The Age of Nuclear Proliferation

The ill-conceived Iran War has set a nuclear cascade in motion

I am haunted by the feeling that, unless we are successful… we see the possibility of having to face a world in which 15 or 20 or 25 nations may have these weapons. I regard that as the greatest possible danger and hazard.

— President John F. Kennedy, 21 March 1963

Eight months before his fateful drive down Elm Street, President Kennedy gave a grim assessment from the White House podium, projecting that without a binding international treaty, the age of nuclear proliferation was imminent. Ambitious middle powers would seize the moment, gather the funding and scientific resources, and drive towards the ultimate weapon.

While Kennedy projected that the 1970s would be the era of this cascade, it appears his prediction may have been 50 years off kilter—the 2020s are emerging as the real decade of detonation.

Iran’s lesson from the school of hard knocks

The war to end the nuclear threat posed by the Islamic Republic of Iran may ultimately prove an unintended catalyst for nuclear proliferation—not only by driving Iran toward nuclearization, but by encouraging numerous other nations to pursue nuclear weapons development as well.

For decades under the leadership of Ayatollah Ali Khamanei, Iran pursued a “latent deterrent” strategy, maintaining a civilian nuclear program that could be altered towards weaponization if necessary. This strategy attempted to delicately thread the needle, tacitly complying with international law and the Ayatollah’s fatwa against nuclear weapons development while deterring Western aggression through the threat of unconstrained enrichment.

This strategy failed spectacularly. Although the latent deterrent compelled the Obama Administration into an international arrangement, it failed to foresee the rise of a hawkish successor who could annihilate years of diplomatic progress with the stroke of a pen.

Trump was not only unafraid to toss aside the binding diplomatic deal, but was comfortable enough to order the assassination of the IRGC’s key regional facilitator General Qasem Soleimani in January 2020 and then to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities directly during Midnight Hammer in June 2025. Iran’s responses—meager, telegraphed attacks on regional bases—failed to strike fear into the hearts of US political leaders.

Despite these flagrant breaches of Iranian sovereignty, the US’s top intelligence agencies assessed that Iran’s ailing Ayatollah stuck to his latent threat strategy and did not commit to nuclear weapons development.

Ayatollah Khamenei would ultimately pay for this hesitation with his life.

Despite the decapitation and over 23,000 airstrikes, the US/Israeli War has failed to achieve any of its objectives. For the first time in many years, Iran has been able to establish a tangible deterrence. With Hormuz controlled, its institutions intact, oil rerouted, proxies enflamed, drones multiplying, and Russian targeting information in place, Iran is, for lack of a better term, ”feeling itself” on the battlefield.

The US and Israel are on their back foot as advanced offensive munitions and missile interceptors have dwindled to critical levels, Gulf allies are begging for a way out, and oil prices are ticking ever higher.

After the failure of the MOU, the reclusive Mojtaba Khamenei and the IRGC now appear aligned in their commitment to strategic escalation. Iranian leaders have already ordered the immediate reconstruction of damaged nuclear facilities and Mojtaba Khamenei—if he has the capacity for reason and a penchant for self preservation—has likely endorsed the development of a real nuclear weapons program.

Trump’s gamble has shifted the Iranian nuclear question from if to when.

Saudi Arabia prepares for the worst

“If they get one, we have to get one.”

Prince Mohammed bin Salman on the prospect of Iranian nuclear weapons in a September 2023 appearance on Fox News.

Flailing in murky oil-laden waters, Saudi Arabia is desperately seeking alternatives. The nation is currently facing a multi-front war as Yemen’s Houthis target Saudi oil facilities and offshore tankers in the Red Sea and Iranian proxies in Iraq launch probing attacks in the country’s east. Iran itself has held off from further strikes on its Saudi adversaries for several few weeks, but reports of planned Iranian barrages linger.

Amid this turmoil, Saudi Arabia has unveiled two major international agreements: the first, a deal with the United States to develop a civilian nuclear enrichment program—which appears to be in limbo amid Israeli pushback—and the second, a new defense pact between the “brotherly” nations of Pakistan, Türkiye, and Saudi Arabia.

