Zuljanah's test launch.
Iran is one technical step away from producing enriched uranium that could allow it to build its first nuclear warhead. The country also has developed—and launched for the first time—a solid-fuel space launch vehicle that could double as an intercontinental ballistic missile.
The stepping stones are in place for Tehran to cross the nuclear threshold, and join North Korea as an atomic-armed “rogue” state.
The administration of President Joe Biden is working to bring Iran back to compliance with the 2015 accord limiting the country’s nuclear-weapons development. Ultimately, it’s up to the regime in Tehran to make a choice. Go nuclear—or don’t.
It’s not a foregone conclusion that Iran’s leaders will choose nuclearization. There’s precedent for a country to develop all the key technologies for atomic weapons and still opt not to field them. In the late 1960s, Japan faced the same choice Iran faces today ... and ultimately said no to nukes.
“Iran might end up like North Korea with a growing nuclear arsenal, but if we are lucky it might prefer to be more like Japan—satisfied with the capability in its back pocket,” said Jeffrey Lewis, an arms-control expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in California.
The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action—the deal the administration of President Barack Obama negotiated with Iran, China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom and the European Union back in 2015—capped Iran’s nuclear-weapons development in exchange for relief from economic sanctions.
The JCPOA was working when, in 2018, President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew the United States from the agreement as part of a broader assault by Trump’s administration on arms-control regimes and Obama’s diplomatic legacy.
Trump reimposed the sanctions on Iran that Obama had lifted. With the JCPOA slowly collapsing, Iran resumed work on its nukes. In early January, Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif announced that the country’s scientists had enriched uranium to 20 percent. That’s one stage of enrichment below what’s required to produce weapons-grade uranium.
The JCPAO allows Iran to enrich uranium no higher than four percent, a level adequate to fuel a nuclear power plant.
A few weeks later, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps launched its first Zuljanah space launch vehicle, an 84-foot, three-stage rocket with a new solid-fuel engine in its first and second stages and a liquid-fuel engine in its third stage.
The rocket can loft a 500-pound payload as high as 310 miles, according to the Iranian government.
If you bent the Zuljanah’s trajectory, aiming for distance rather than height, you could carry a one-ton warhead as far as 3,100 miles, Lewis estimated. A weaponized Zuljanah could strike targets as far away as China and the United Kingdom.
The enrichment move and the Zuljanah launch together amount to a naked attempt by officials in Tehran to leverage their emerging nuclear technology for sanctions-relief. “Our measures are fully reversible upon full compliance by all,” Zarif stated.
In other words, Iran has signaled it will halt its nuclearization effort ... if the United States lifts the Trump-era sanctions.
The Biden administration’s position is clear. It wants to restore the JCPOA and stop Iran from getting an atom bomb. “We would like to make sure that we reestablish some of the parameters and constraints around the program that have fallen away over the course of the past two years,” said Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security advisor.
But Biden wants Tehran to make the first move. “If Iran comes back into full compliance with the obligations under the JCPOA ... the United States would do the same, and then use that as a platform to build a longer and stronger agreement that also addresses other areas of concern,” Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said on Friday.
Consider it a game of diplomatic chicken. Which party will move first—and risk weakening its negotiating position?
It’s not inconceivable that Iran might budge first.
Countries rarely surrender—or even freeze—major new strategic technologies once they’ve developed them. That’s why North Korea, a nuclear state since 2006, has proved to be such a vexing diplomatic problem for the rest of the world.
There are exceptions, of course. One of them, Japan, could illuminate the current crisis.
Japan, the first and so-far-only target of an atomic attack, might seem like an unlikely nuclear power. But in the late 1960s, Tokyo considered developing atomic weapons.
Technically, it wouldn’t have been difficult. Japan already possessed all the key technologies—the fruits of a strong domestic nuclear-power and rocket industries. But there were, and still are, strong cultural and political impulses against atomic weapons in Japan.
And besides, as long as Japan and the United States are close allies, America’s own nuclear deterrent helps to protect Japan.
Tokyo decided not to go nuclear. But every few years, the nuclear question reappears in Japanese media—a healthy reminder that politics, not technology, keeps Japan out of the atomic camp.
There’s reason to hope Iran might follow the same path Japan did. Despite having developed all the key technologies for a nuclear weapon, Tehran could stop short of actually building one.
Going nuclear this late in the atomic age can have deep and lasting economic effects, as the world isolates and contains rogue atomic powers by way of permanent sanctions.
Look at what has happened to North Korea. Yes, the regime in Pyongyang has nukes. But it also is a pariah state with minimal access to global markets.
As long as Iran stops short of full nuclearization, it can hope to rejoin the world economy some day—and end up more like Japan than North Korea.
There are hints that key members of the Iranian regime favor the former. Consider that Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, ordered the military to limit the range of its most powerful rockets to just 1,250 miles—and also directed the IRGC to deploy its new solid-fuel engine in a space launcher rather than a weapon.
As with Japan, it might be enough for Iran that it can develop nukes. If Tehran is inclined to trade warheads for economic benefits, then the Biden administration can afford to stand firm and wait for Iran to move first toward compliance with the 2015 deal.
After all, Tehran—jealously eyeing Tokyo’s trade ties—might actually prefer compliance.
