Essay | Iran’s Nuclear Calculus Has Now Become More Dangerous
The rising tensions between Iran and Israel have provoked understandable foreboding. On April 1, an Israeli airstrike killed a senior Iranian commander in Damascus. Last weekend, Iran responded by launching more than 300 drones and missiles at Israel, which in turn prompted Israel to strike targets in the Iranian city of Isfahan on Thursday night. As the two historic antagonists climb the tiger’s back, the Biden administration is hardly alone in fearing a regional conflagration.

The Islamic Republic seeks revenge for its dead, while Israel needs to restore deterrence, badly damaged by Hamas’s Oct. 7 assault. If Israel fails to reestablish sufficient deterrence, it must prepare for a future filled with air-raid warnings and Israelis continuously in bomb shelters.

Lurking behind these anxieties is the Islamic Republic’s nuclear calculations. When the mullahs launched their atomic-weapon and ballistic-missile programs four decades ago, they were primarily thinking about countering Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, secondarily about checking the U.S. In those early days, as far as we can gather from Iranian sources about the genesis of the theocracy’s nuclear ambitions, a hatred of Israel and the regime’s fierce antisemitism weren’t significant drivers. That has surely changed.

Iran’s theocratic regime has to stand as the most successful imperial power in the Middle East since the British Empire. The comparison would offend the mullahs, but both managed to patrol large swaths of territory by relying on proxies—imperialism on the cheap. Soon after coming to power in 1979, Iran began putting together its collection of terrorists and militants. In Lebanon, it created Hezbollah, established a tight relationship with the Palestine Liberation Organization (especially its lead military organization, Fatah) and later funded the more explicitly Islamic Palestinian rejectionist groups Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.


Israeli soldiers display an Iranian ballistic missile that fell in Israel during last weekend’s attack.Photo: gil cohen-magen/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
The clerical elite learned early that they could inflict pain on their adversaries with a measure of impunity if they hid behind their proxies. Their record of achievement is extraordinary. Hezbollah’s bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983 provoked America’s withdrawal from Lebanon, clearly showing that even a Western superpower could be deterred through terrorism. Shiite Islamists started the cult of suicide bombing, which has since become the calling card of Sunni holy warriors.

Then came the 9/11 wars, the Arab Spring of 2011-12, the Syrian civil war and, most recently, the return of the Taliban in Afghanistan, after the ignominious withdrawal of U.S. forces.

Civil wars and ethnic and sectarian conflicts have marked the new order, providing Iran with a bonanza of opportunities. The famed Islamic Revolutionary Guard commander Qassem Soleimani masterminded a multinational auxiliary force that could be deployed to various fronts. He created the so-called “axis of resistance,” Iran’s primary means for waging war against the Jewish state and America’s presence in Syria and Iraq. The Islamic Republic’s Shiite proxies lacerated U.S. forces in Mesopotamia, helping to humble a superpower. Iran helped to fuel the “forever wars” that have upended and demoralized American foreign policy.

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Once civil war broke out in Syria, Tehran marshaled approximately 80,000 militiamen from across the region to rescue the Assad dynasty. In 2015, Russian special forces and air power also arrived. Together they slaughtered their way to victory. Ever since, Israel has been waging an unending air campaign in Syria to stop Tehran from turning the country into another missile platform.

In Yemen, the Houthis—wayward Shiites who were historically unloved by Iran’s branch of Shiism—proved eager surrogates of Tehran. They defeated the combined forces of the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and their Yemeni allies, humbling the impetuous Saudi crown prince, Muhammed bin Salman.


Fighters for Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militia, at a member’s funeral in Lebanon, October 2023.Photo: amr alfiky/Reuters
Through all of this mischief, Iran’s territory remained immune from retaliation as its embattled adversaries kept insisting that they could not expand the conflict.

Iran’s clerical regime celebrated Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel as a triumph of their “axis of resistance” strategy. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameini intoned, “The cores of resistance are determining the fate of our region, and an example of them is the Al Aqsa Flood Operation.” Whether or not Khamenei gave the green light for the attack, his regime’s extensive military aid to Hamas was explicitly aimed to allow it to wage a more effective war against their mutual enemy.

