How Bombing Iran May Have Made Nuclear Diplomacy Much Harder

Time​ Magazine

3 days ago

What began as a military campaign against Iran's nuclear infrastructure may have given way to a more enduring crisis: the collapse of decades-long efforts to contain nuclear proliferation through diplomacy.
After days of escalating airstrikes between Israel and Iran that killed hundreds in Iran and dozens in Israel—and the United States' decision to involve itself—one of the most lasting, and difficult to quantify, losses may be the fragile framework of international nuclear cooperation.
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While the full scope of physical damage to Iran's nuclear facilities remains unclear, analysts warn that the attacks may have pushed Iran to the brink of abandoning the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the foundational agreement designed to limit the spread of nuclear weapons and promote peaceful atomic energy that Iran has been a party to for five-and-a-half decades.
Iran is now 'quite likely' to withdraw from the NPT under which it pledged not to develop a bomb, warned Ali Vaez, director of the Iran Project at the International Crisis Group. Outlining 'worst-case scenarios' in an essay for TIME, Vaez suggested: 'Over time, Iran's regime could attempt to reconstitute its nuclear activity from the rubble, only with an explicit aim of fashioning a weapon in the shortest possible time as a means of deterrence in the future.'
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Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute in Washington, D.C., said in a post on X that Iran's nuclear program 'has at best been set back, but certainly not destroyed, while dramatically increasing Tehran's determination to achieve nuclear deterrence.' He added that Iran having a damaged but not fully dismantled nuclear program makes any future peace between Iran and Israel even more precarious.
Israel, which is believed to have its own clandestine nuclear weapons program and is not a member of the NPT, has stated that it cannot allow nations hostile to it to develop a nuclear weapon.
'While Trump may have genuinely envisioned a one-and-done,' Parsi said, U.S. intervention at the request of Israel has signaled that, should Israel or Iran choose to reignite the war, Israel will have 'succeeded in trapping him in a long, if not a forever, war.'
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For diplomacy to resume, he argues, 'Trump's only exit out of this is to discard the Israeli red line of zero-enrichment and return to the American red line of no weaponization.'
A blow to non-proliferation diplomacy
The diplomatic fallout is already materializing in Tehran. Iran's parliamentary national security committee passed the outline of a bill on Monday to suspend Tehran's cooperation with the United Nations' nuclear watchdog—the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)—so long as Iran's nuclear sites remain vulnerable to military attack. Committee spokesperson Ebrahim Rezaei reportedly told semi-official Tasnim news agency that the bill would mean a suspension in installing surveillance cameras, inspections, and submitting reports to the IAEA.
Mohammad Eslami, the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, said the government is planning to restore its nuclear program as it evaluates what damage has been done. 'Preparations for recovery had already been anticipated, and our plan is to prevent any interruption in production or services,' Eslami said in a statement reportedly carried by government-affiliated Mehr News.
Iran's envoy to the IAEA, Reza Najafi, told reporters on the sidelines of an emergency IAEA board meeting on Monday that U.S. involvement in the strikes had 'delivered a fundamental and irreparable blow to the international non-proliferation regime conclusively demonstrating that the existing NPT framework has been rendered ineffective.'
Scope of physical damage to Iran's nuclear facilities remains unclear
The breakdown in diplomacy is unfolding as questions hang over just how significant the physical damage is to Iran's nuclear infrastructure—an element that may carry long-term consequences for non-proliferation efforts.
After the U.S. dropped 30,000-pound bombs on three of Iran's key nuclear facilities and risked a wider war, President Donald Trump declared from the White House that 'Iran's key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated.'
'THE NUCLEAR SITES ARE COMPLETELY DESTROYED!' President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social on Tuesday. Earlier the same day, he posted: 'IRAN WILL NEVER REBUILD THEIR NUCLEAR FACILITIES!'
But Iran's nuclear program has at most been set back a few months, according to a reported initial assessment by U.S. intelligence.