The timing of the latter sends a clear message—we can do this with you, or without you.

Although Trump endorsed the Mecca Pact as an America-First foreign policy move to cut back Middle East dependence on the US, an independent defense pact between a nuclear-armed muslim nation and two non-Abraham Accords Israeli adversaries is clearly not in his, or Israel’s, interests.

Although it has not explicitly outlined such plans, the pact opens the door for the staging, leasing, or loaning of nuclear weapons from Pakistan to Saudi Arabia or Türkiye. Such a deployment may become a necessity for Saudi Arabia in the event Iran successfully develops a nuclear warhead. From their perspective, without a nuclear deterrent, the Shia powerbase of Iran could exact incredible concessions from the Sunni world and rise to dominate the region.

Whether through its own development or through regional alliances, Saudi Arabia is keen to obtain the ultimate deterrent.

South Korea’s 1974 Déjà vu

South Korea is facing their greatest security dilemma since the end of the Korean War as Trump’s jingoism reaches a fever pitch.

On August 16, the US President fired off a shocking Truth Social, declaring that the US was done with “inappropriate” and “hostile” joint military exercises on the Korean peninsula that have been a hallmark of the US-SK partnership for decades. Trump dragged the exercises as costly, pointless, and rubbed salt in the wounds of the South Koreans by saying the decision was motivated in part by his “very good relationship with Kim Jong Un.”

Over the course of his second administration, Trump has shaken the South Koreans to their core by imposing punitive tariffs on the key trade partnership, moving critical missile interceptors away from the peninsula towards the Iran theatre, and blasting the ally as ungrateful and irrelevant.

Meanwhile, South Korea’s hostile and nuclearized neighbor to the North is more emboldened than ever. Over the last few years, North Korea has revived its plummeting economy through a combination of collaborative manufacturing deals with China, ambitious cryptocurrency heists, and arms sales and personnel leases to Russia amid its war in Ukraine. Its growing confidence has been manifested in increasingly provocative ballistic missile tests, the most recent of which involved a long-range missile being fired into the sea between Japan and South Korea.

With South Korea’s primary security lifeline fraying, and no viable security partner substitutes, the nation is almost certainly considering nuclear weapons development.

It wouldn’t be the first time, either. Fearing the US was permanently pivoting away from Asia as it licked its wounds from the disastrous Vietnam War, South Korea’s President Park Chung-hee launched a covert program in 1974 to develop nuclear weapons. Teams of scientists and engineers were assembled, infrastructure plans were drawn up, and the South Koreans began reaching out to French and Canadian nuclear power plants for key reactor components.

Upon discovering their ambitions, the outraged Kissinger State Department intervened and coerced the French into abandoning any nuclear developments with South Korea. To ensure no further nuclear endeavors were initiated, Defense Secretary James Schlesinger made commitments to the lasting defense of South Korea, and the country signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1975.

While the NPT remains in effect, South Korea may judge that in the year 2026 practical security trumps international law. The mask has clearly fallen as the US has not only ignored international legal statutes but has engaged in an all out assault on key institutions including the United Nations and the International Criminal Court (ICC).

South Korea still has the dragon in the room to consider. China is the nation’s most important trade partner and will certainly use their immense leverage to prevent South Korea from obtaining nuclear weapons. Nevertheless, South Korea’s security situation is increasingly trending towards existentialism, and the capitalist democracy may have no choice but to level the playing field with their nuclearized northern counterpart.

Wave Dynamics

If Iran, Saudi Arabia, and South Korea are able to nuclearize in the next five years, wave dynamics dictate that more are to follow. The most likely contender is Türkiye–who are on the periphery of NATO, are facing escalating Israeli aggression, and are unlikely to be supported by the American, British, or French nuclear deterrent in any conflict scenario. Other nations with a potential nuclear interest include Algeria, Afghanistan, Egypt, Ethiopia, Japan, and Morocco. The NPT is unlikely to sway nations away from nuclear weapons development if the dominos truly begin to fall.

Countries aligned with US power are bound to seek the ultimate insurance policy amid American incoherence, and nations opposed to the US are taking notes from the most validated strategist of the twenty-first century — Kim Jong Il.