Khamenei surely anticipated severe Israeli retaliation, while also assuming that the old rules would prevail: Iran would stoke its “rings of fire,” inflaming Israel’s frontiers through its proxies, and the ever-anxious West, led by the escalation-dreading Biden administration, would step in and impose a settlement on Israel. A badly battered Hamas would eventually emerge from its tunnels and declare victory.

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To a large extent, the script has played out as Iran anticipated. Forced into unforgiving urban warfare, Israel has scorched Gaza. Facing increasing pressure from the White House, the IDF hasn’t moved on the last Hamas redoubt in Rafah. Unwilling or unable to sustain a significant occupation elsewhere in Gaza, Israeli forces are already encountering insurgent attacks in cleared areas.

Outside of Gaza, the Islamic Republic did what it needed to do. Hezbollah shot some of its rockets at Israel’s north, and the Houthis disrupted maritime traffic in the Persian Gulf. Tehran has been sending weapons to the West Bank. When Iran’s Shiite protégés in Iraq killed three American servicemen in Jordan, the Biden administration spared Iran and bombed its agents. At the U.N., Tehran got the desired denunciations of Israel. South Africa, stuck in decline with nasty internal politics, has become a poster child for Third World grievances, with a special animus against the Jewish state. It charged Israel with genocide at the International Court of Justice.

Although Israel may be getting bogged down in Gaza and is in an increasingly severe wrestling match with the Biden administration on how to fight Hamas, Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has obviously decided to make Iran pay a higher price for its machinations. It did so loudly when it killed General Mohammad Reza Zahedi and six of his deputies in Damascus on April 1.

In life and death, Zahedi did not enjoy the public acclaim of Soleimani. The regime’s propaganda machine never touted his efforts to defeat Shiite-loathing Sunni extremists, which helped to make Soleimani a semi-sacred figure even among Iranians who despise the clerical regime. Zahedi was, however, a critical commander in Iran’s terror network, close to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. He was also a significant player in Iran’s long-standing support of Hamas. Khamenei was well aware of Zahedi’s many accomplishments, which also included a significant stint in crushing Iran’s internal opposition, and would want to avenge him.

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Rubble at the site of the airstrike that killed an Iranian commander in Damascus, April 1. Photo: louai beshara/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Still, the scale of Iran’s retaliation surprised many. The Iran-Israel duel had been a confrontation with understood limits: Iran relied on terrorism and Israel on cyberattacks and targeted assassinations. The Syrian civil war stretched those limits but didn’t erase them. The Islamic Republic built armed encampments on Israel’s borders; Israeli planes continuously pummeled them. Yet both sides exempted each other’s territory from direct assault. All that changed when Tehran shot hundreds of projectiles at Israel on April 14, followed by Israel’s retaliatory attack on targets in Iran on April 18.

It is well-known that the ailing, 85-year-old Khamenei is trying to stage-manage his succession. This is not just succession at the very top; the country’s entire elite is changing. After years of purges, many conservative stalwarts of the revolution, such as former president Hassan Rouhani and former speaker of the parliament Ali Larijani, have been excised from the body politic. They are being replaced by more ideologically strident and parochial men drawn from the ranks of the Revolutionary Guard and conservative religious circles. All of these people are more bellicose toward both Israel and the U.S.

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Israel has thus far limited its counterattack to targets in the city of Isfahan, where Iran has nuclear facilities and an air base. It is unclear if this is the first salvo of a larger campaign or the sum total of its retaliation. Washington and the Europeans will certainly try to persuade Jerusalem to refrain from doing more. Netanyahu, whose bark has always been worse than his bite, has been allergic to war across his long career. Israelis in general seem divided between those who see their nation’s defense as coterminous with Washington’s wants and those more willing to risk American displeasure.

