US President Trump declared last year on the conclusion of the twelve-day war between the US-Israel and Iran that “Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated”. His statement was repeated even more forcefully by his defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, that the US had succeeded in not only destroying Iran’s nuclear facilities but also in wiping out its nuclear ambitions. Eight months later, on February 28, 2026, the US and Israel relaunched coordinated military strikes on Iran. This time round the scope of the war had widened, and Trump declared that they were once again targeting Iran’s nuclear facilities and its military infrastructure and also forcing a regime change.
The 12-day war last June is reported to have caused significant damage to Iran’s uranium enrichment and conversion facilities. The International Atomic Energy Agency reports confirmed that its main nuclear facilities located in Fordow and the heavily fortified underground site at Natanz were severely hit by the use of US bunker-buster bombs. The Arms Control Association also confirmed the destruction of the heavy-water reactor at Arak.
Three days into Operation Epic Fury, on March 2, 2026, to be precise, the IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi declared that although Iran did have a nuclear programme, it had “no structured programme to develop nuclear weapons”. The current campaign has further damaged the Natanz nuclear facility and has rendered Fordow inoperable. The defence-industrial facilities required to reconstitute enrichment capacity have also been targeted.
By contrast, Israel’s nuclear weapons are regarded as one of the world’s worst-kept secrets. The Centre for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation has pointed out that Israel possesses around 90 to 100 nuclear warheads, making it the only nuclear-armed state in the Middle East. Their programme originated in the 1960s with the help of France, though as far as the outside world is concerned, it is not known to have test-fired any of these weapons. Israel has also refused to become a member of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, nor has it ratified the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
Israel has been crying wolf about Iran inching towards a nuclear weapon despite possessing a nuclear armoury comprising medium and long-range ballistic missiles. The United States has the world’s largest inventory of around 5,500 nuclear warheads, from which a quarter are currently located in bases around the globe.
Europe has already been drawn into a spiralling conflict between Russia and Ukraine, which has thrown up fears of it escalating into a nuclear conflict. The eye of the storm remains Europe’s largest nuclear facility, the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Plant (ZNPP), located on the river Dnieper. The Russian troops seized this plant in March 2022, and ever since, both Russian and Ukrainian troops have been playing a cat-and-mouse game to gain control of it.
Despite several warnings from Grossi during the last four years, both sides continue to fight to gain control over it, though at present it remains in the custody of Russian forces, who have converted ZNPP into an impregnable fortress. There has been little let-off from the Ukrainian side, who continue to fire drones from across the river. A drone attack, some time ago, had damaged the plant’s cooling tower. Fortunately, the fire was brought under control. With all its six reactors having been shut down, the IAEA did not find any spike in radiation levels.
The equation between the US-Israel combine and Iran remains asymmetrical, with both these nuclear-armed states maintaining a significant advantage possessing advanced aerial firepower and superior intelligence capabilities. Despite this imbalance, Israel is constantly harping on the fact that it is facing an existential threat from Iran. The casualty figures speak for themselves. On March 17, Human Rights Activists, a US-based group in Iran, reported 3,114 people had been killed—including 1,138 military personnel and 1,354 civilians, of which at least 207 were children. Another 622 fatalities were "unclassified" (civilian/military).
The Netanyahu government has not released figures for the persons killed or wounded, but frequent drone and missile attacks have forced increasing numbers of Israelis to seek shelter in basements and bunkers. The frequency of these attacks has destroyed the illusion of invulnerability that Netanyahu has strenuously tried to build.
The question experts are asking is what happens if Iran does succeed in sustaining a long-term fight against Israel? Will Netanyahu’s answer to this unconventional but damaging warfare be to use the nuclear bomb? In June last year, some of Trump’s advisers had maintained that only a tactical nuclear weapon would be able to destroy the fissile material at Fordow. Anti-war experts warn that the Middle East conflict is spiralling into an extremely dangerous situation. American political scientist John Mearsheimer has, in a series of interviews, declared that if the Israelis lose the war, “we can well get to a scenario where they can consider using nuclear weapons”. Renowned American economist Prof Jeffrey Sachs has also warned that if the Middle East war spirals out of control, Israel could use the N-option. Sachs, in a recent podcast, elaborated on how even Trump’s influential adviser, David Sachs, has advised the American president “to pack his bags and go home”, as the continuation of the war would only result in a global calamity.
Experts across the world question how both the US and Israel started a war on the premise that they were facing an “imminent threat” from the Khamenei regime. Such a pre-emptive threat on the basis of a hypothesis or speculation can hardly be described as “imminent”. These strikes risk igniting a wider regional catastrophe and are another example of Trump’s reliance on brute force to promote his global agenda, irrespective of the extent of the catastrophe it is causing on the ground.
Nuclear bombs that detonated over Hiroshima and Nagasaki resulted in the deaths of several lakh people. The recent attacks on oil depots and refineries in Teheran have released immense quantities of toxic soot, prompting the WHO to warn its residents that this “black rain” could contaminate air, food, and water.
Iran was willing to have its nuclear programme subject to the IAEA’s scrutiny. The question to be asked is why has there been no scrutiny of Israel’s warheads? Why are the United Nations watchdogs unable to enforce a fair and universal law to be implemented across all nations? These double standards have once again brought into sharp focus the ineffectiveness of the United Nations and how ill equipped it is to handle the complex challenges facing us. The world may be transitioning towards a multipolar order, but before that happens, there is an immediate need to rein in these dogs of war.
Rashme Sehgal is an author and an independent journalist.
