within the area.
It’s, in any case, unlikely that any U.S. administration may strike a cope with Tehran on nuclear coverage that may concurrently settle all excellent points and resolve a long time of mutual acrimony.
However by signing and abiding to the phrases of the JCPOA, Iran has demonstrated a willingness to cooperate on the nuclear concern up to now. Below the settlement, Iran accepted a extremely restricted and low-proliferation-risk nuclear program topic to intrusive inspections by the worldwide neighborhood.
That association was useful for regional stability and for buttressing the worldwide norm towards nuclear proliferation. A return to a JCPOA-type settlement would reinforce a diplomatic method to relations with Iran and create a gap for progress with the nation on different areas of concern.