In anticipation of an Israeli military response, Brigadier General Ahmad Haghtalab, the commander for security of Iran’s nuclear facilities, suggested on Thursday how the Islamic Republic will use the nuclear shadow moving forward. “If the counterfeit Zionist regime would want to use the threat of attacking our country’s nuclear sites as a tool to put Iran under pressure,” he said, “revision of the Islamic Republic’s nuclear doctrine and polices as well as a departure from the previously announced reservations is conceivable and probable.”

Khamenei must wonder now if his situation would be better if Iran had already tested a nuclear weapon. Would Israel have attacked one of his cities if it had to think about the prospect of a mushroom cloud over Tel Aviv? As successful as the axis of resistance has been for Iran, it has not checked offensive Israeli actions. A combination of Islamist proxies and an Iranian bomb, however, might well do the trick.

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Even after everything that has taken place lately in the region, the U.S. intelligence community is at ease with its conclusion that “Iran uses its nuclear program to build negotiating leverage and respond to perceived international pressure.” Khamenei has not detonated a bomb because the program is a tool of diplomatic gamesmanship.

In reality, there are no technical barriers left that Iran’s engineers cannot overcome. Ali Akbar Salehi, the former head of the country’s Atomic Energy Organization and the regime’s most well-credentialed nuclear engineer, recently remarked: “We have [crossed] all the thresholds of nuclear science and technology.” Whatever the reasons behind Khamenei’s apparent reluctance to give the final green light, what’s happened since Oct. 7 must certainly give him pause about this hesitation.


Ayatollah Ali Khamenei visits an exhibition on Iran’s nuclear industry, June 2023.Photo: Iranian Supreme Leader’S Office/Zuma Press
The Gaza war has clarified the struggle between Israel and Iran. The Palestinians, surely much to Hamas’s displeasure, are again bit players in the Middle East’s new great game. In such a contest of wills, nothing checks one side better than the fear that the other might actually use a nuclear weapon. The Islamic Republic obviously doesn’t fear Israel’s nuclear arsenal. The same can’t be said for the reverse. With the ultimate weapon behind it, Iran would be not just a nation of consequence but a regime too dangerous to fail for those Americans still dreaming of regime change. Nuclear weapons don’t change everything, but they change a lot.

In the past seven months, America and Israel have been shocked by two events that were once unthinkable: the attacks of Oct. 7, Israel’s mini-Holocaust, and Iran’s missile attack, the first direct assault on Israeli territory in 45 years of unrelenting enmity. The next surprise may well be an unexplained seismic tremor in one of Iran’s deserts. The elderly Khamenei could then look upon Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s massive mausoleum and say with all humility, “I have surpassed thee.”

Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former Iranian-targets officer at the Central Intelligence Agency, is a resident scholar at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Ray Takeyh is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relation

Hamas airs video showing hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin; Hundreds march in Jerusalem
Goldberg-Polin was seriously wounded in Hamas' attack at the Nova festival on October 7, and appears in the video with an amputated arm. Hundreds of protesters march in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv in what they're calling a 'rage demonstration' prompted by the video's release

Hamas released a video on Wednesday showing Israeli hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin who was kidnapped to Gaza on October 7 - the first sign of life from his time in captivity.

Goldberg-Polin had attended the Nova festival at Kibbutz Re'im with friends and sought refuge in a shelter when Hamas stormed the outdoor rave. He sustained serious wounds and is seen in the video with an amputated arm.

He was born in California to Rachel and Jon and moved to Israel in 2008. He celebrated his 24th birthday four days before he was kidnapped.

Shortly after the video was released, hundreds of protesters, including friends of Goldberg-Polin, marched towards the prime minister's residence in Jerusalem, lit a bonfire, and called for his release. At least two protesters were arrested. Police deployed skunk water against demonstrators blocking streets.

The video, approved for release by Goldberg-Polin's family, begins with Goldberg-Polin introducing himself and recounting his abduction. "I went out to have fun with my friends, and instead, I found myself fighting for my life with severe wounds all over my body after trying to shield myself and others because there was no one to protect us that day," he said.

