After years of high tensions and fitful diplomacy, it should now be clear to all that there will be no negotiated solution to the Iranian nuclear issue. And although U.S. presidents and Israeli prime ministers have routinely insisted that all options remain on the table, it is unlikely that either the United States or Israel will use overt military force to eliminate Iran’s nuclear program. It is time to start envisioning a world with a nuclear-armed Iran.
Critics of the theocracy in Tehran tend to cast that outcome as a nightmare scenario. In fact, going nuclear could lead to the undoing of the Islamic Republic. Getting the bomb would likely backfire on the regime, in part by sparking a much-needed reset of U.S. policy that would allow Washington to finally focus on the Islamist state itself and not just its nuclear apparatus. A nuclear arsenal would not offer the regime the security it so desperately craves; to the contrary, soon after testing a nuclear weapon, the theocracy would find itself more vulnerable than ever.