A leaked Defense Intelligence Agency preliminary report, which members of the Trump Administration have claimed is wrong, found that Iran's nuclear facilities were damaged, but not severely degraded, and that Iran still has the ability to enrich uranium. Earlier damage assessments by U.S. and Israeli militaries using satellite images of Fordow also suggested that the site had not been obliterated.
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Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said at a news conference on Sunday that the country is 'calculating the damages' from the strike.
IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi told the U.N. Security Council that there are visible craters at Fordow, and that entrances to tunnels used to store enriched uranium appeared to have been hit at Isfahan. But he also cautioned that 'no one, including the IAEA, is in a position to assess the underground damage.'
Some observers believe Iran may have preemptively moved enriched uranium to undisclosed locations. The IAEA confirmed last week it was unable to track Iran's stockpile amid the ongoing bombardment. Iran had previously warned the IAEA that its stockpile, which is typically secured at Isfahan, could be moved in the event of an Israeli attack.
Grossi said after the U.S. strikes that 'Iran has informed the IAEA there has been no increase in off-site radiation levels at all three sites,' suggesting that the strikes may not have hit uranium stores directly. Still, he urged Iran to disclose the new location of any relocated nuclear material and reaffirmed Tehran's obligations under the treaty.
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Iran's legislative response suggests a hardening stance. 'Iran has no plans for non-peaceful activities, but the world witnessed clearly that the IAEA has not honored any of its commitments and has turned into a political instrument,' parliamentary speaker Mohammed-Bagher Ghalibaf said during Monday's session.
'This war makes it more, not less, likely that the Iranian government will eventually build a nuclear weapon,' argues Sara Haghdoosti, executive director of Win Without War, a progressive Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group. 'Israeli—or even U.S.—airstrikes cannot wipe out the knowledge behind the nuclear program or reliably destroy all centrifuges and uranium in a country over twice the size of Texas.'
Iran more likely to withdraw from nuclear diplomacy
Whether Iran was actively pursuing a nuclear weapon remains in dispute. U.S. intelligence concluded earlier this year that the country had no plans to develop a nuclear weapon, while Trump and Israeli officials have insisted it did. Iran has maintained that its uranium enrichment is in line with its right to peaceful enrichment for energy purposes under the NPT. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian reiterated that view on Tuesday, reportedly telling regional officials that Iran is interested only in pursuing its 'legitimate rights' and has no ambitions 'to acquire nuclear weapons.'
Iran and the U.S. had been in the midst of protracted talks centered on Iran's nuclear program when Israel launched its surprise attack on Iran. The war put a halt to further talks with the U.S.—although Iran continued talks with European officials—and it is unclear whether they will begin again.
Several agencies and countries, including the European Union and Grossi, have urged Iran to return to the negotiating table. But Iran's envoy to the U.N. Ali Bahreini said on Sunday that it can't return to something 'it never left.' He said the NPT has been 'manipulated into a political weapon' and 'exploited as a pretext for aggression and unlawful action.'
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Iran ratified the treaty in 1970, and signed another deal with former President Barack Obama in 2015 agreeing that its nuclear program will be exclusively peaceful in exchange for the relief of economic sanctions. Trump exited the deal in 2018 during his first term, reimposing heavy sanctions on Iran, which pushed Iran to restart some nuclear operations.
Foad Izadi, a professor at the University of Tehran, told Al Jazeera that Iran's collaboration with the IAEA as a member of the NPT has clearly not benefited or protected Tehran.
'Iran doesn't have to be there,' Izadi said, 'given the fact that Iranian nuclear sites that were under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency, that were under the monitoring of [the IAEA], were attacked.'
Haghdoosti, the Win Without War activist, tells TIME that the airstrikes on Iran, which the Trump Administration has framed as part of a deliberate strategy to pursue 'peace through strength,' will erode diplomatic efforts around nuclear programs for all countries now and in the future.
'The lesson of this war for the Iranian government and any other government contemplating acquiring nuclear weapons is that even if the U.S. is negotiating with you to end that pursuit, it will still support—and even join—a war against you,' Haghdoosti says. 'That's a strong incentive for governments to skip diplomacy entirely and go straight to getting a nuclear weapon.'