What the attack on Iran’s nuclear sites means for the non-proliferation regime

2026-03-16 - 09:54

On March 2, just a few days into the ongoing war, the United States and Israel carried out attacks on Iran’s Natanz nuclear enrichment facility. After initially disputing the claims, the IAEA later confirmed damage to the entrance buildings of the underground fuel enrichment plant at Natanz, located on the outskirts of Qom. The attack came several months after the 12-day standoff between Iran and Israel, when a similar attack was carried out on the Natanz uranium enrichment site’s underground structures. These attacks have established a dangerous new precedent in global nuclear politics. The targeting of Iranian nuclear facilities — Natanz, Fordow and Isfahan — operating under the IAEA safeguards renders irrelevant the very system designed to ensure nuclear programmes remain peaceful. “Again, they attacked Iran’s peaceful safeguarded nuclear facilities yesterday. Their justification that Iran wants to develop nuclear weapons is simply a big lie,” said Reza Najafi, Iran’s envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). These escalations go far beyond immediate military confrontation. For decades, the international nuclear order has rested on a simple bargain: states that renounce nuclear weapons and accept intrusive international inspections will be protected by international law and norms. The strikes on Iran, however, directly challenge this premise. If facilities operating under international safeguards can still be bombed, what incentive remains for states to accept those safeguards at all? At the same time, the attacks highlight a deeper contradiction at the heart of the global non-proliferation regime: nuclear-armed states and their allies have freedom of action while non-nuclear states remain vulnerable to coercion, intervention and even military attacks. The message that many states are likely to draw from recent events is stark: adherence to non-proliferation norms does not guarantee security, but possession of nuclear weapons might. This article examines how recent geopolitical developments have systematically undermined the foundational principles of the non-proliferation regime, what these developments imply for the upcoming 2026 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference, and what this means for a world where might increasingly trumps right. Selective use of force If the nuclear deterrence theory holds that a nuclear-armed state would refrain from waging war against a nuclear-armed adversary because the consequences of such an act would outweigh the potential benefits, then North Korea vindicates this theoretical assumption. Despite decades of flouting international law, withdrawing from the NPT, conducting multiple nuclear tests, and developing intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the continental United States, Pyongyang has faced sanctions and diplomatic isolation but not military invasion. Its growing nuclear arsenal, despite its comparatively small size, has provided the authoritarian regime with a shield against the kind of forcible regime change that has befallen other states. This contrasts with the fate of states that are rich in resources but lack a nuclear deterrent, case in point: Venezuela. Even protection under international law could not protect the country, which hosts the world’s largest oil reserves, from US military intervention and the subsequent kidnapping of its head of state. Two decades ago, Iraq and Libya, both possessing substantial oil wealth, faced devastating wars despite abandoning their nuclear programmes. The 2003 US invasion of Iraq, which was justified with unfounded and non-existent allegations of “weapons of mass destruction”, resulted in the death of more than a million Iraqis. Similarly, even after Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi voluntarily dismantled his nuclear programme in exchange for normalised relations with the West, his fate remained the same: overthrown and killed in a Nato-backed intervention in 2011. Libya is a cautionary tale that is not lost on other states contemplating their security options. Years later, the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine once again reignited debate over the deterrent value of nuclear weapons. After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine inherited the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal but chose to denuclearise and passed on the weapons to Russia. In exchange, it was given security assurance from the United States, the United Kingdom, and the very Russia that Ukraine is at war with. None of those promises and guarantees, given nearly three decades ago, hold today. And so, the question arises: would Russia have risked a full-scale invasion of a nuclear-armed Ukraine? The counterfactual is difficult to prove definitively, but the invasion sparked widespread discussion about whether the possession of nuclear weapons would have prevented the war. Many also examined how the conflict will spur nuclear armament, with Japan, South Korea, Finland, and Sweden reassessing their military postures. The Ukraine precedent sends a chilling message to any non-nuclear state relying on security guarantees: words are cheap; warheads are not. Double standards If the selective application of force against non-nuclear states undermined the non-proliferation regime’s credibility, the 2025 and 2026 Israeli-American strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities