It is not difficult to imagine a future in which U.S.-Iranian nuclear negotiations resume, collapse or an agreement unravels as Tehran engages in a suspect march toward nuclear weapons capability. Washington and Jerusalem would once more confront the familiar question: what military action could permanently end Iran’s nuclear ambitions? More precisely, what form of coercion could prompt Iran to conclude the costs of pursuing a nuclear deterrent or compellent outweigh its perceived benefits?
History offers a sobering answer. A careful examination of efforts to halt nuclear proliferation through force reveals no practical “practiced” military method capable of durably ending the nuclear ambitions of a technologically capable and determined state such as Iran without military occupation and regime removal. That implausible course inevitably raises a darker question. If “never again” Israel – founded in the shadow of the Holocaust, traumatized anew by 7th October, surrounded by hostile actors, repeatedly threatened with destruction by Iranian leaders, protected by sophisticated but imperfect missile defences, increasingly isolated diplomatically and uncertain of enduring American support – were ultimately to conclude that conventional means had failed and deterrence implausible would it contemplate lifting the veil over its undeclared nuclear arsenal not merely to deter but, in the gravest imaginable circumstance, to employ as the final guarantor of national survival?
The question is deeply unsettling. Yet history suggests it cannot responsibly be dismissed. Plausibility demands a “durable” negotiated resolution putting to bed Iran’s nuclear spectre.
The record past begins with the first nuclear arms race. The Manhattan Project was not conceived merely to build an atomic bomb; it was intended to build one before Nazi Germany and, if necessary, use it against Hitler.[i] That imperative generated an intensive campaign to locate, sabotage, and destroy Germany’s nuclear infrastructure. Allied forces attacked the heavy-water facilities at Vemork in German-occupied Norway[ii], bombed the Auergesellschaft uranium-processing plant at Oranienburg[iii], struck facilities associated with uranium metal production, and disrupted other elements of the German nuclear enterprise. Ultimately, however, these operations complemented rather than determined the outcome. Germany’s atomic project collapsed because of scientific misjudgments, inadequate investment, and, “finally,” the complete military defeat and occupation of the Third Reich.
The decades following World War II present a striking contrast. As the Soviet Union approached its first successful nuclear test in 1949, the United States examined preventive military action but ultimately rejected it. More serious discussions emerged regarding China’s nuclear program and, later, North Korea’s. India likewise considered military options as Pakistan advanced toward nuclear capability. Outside the Middle East, preventive strikes remained largely theoretical. Political leaders consistently concluded that even limited attacks carried an unacceptable risk of escalating into large-scale conventional – or potentially nuclear – war. Instead, they accepted an uncomfortable alternative: deterrence. The expectation was not that proliferation could always be prevented but that stable nuclear deterrence would preserve peace despite it.
The Middle East departed sharply from that pattern with no confidence in deterrence. It became the globe’s principal laboratory for preventive military action against concerning programs. Israel’s destruction of Iraq’s Osirak reactor in 1981[iv] following Iran’s botched attempt the year before, its extensive campaign of sabotage and targeted and attempted killings against Iraqi nuclear scientists, along with its 2007 destruction of Syria’s covert North Korean engineered al-Kibar reactor[v] demonstrated that military force can, under certain circumstances, decisively eliminate a nuclear commitment.
Yet these cases reveal equally important limitations. Military force succeeds only when the target state lacks the capacity to rebuild or when military action is ultimately followed by occupation and regime change. Iraq illustrates both lessons. Although the Osirak strike delayed Saddam Hussein’s nuclear ambitions, it did not end them. Baghdad simply shifted to a far more sophisticated clandestine centrifuge enrichment program. Only Iraq’s defeat in the 1991 Gulf War exposed that hidden effort through intrusive United Nations inspections.[vi] Saddam’s nuclear ambitions disappeared permanently only after the 2003 American invasion toppled his regime.
Syria represented a different case. The al-Kibar reactor was a single, isolated facility in a country possessing little indigenous nuclear infrastructure. Once destroyed, the project effectively ended. Iran presents no comparable vulnerability.