Why Iran, a State Sponsor of Terrorism, Should Never Be Allowed to Have Nukes
Why Iran, a State Sponsor of Terrorism, Should Never Be Allowed to Have Nukes
April 23, 2026
There are nine nuclear-armed nations, and Iran wishes to be the tenth. For decades, the United States, along with European allies, has been trying to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, producing several iterations of the Iran nuclear deal, all of which failed to stop Iran’s progress. This is one of the primary reasons President Trump decided in 2025 and again in 2026 to launch strikes against Iran.
Opponents of those strikes have attempted to rewrite history by claiming Iran has no ambition to build nuclear weapons, that Iran has stopped trying, that the nuclear treaty would have prevented Iran from obtaining weapons and that Trump was wrong to withdraw, that the strikes either irreversibly destroyed Iran’s nuclear program or did nothing to it, that Iran should have nuclear weapons because other nations do, and that Iran poses a threat to no one.
None of these claims holds up. Iran’s nuclear ambitions are not recent. The country’s program drew intense international pressure starting in 2002, when an anti-regime group alleged that Iran had secretly built a pair of nuclear facilities, and the IAEA confirmed that until 2003, Iran had a “structured program” to carry out activities relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device.
In October 2025, former Iranian defense minister Ali Shamkhani stated, “If I returned to the defense portfolio, I would move toward building an atomic bomb,” and declared that if he could return to the 1990s, “we would definitely build the atomic bomb.” According to the Institute for International Political Studies, sources in Tehran reported that in October 2025, Khamenei had authorized the development of miniaturized nuclear warheads for ballistic missiles, despite denials issued at earlier dates.
Those who claim Iran has ceased pursuing weapons must contend with the IAEA’s own record. In December 2024, IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi said that Tehran was “dramatically” ramping up uranium enrichment to up to 60 percent, close to the roughly 90 percent weapons-grade threshold. By February 2025, U.S. intelligence indicated that a covert team of scientists was orchestrating a faster, though cruder, approach to creating an atomic weapon. As of the June 2025 strikes, Iran had enriched some 972 pounds of uranium up to 60 percent purity, according to IAEA estimates.
The claim that the JCPOA would have permanently prevented Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons is contradicted by the deal’s own structure. The JCPOA contained sunset provisions, including lifting limits on centrifuges after 10 years and reduced enrichment caps lasting only 15 years, leading to concerns that the deal would only temporarily delay Iran’s nuclear program. The United Against Nuclear Iran assessment said that the deal provides Iran with a clear pathway to nuclear weapons, as enrichment and plutonium-processing restrictions end between 2026 and 2031, potentially reducing breakout time to weeks, if not days.
Then-President Obama acknowledged in 2015 that after those restrictions expired, breakout time would fall to “almost down to zero.” RAND summarized the structural problem: the original JCPOA was not a permanent limitation but a pause, after which Iran could drop the Additional Protocol and sprint to develop a nuclear weapon.
Trump withdrew from the deal in 2018 for precisely these reasons. The White House announcement stated that the JCPOA enriched the Iranian regime and enabled its malign behavior, while at best delaying its ability to pursue nuclear weapons and allowing it to preserve nuclear research and development. Trump called it “the worst deal ever,” so terrible it could lead to “a nuclear holocaust.”
On the question of whether the 2025 strikes fully destroyed or had no effect on Iran’s nuclear program, both extremes are false. On March 3, 2026, the IAEA confirmed that while recent bombings had failed to destroy the Natanz nuclear facility, significant damage to its entrance buildings had made it inaccessible. Iran was simultaneously working to reconstitute its program.
According to the Alma Research and Education Center, Iran was using the opening of negotiations to transfer centrifuges and sensitive equipment to protected production lines deep underground, while parallel excavation of a new facility south of Natanz continued with greater intensity. The full extent of damage to Iran’s enrichment program remains unclear, as the IAEA withdrew inspectors in June 2025 and has not been able to inspect the attacked facilities.
The argument that Iran poses no threat to other nations is refuted by its documented record. The Iranian regime is responsible for the deaths of at least 603 American service members in Iraq since 2003, accounting for 17 percent of all U.S. personnel deaths in Iraq from 2003 to 2011. Iran prosecutes this campaign primarily through the IRGC, which reports directly to the Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah, who is currently assumed to be Mojtaba Khamenei, and operates independently of Iran’s regular military.
The IRGC supports the operations of a vast network of proxy militias, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza, and the Houthis in Yemen. The United States designated the IRGC a Foreign Terrorist Organization in April 2019 under Section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act. In January 2026, the 27-member European Union formally designated the IRGC as a terrorist organization at a meeting of EU foreign ministers.
Washington considers Iran the foremost state sponsor of terrorism, spending more than $1 billion on terrorist financing annually. The Defense Intelligence Agency reported that Houthi maritime terrorism resulted in a 90 percent drop in container shipping through the Red Sea, which under normal conditions accounted for up to 15 percent of international maritime trade.
In February 2026, the IRGC launched 21 confirmed attacks on merchant ships in the Strait of Hormuz and reportedly laid sea mines. It then declared the strait closed, prompting Maersk, CMA CGM, and Hapag-Lloyd to suspend transits and triggering the largest oil supply disruption since the 1970s energy crisis.
Between 2019 and 2025, Iran or its proxies were responsible for the drone and missile attack that destroyed five percent of global oil production capacity at Saudi Aramco’s Abqaiq facility. They also carried out sustained campaigns against U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria that resulted in American casualties. Houthi interdiction of Red Sea shipping disrupted global supply chains.
Following the February 2026 U.S.-Israeli strikes, Iran fired ballistic missile barrages at U.S. military installations across Qatar, Kuwait, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Iraq, Oman, and Jordan, while NATO forces intercepted Iranian drones and missiles near Turkey’s Incirlik Air Base.
Iran has the largest ballistic missile inventory in the Middle East, with its longest-range missiles reportedly capable of striking targets up to 2,000 kilometers away, covering all of the Middle East and part of Europe. Nuclear weapons under this behavioral pattern would not change Iran’s strategic objectives; they would remove the constraints on pursuing them.
Granting nuclear weapons to a state whose own military force is a designated terrorist organization would, by definition, place nuclear capability in the hands of terrorists, an outcome prohibited under U.S. law and incompatible with any reasonable standard of international security.
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Author: Antonio Graceffo
