In the best traditions of a Persian epic, Tehran has long been able to play on the fear and curiosity of the great powers, leaving them in the dark about the true contents of its “box”. Against this background, all sorts of assumptions arise about whether Iran really needs nuclear weapons, which will almost certainly lead to international condemnation and even greater isolation, or whether it is more focused on instilling the idea that it has such weapons that would compensate for existing vulnerabilities, writes Alla Levchenko. The author is a participant of the Valdai – New Generation project.
For over twenty years, questions about Iran’s nuclear programme have been stirring in the minds of outside observers and the international community, as they try to unravel the hidden intentions and secret aspirations of Iranian leaders. Tehran, with its characteristic multi-layered meanings and subtlety of political weaving, jealously guards its “nuclear treasure,” allowing others to take a close look at it only occasionally. Maintaining a situation of balancing on the brink of creating nuclear weapons has become one of the main methods of political and diplomatic positioning for the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI). This ambivalence in intentions and the constructed aura of mystery around its nuclear programme has become a unique foreign policy resource, masterfully used by Tehran’s politicians.
The Iranian political and clerical elite attaches almost sacred significance to nuclear weapons, seeing them as a guarantee of the existential preservation of post-revolutionary theocratic statehood, as well as its independence and prestige. At the same time, being on the threshold of producing an atomic bomb is becoming an independent strategy of action, in which two substantive components are seen: an orientation toward cooperation and increasing the transparency of its nuclear activities, as well as instilling in the international community the idea of a readiness to acquire and use the most destructive weapons to protect its national sovereignty, supported by a demonstration of the real ability to do so. Such duality allows Iran to change the ornamental decoration of its “nuclear box” depending on the political moment...
In the best traditions of a Persian epic, Tehran has long been able to play on the fear and curiosity of the great powers, leaving them in the dark about the true contents of its “box”. Against this background, all sorts of assumptions arise about whether Iran really needs nuclear weapons, which will almost certainly lead to international condemnation and even greater isolation, or whether it is more focused on instilling the idea that it has such weapons that would compensate for existing vulnerabilities.
First, the “nuclear card” has become a way of reconciling Iran’s political ambitions with the current state of the nation’s resource potential. The Islamic Revolution of 1979 brought two conceptual innovations to Iran’s foreign policy: a focus on exporting the Islamic revolution and forming a universal Islamic community, as well as equidistance from key centres of power for ideological and political reasons. Subsequently, it became clear that the country’s limited resource potential does not allow for the implementation of such grandiose plans, which require adjustments and adaptation. Although Iranian leaders have undertaken some domestic economic reforms and made diplomatic compromises outside, messianism and the idea of the righteous path have always remained in their minds and hearts, as well as the fundamental source of antagonism between the Iranian and Western pictures of the world, which are manifested in their foreign policy programmes. In these conditions of pre-established hostility and the material and power disparity with potential adversaries, the possibility of creating nuclear weapons has to some extent made it possible, at least symbolically, to compensate for the existing limitations.
Second, maintaining uncertainty around its nuclear programme has become a pass into big politics for Iran and has turned into a means of strengthening its negotiating capabilities in bargaining with Western partners. Tehran is playing a subtle game, combining elements of transparency and secrecy in the development of its nuclear activities. Iran invariably repeats that all work on the development of the nuclear programme is aimed at developing a peaceful atom, which is its legal right. As a party to the 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and the 1974 Safeguards Agreement with the IAEA, Iran also signed the Additional Protocol in 2003 on providing full and reliable information about its nuclear programme. In 2015, the P5+1 (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany) concluded the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action on the Iranian Nuclear Programme (JCPOA), approved by UN Security Council Resolution 2231 (2015).
In this case, Iran went so far as to open the cover of its “box” as much as possible and assure the international community of its exceptionally safe contents in response to the lifting of harsh sanctions by countries with “nuclear suitcases”. However, the decision of the US administration of Donald Trump to abandon all agreements and return to the former policy of maximum pressure on Iran in 2018 elicited a sharp rejection on the part of Tehran, which considered itself entitled to refuse to comply with the terms of the agreement.
Third, maintaining a stable idea ofthe possibility of possessing nuclear weapons and demonstrating a real readiness to develop them has become for Iran, to some extent, a way to resist external pressure and demonstrate inflexible political will. Tehran achieves this effect through the use of rhetoric containing hints that it may create nuclear weapons if necessary. In practice, such verbal assurances are supported by the construction of infrastructure and the acquisition of technologies for uranium enrichment. Thus, after the failure of the Vienna talks in 2022, Iran announced its refusal to comply with the restrictions on uranium enrichment and the size of its stockpiles, returning to rather harsh rhetoric. In particular, Iranian political leaders began to make statements about reducing the time frame for creating nuclear warheads. In December 2023, the IAEA reported that Tehran had increased the rate of production and accumulation of uranium enriched to 60%, which, when brought to 90%, can be used to create a nuclear bomb. Moreover, in May 2024, Advisor to the Supreme Leader of the IRI Kamal Kharrazi said that in the event of an existential threat, Iran would go for nuclear weapons. Against this background, concerns began to circulate in the West about Iran approaching a “threshold state”, in which it will be able to release the genie from its “box” in a short period of time, ready to realize the fears of its Western adversaries.
At the same time, the desire to understand the logic of Iran’s behaviour invariably returns to the idea of a filigree-performed score with an unforeseen final, which is extremely intriguing to those around, sometimes giving rise to frantic fear in potential opponents. In the context of a large-scale escalation in the Middle East, it is probably the latent form of the nuclear programme that allows Tehran to harbour expectations among opponents about the onset of unacceptable consequences, which to a certain extent helps control the escalation ladder. On the other hand, this also works in relations with the Western countries, which, as Iran is convinced, have been prevented so far from carrying out an armed intervention to overthrow the regime only by uncertainty about the real scale of the nuclear programme’s development. Apparently, the prolonged presence in a politically and ideologically unfriendly environment has forced Tehran to develop its own means of communication with the outside world.