attacked its very foundations. These nuclear facilities were under IAEA safeguards, which were responsible for verifying compliance and making decisions on the agency’s member states as per the safeguards agreement. In the event of non-compliance, there is a diplomatic mechanism to report to the UN Security Council, which, in turn, has several options for dispute resolution under the UN Charter. However, one UNSC member (the United States) and one non-NPT nuclear-armed state (Israel) attacked nuclear facilities operating under international supervision and verification. In an inversion of the non-proliferation regime’s intended logic, the region’s only nuclear weapons state attacked a non-nuclear state’s safeguarded facilities. This was an unprecedented violation of the principle that internationally supervised nuclear facilities should be protected from armed attacks and could have resulted in radiological contamination of the surrounding areas. More importantly, this was an assault on the safeguards system underpinning non-proliferation efforts. The justification for the strikes is also contested. According to IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi, inspectors had found no evidence that Iran was operating a programme to manufacture nuclear weapons. Public statements by US officials likewise suggested that the immediate concern was Tehran’s conventional missile capabilities rather than an imminent nuclear weapons breakout. In other words, the strikes were not undertaken to stop an active nuclear weapons programme. This distinction matters because preventive military action against safeguarded nuclear infrastructure sets a precedent that could fundamentally undermine the logic of nuclear non-proliferation. Ironically, earlier strikes on Iranian nuclear infrastructure appear to have already degraded Tehran’s enrichment capabilities. Damage to the Natanz and Fordow enrichment facilities likely rendered them inoperable for the time being, making it more difficult for Iran to enrich uranium to weapons-grade levels. If Iran had chosen to pursue nuclear weapons, it would likely have taken longer to produce sufficient fissile material after the strikes than it would have beforehand. This further complicates claims that the attacks were necessary to address an imminent nuclear danger. If states cannot trust that compliance with IAEA monitoring will protect their civilian nuclear programs from military strikes, why would they accept intrusive inspections and transparency measures? The message is clear: safeguards offer protection only until geopolitical interests dictate otherwise. Compliance with international norms provides no insurance against the use of force. The contradiction becomes even sharper when Israel’s own nuclear status is considered. Israel is widely believed to possess a significant but undeclared nuclear arsenal while remaining outside the NPT and the IAEA safeguards system. Unlike Iran, an NPT member state whose nuclear facilities are subject to international monitoring, Israel has never accepted full-scope safeguards and maintains a policy of deliberate nuclear ambiguity regarding its capabilities. Yet, a non-NPT nuclear-armed state conducted military strikes against the safeguarded nuclear facilities of an NPT member state without facing comparable international scrutiny or enforcement pressure. For many states, particularly in the Global South, this reinforces long-standing concerns that the non-proliferation regime operates through selective enforcement rather than universal principles. The perception that some states remain permanently exempt from the rules while others are expected to comply with intrusive monitoring inevitably weakens the legitimacy of the broader non-proliferation framework and strengthens arguments that nuclear restraint is applied asymmetrically in practice. Rearranging the deck chairs? The 2026 NPT Review Conference approaches amid this backdrop of institutional and norm erosion. The conference faces multiple challenges: attacks on nuclear facilities in conflict zones, renewed proliferation interest among some states (along with the normalisation of views about states acquiring nuclear weapons), and an increasingly toxic atmosphere in the review process itself. After the failure of the previous two review conferences, the upcoming meeting appears to be headed down the same path. Despite its inherent weaknesses, the NPT has persisted because it provides the legal architecture within which most states operate. The question is whether this architecture can withstand the structural stresses now bearing down on it. The non-proliferation regime comprises multiple pillars beyond the treaty itself, including safeguards, verification mechanisms, export control regimes, and various voluntary measures. Some components are more effective than others, but all depend ultimately on state cooperation and goodwill. When states perceive a lack of reciprocity, when nuclear-weapon states fail to fulfil disarmament obligations under Article VI of NPT while demanding non-proliferation compliance from others, the system’s legitimacy erodes. Progress on disarmament has been particularly disappointing. Forums, including the United Nations, the UN General Assembly and its First Committee, the Conference on Disarmament, and the UN Disarmament Commission, have become exercises in procedural manoeuvring and rhetorical posturing rather than venues for meaningful progress. Structural stressors and discriminatory practices have rendered these