He addressed the prime minister, saying, "Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli government, you should be ashamed for abandoning me and thousands of citizens on that day. You should be ashamed. For almost 200 days, we're here, and all the IDF's attempts to rescue us have failed."

Goldberg-Polin further stated that "Air Force bombings killed around 70 hostages like me, and you should be ashamed that every deal that comes to the table, you and your government reject. Don't you want to end this nightmare already?"

"Benjamin Netanyahu and members of the government, while you sit and celebrate holidays with your families, think of us, the hostages who are still here, in hell beneath the ground. Without water, without food, without sunlight, without the medical treatment I so desperately need," Goldberg-Polin added.

"I demand from you, Prime Minister, and your government and cabinet: Every day we're here is another day you abandon us, another day you allow our blood to be shed. Do what's expected of you already, and bring us home now. Or is that too much for you? It's time to clear out your offices, and go home," he said.

Rachel Goldberg-Polin, mother of Israeli-American hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin, along with other families of hostages in Gaza, speaks to reporters outside the White house in Washington, last week.Credit: Susan Walsh / AP
In the end of the video, Goldberg-Polin addressed his family, saying: "One last thing, and most importantly: Mom, Dad, Libby, and Orly, I love you very much and miss you terribly, and I think of you every day I'm here. I know you're doing everything possible to get me home as soon as possible. I need you to stay strong for me and keep fighting until each one of the hostages comes home safely. I expect and hope to be with you soon, after all this is over. I won't be here anymore, but I hope I've given you some peace of mind this holiday."

Following the video's release, the Goldberg-Polin family released a statement: "Seeing the video of Hersh today is overwhelming. We are relieved to see him alive but we are also concerned about his health and wellbeing as well as that of all the other hostages and all of those suffering in this region."

"We are here today with a plea to all of the leaders of the parties who have been negotiating to date. This includes Qatar, Egypt, the United States, Hamas and Israel: be brave, lean in, seize this moment and get a deal done to reunite all of us with our loved ones and end the suffering in this region. Hersh, we heard your voice today for the first time in 201 days and if you can hear us, we are telling you, we love you, stay strong, survive," they wrote.

The Families Forum Headquarters, the official group representing the hostages' relatives, also issued a statement saying that "Hersh's cry is the collective cry of all the hostages - their time is rapidly running out. With each passing day, the fear of losing more innocent lives grows stronger."

"We cannot afford to waste any more time; the hostages must be the top priority. All the hostages must be brought home - those alive to begin the process of rehabilitation, and those murdered for a dignified burial," it said.

The group noted that the Goldberg-Polin family has given permission for Israeli media to show the video of Hersh in captivity. Normally, Israeli media refrains from showing videos released by Hamas.

In the evening, hundreds of protesters began marching to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Jerusalem residence and are demonstrating outside Israel's defense headquarters in Tel Aviv, in what's labeled a "rage demonstration" prompted by the video's release. Clashes have erupted between protesters and police in Jerusalem, resulting in the arrest of one demonstrator.

Germany's ambassador to Israel, Steffen Seibert, commented on the video's release in a post on X, saying that it raises "conflicting feelings." He expressed "bottomless contempt for the Hamas terrorists who so cruelly advertise their own terrible crime in this video."

Goldberg-Polin's mother, Rachel, was chosen as one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people in the world for 2024 after meeting with dozens of world leaders, including U.S. President Joe Biden and the pope, as part of her mission to free her son and the other remaining hostages.

In response to her inclusion on the list, Goldberg-Polin thanked Time magazine "for recognizing the significance and gravity of the hostage crisis and the need for the world to advocate on their behalf, until each one is returned home."

"I pray this platform will help compel the world not to forsake these remaining 133 souls, who hail from 25 countries, 5 religions and range in age from 15 months to 86 years old, and who have now been held captive in Gaza for 194 days. We must not turn a blind eye to the suffering of these human beings, along with the suffering of all innocents in Gaza," she said in a statement issued by The Families Forum Headquarters.