On Wednesday, U.S. President Donald Trump suggested that U.S. and Israeli military operations had effectively closed the Iran nuclear file: “The only thing we’d be asking for [in future talks with Iran] is what we were asking for before, about ‘we want no nuclear’—but we destroyed the nuclear.” Yet even if the president’s claims that Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities have been “completely and totally obliterated” prove to be correct (and this is far from guaranteed), the recent conflict has ushered in a period of significant nuclear uncertainty, which threatens to fester if not swiftly addressed.
Iran’s nuclear program has clearly been damaged, although it is too early to know just how badly. Other developments are less reassuring. Iran appears to have retained custody over its stockpiles of highly enriched uranium, likely enough to fuel multiple bombs if further enriched. As U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance told ABC News on Sunday, “We are going to work in the coming weeks to ensure that we do something with that fuel, and that’s one of the things that we’re going to have conversations with the Iranians about.”
Although Trump has questioned whether a new nuclear deal is necessary, in reality, deft diplomacy will be needed both to facilitate peace and to prevent metastatic uncertainty about Iran’s residual capabilities from spawning crises for years to come. Such negotiations are rarely straightforward, especially with Tehran. Unfortunately, recent events have also undermined many of the tools and institutions that the United States and others have historically relied on to offset nuclear risks.
Tehran’s strategy of hovering at the nuclear threshold has clearly failed to deter external attacks, not only against nuclear facilities but also against regime and military targets. There is a real danger that this will harden its resolve to acquire nuclear weapons. If Iran does pursue the bomb, whether now or in the future, it will probably opt for proliferation pathways that are more difficult to monitor. Iran would not need to rebuild large-scale facilities like Natanz or Fordow if it decided to sprint for the bomb, and smaller sites would be harder to reliably detect, even with exquisite intelligence. With access to highly enriched uranium, advanced centrifuge components, and skilled personnel (conditions that almost certainly apply right now), the current or a future regime could potentially reconstitute a nuclear weapons program in relatively short order.
Even if Iran’s nuclear weapons program is never resuscitated, assessing that these ambitions remain dormant will demand vigilance, resources, and attention for years to come. And Tehran, which has a track record of concealing nuclear activities, will struggle to convince the international community that it has given up the pursuit.
In this context, the evident deterioration of Iran’s relationship with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)—the global watchdog that safeguards civilian nuclear programs against misuse—is particularly troubling. The agency played a crucial role in past efforts to roll back Iran’s nuclear program, including in the implementation of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). The JCPOA granted the agency unprecedented access to Iran’s nuclear program, including facilities that were bombed in recent weeks.
Prior to the war, relations between Iran and the IAEA were already on a concerning trajectory. After the first Trump administration pulled out of the JCPOA in 2018 (Tehran was in compliance at the time), Iran started to progressively walk away from its own commitments under that agreement. In February 2021, the regime stopped implementing its Additional Protocol with the IAEA, a safeguards provision that expands information-sharing and inspector access. It has also curtailed most JCPOA-specific monitoring requirements, which were designed to make covert activities harder to hide by enhancing oversight at multiple points in the nuclear fuel cycle.
Routine safeguards inspections have continued, providing some insight into Iran’s increasingly sophisticated program, although mounting intransigence prompted the IAEA’s Board of Governors to declare Iran to be in breach of its nonproliferation commitments on June 12. Israel launched its campaign the next day, and Vance cited the IAEA’s findings in the run-up to U.S. strikes.
Although inspections were suspended during the conflict, the IAEA continued monitoring the situation to the best of its abilities and exhorting Iran to maintain its dialogue with the IAEA Incident and Emergency Centre. As IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi told the U.N. Security Council, “Nuclear facilities and material must not be shrouded by the fog of war.”
Yet, as the fog clears, there are questions about what role the agency will be able to play going forward. At least for now, Iran remains party to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and is still bound by its Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement, which requires states to declare nuclear materials and facilities to the IAEA and allow inspectors to verify they are not being diverted for nefarious ends. Moreover, if Iran concedes to the Trump administration’s somewhat nebulous demands that it permanently give up nuclear weapons, the IAEA’s technical expertise and familiarity with the program’s history would be invaluable in assuring the international community that the capacity to weaponize cannot be easily reconstituted.
For Iran, however, cooperating with the IAEA will be politically contentious, especially after recent events, and a growing chorus of domestic malcontent augurs future challenges. Iranian officials, including Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, have lambasted the international community for failing to prevent or adequately condemn attacks on civilian nuclear facilities under IAEA safeguards. During the conflict, Ali Larijani, an advisor to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, even threatened the IAEA chief: “Once the war is over, we will deal with Grossi.” Officials have already stated that they will stop sharing certain information with the agency, and the Iranian parliament recently passed a bill calling for the government to suspend Iran’s cooperation with the IAEA altogether.
In the days and weeks to come, policymakers will have to carefully distinguish between Iran’s legitimate frustrations and domestic political constraints and attempts to manipulate these conditions to mask clandestine proliferation ambitions. Indeed, the foreseeable future will be characterized by considerable speculation about both Iran’s capabilities and its intentions.
Given how sophisticated Iran’s nuclear program has become, and how much damage its nuclear facilities have recently absorbed, restoring verification baselines will be crucial in the coming weeks and months. In his Wednesday remarks, Trump said the United States and Iran would hold talks next week; these baselines should be a key focus. The international community needs to know what capabilities Iran has retained after these attacks and identify equipment and materials that could be used to reconstitute the program at a later point.
Some uncertainty is inevitable, though suspicions will run high if Iran appears uncooperative (or if policymakers and the public have to take Tehran’s words at face value). Although Iraq dismantled its nuclear program after its defeat in the first Gulf War, the international community did not trust its own success, in part because of relentless Iraqi obstruction. Over time, these incidents provided endless fodder for skeptics and pretext for indefinite interventions. Solving the nuclear question in this manner did not result in regional stability.
If all parties, including Iran, aspire to more than a temporary respite between nuclear crises, they should prioritize restoring some degree of transparency, ideally through multilateral mechanisms. Although recent events have showcased the sophistication of Israeli and U.S. intelligence penetration, public inconsistencies regarding the imminent, or not-so-imminent, threat of Iranian weaponization also underscore the perils of relying exclusively on these sources (and how leaders interpret them). Iran’s grievances with the IAEA may prove insurmountable, but in the absence of cooperation, future crises will be hard to avoid and even harder to de-escalate.
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