bodies roughly as consequential as Model United Nations exercises: plenty of talk, precious little action. This dysfunction contributed directly to the negotiation of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), which entered into force in 2021. The treaty represented frustration among non-nuclear-weapon states with the lack of progress on disarmament under Article VI of the NPT. However, all nuclear-armed states and most of their allies rejected the TPNW, rendering it stillborn from a practical standpoint. The treaty’s negotiation and rejection highlighted the vast chasm between nuclear-weapon states and non-nuclear-weapon states regarding disarmament obligations and timelines. The message to would-be proliferators Argentina, Brazil, Sweden, and Australia are some states that once considered acquiring nuclear weapons before deciding to forgo them. States in the Middle East and North Africa region chose to exercise restraint and signed the NPT. However, there are ongoing debates in South Korea and Japan regarding the necessity of nuclear deterrents. What might these non-nuclear-weapon states infer from recent developments and current trajectories? First, non-proliferation ideals and principles are subordinate to the strategic interests of nuclear-weapon states. Pakistan’s pursuit of nuclear weapons was tacitly accepted by the United States during the 1980s when Islamabad served as a conduit for assistance to Afghan mujahideen fighting Soviet forces. India’s nuclear weapons status was effectively recognised through the 2005 Indo-US Civil Nuclear Agreement and subsequent waiver from the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) guidelines for nuclear trade in 2008, which granted India access to civilian nuclear technology and fuel despite its refusal to sign the NPT. The strategic value to powerful states matters more than non-proliferation compliance. Second, the costs of restraint may exceed its benefits. Libya’s experience shows that forswearing the nuclear option may not prevent eventual military interventions. The Iraq invasion showed that cooperation (however grudgingly) with the inspections regime and no evidence of WMD proliferation does not offer protection if a powerful state decides you’re a threat. Ukraine’s experience demonstrates that security assurances from major powers may prove worthless when they are tested. The non-proliferation bargain, which entails forgoing nuclear weapons in exchange for security guarantees and access to civilian nuclear technology, increasingly looks like a bad deal from the perspective of states concerned about regime survival. Third, the possession of nuclear weapons, while not guaranteeing immunity from all military actions, clearly raises the threshold for major military intervention. North Korea’s continued existence despite its pariah status speaks volumes. The contrast with Iran, Iraq and Libya could hardly be starker. The road ahead The non-proliferation regime faces an existential crisis due to the erosion of the principles and norms that gave it meaning. When powerful states attack safeguarded nuclear facilities, security guarantees prove worthless, and the possession of nuclear weapons demonstrably provides security that international law cannot, the logic of non-proliferation collapses. The 2026 NPT Review Conference will convene amid eroded trust and violated norms. Diplomats will gather, deliver statements, and negotiate texts. However, unless the underlying dynamics change and powerful states recommit to the bargains and principles that made non-proliferation possible, the conference risks becoming another exercise in diplomatic theatre, rearranging deck chairs as the institutional ship takes on water. The tragedy is that the world, if only briefly, understood that nuclear proliferation serves no one’s interests. The NPT, though imperfect, was a collective achievement: a bargain in which nuclear weapons states committed to eventual disarmament, while non-nuclear weapons states foreswore nuclear weapons in exchange for security assurances and access to civilian nuclear technology. This bargain is breaking down because key parties have abandoned their commitments. What replaces it may well be a world of expanded nuclear arsenals, heightened tensions, increased risks of nuclear use, whether intentional or accidental, and the loss of whatever slim margin of safety the non-proliferation regime provided. The warm comfort of international law and collective security is giving way to the cold reality that in a world where principles are sacrificed at the altar of interests, survival depends on self-help measures, and the ultimate form of self-help is a nuclear deterrent. This is the message being sent. Whether intended or not, whether acknowledged or not, states are receiving it. The question is not whether the non-proliferation regime will change in response to these developments. It already is changing. The question is whether this change will be managed through reformed institutions and renewed commitments or whether it will proceed through the chaotic proliferation that the regime was created to prevent. The answer may well determine whether the twenty-first century proves more stable or more dangerous than the twentieth, a century that barely avoided nuclear catastrophe on multiple occasions. The bells are tolling. Whether they mark the end of an era or sound a call for renewal depends on choices yet to be made. Yet the hour is late, and the gathering darkness offers little cause for optimism.