After the decapitation of Hizbullah, Iran could race for a nuclear bomb

After the decapitation of Hizbullah, Iran could race for a nuclear bomb

The Economist-Oct1st2024

WHEN AN ISRAELI bomb killed Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hizbullah, last week, it did not just decapitate a fearsome militia that has driven some 60,000 Israelis from their homes with frequent rocket attacks. It also dealt a hammer blow to Iran’s “axis of resistance”, a constellation of proxy forces that Iran has for decades used to attack both Israel and Western interests in the Middle East. In addition to its current assault on Hizbullah, Israel’s year-long dismemberment of Hamas in Gaza has vastly diminished Iran’s capacity to cause trouble if threatened. Those defeats, in turn, may be prompting Iran to fall back on its other main form of deterrence: its nuclear-weapons programme.

In recent days, amid Israeli strikes on Hamas, Hizbullah and militants backed by Iran in Yemen, Iranian officials have been insinuating that Israel’s belligerence may induce Iran to develop nuclear weapons. Others have suggested that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, might rescind an earlier fatwa, or religious edict, ruling out the pursuit of nuclear weapons. The regime has been expanding the number and sophistication of centrifuges it uses to purify uranium. It now has a big stockpile of near-weapons-grade material. It is plausible, though not yet likely, that Mr Khamenei might decide that the only way to protect his regime, which is despised by its own citizens and vulnerable to Israeli attack, would be to seek nuclear weapons.

America and Israel have long promised that Iran will not be allowed to build a bomb. Israel, in particular, appears to have detailed intelligence on the progress of Iran’s nuclear programme. If it were to pick up signs that Iran was crossing a threshold, it might well attack Iranian nuclear sites—something it came close to doing in 2011. But there is no guarantee that this would succeed. Israeli insiders, in their more candid moments, acknowledge that the chance to set Iran’s nuclear programme back significantly with air strikes may have passed: the relevant facilities are too deeply buried and nuclear know-how too widely dispersed. Bombing them would set the region ablaze while only delaying the programme by months, some argue.