(Bloomberg) -- Iran has rarely looked more on the back foot after weeks of Israeli attacks that degraded its proxies Hezbollah and Hamas. And Tehran’s barrage of some 200 missiles fired at Israel on Tuesday was judged “ineffective” by the US.
But those setbacks may have an unintended and dangerous consequence, according to current and former government officials in the US, Israel and the Arab world. They fear that Iran, backed into a corner and feeling more threatened, may speed up its nuclear advances and pursue atomic weapons.
Hardline factions inside Iran may push Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to order the development of nuclear weapons, arguing against others within the establishment who want the government to focus on improving relations with the West. According to one Israeli official, Khamenei is likely calculating which way to go.
“If the proxy forces are not effective for their national strategy anymore, if they realize that their conventional forces aren’t anywhere close, then the only other option from their perspective would be to try to acquire enough nuclear weapons to make it very difficult to strike Iran without risking a nuclear retaliation,” said Mick Mulroy, a retired Central Intelligence Agency Officer and a fellow at the Middle East Institute.
Acquiring such weapons would be a longer-term step for Tehran and wouldn’t immediately factor into the current conflict in the Middle East. Nuclear material would still need to be engineered and put into a deliverable warhead. That could take months, depending on the sophistication of the device.
But the prospect of an Iranian nuclear breakout is fueling fresh alarm of a catastrophic escalation in the tension with Israel, which is believed to have a significant number of nuclear weapons of its own — though the government has never acknowledged it.
Iran’s next steps may also depend on how Israel chooses to respond to Tuesday’s missile barrage — and assessing whether that attack was actually designed to inflict major damage or just meant to send a message. Many of Iran’s missiles got through Israel’s air defenses though they caused little damage.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has threatened retaliation against Iran. There’s widespread pressure among the Israeli public and opposition politicians for it to be forceful. Naftali Bennett, one of Netanyahu’s main rivals, called for Israel to “destroy Iran’s nuclear program.”
Targeting Iran’s nuclear facilities — a move US President Joe Biden said he wouldn’t support — may lead Iran’s senior leaders to “cross the nuclear threshold if their decades long investment in that program comes under attack,” according to Dana Stroul, a former senior Pentagon official who’s now at the Washington Institute.
An assessment by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence published in July said Iran probably would take more steps and “consider installing more advanced centrifuges, further increasing its enriched uranium stockpile, or enriching uranium up to 90%” in response to more sanctions, attacks or censure.
So far Iran has continued to insist it isn’t looking to pursue nuclear weapons, even as recent statements by current and former Iranian officials suggest that the country could revisit its nuclear doctrine. US intelligence also assesses Iran hasn’t decided to restart the country’s nuclear weapons program.
If Iran did decide to build an atomic bomb, it could spark a nuclear arms race in the region. Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, has said that if Iran builds an atomic weapon, his country would have little choice but to do the same.
Iran’s nuclear program was producing the equivalent of one bomb’s worth of 60%-enriched uranium per quarter, according to data from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the world’s nuclear watchdog. That material can be quickly enriched to the 90% levels used in most weapons, to then produce the 15 kilograms of fuel used in a simple warhead.
Tehran stepped up its enrichment soon after former US President Donald Trump in 2018 quit a deal that imposed limits on its nuclear program. In return for signing the agreement in 2015, Iran was given sanctions relief.
In the short-term, any further reaction from Tehran would likely rely on its conventional capabilities or sponsoring attacks on Israeli embassies and other targets abroad, according to several of the officials.
Longer term, nuclear weapons would “provide the ultimate deterrent capacity” because they “would cause Washington and Jerusalem to fear escalating,” according to Andrea Stricker, deputy director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Nonproliferation and Biodefense Program.
“That would ensure that Iran’s proxies are not as responded to” and that “the regime would be able to pursue additional aggression,” she said.
--With assistance from Jonathan Tirone, Iain Marlow and Golnar Motevalli.
(Updates with analyst comment from penultimate paragraph.)
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