WAR WITH IRAN MORE LIKELY TO GAURANTEE, NOT PREVENT, NUCLEAR WEAPONS ACQUISITION

WED 18 JUNE 2025

PEOPLE FOR NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT

HUMAN SURVIVAL PROJECT

WAR WITH IRAN MORE LIKELY TO GAURANTEE, NOT PREVENT, NUCLEAR WEAPONS ACQUISITION

AUSTRALIA MUST HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH MILITARY ACTION

US military action against Iran, in concert with that of Israel, is as likely to positively ensure that Iran leaves the NPT and acquires nuclear weapons as a national security priority, as it is to induce it to sign a deal that eschews nuclear weapons forever, and is as likely to cement the current regime in power over the much longer term as it is to destabilise it and induce regime change, absent actual US invasion.

Invasion and occupation would be itself a risky and uncertain business with a colossal body count and uncertain outcome that could go on forever.

While the current Iranian regime is thoroughly objectionable, military action and war are more likely to result in a closing of the ranks than an uprising against it, and more likely to result in the deaths of bright young unorthodox Iranians such as poet Parnia Abbassi, whose poem is after the end of this statement. War creates precisely the conditions in which they can be gaoled by the regime if they have not been killed by the bombs of Israel or the US.

While over the immediate term, significant damage appears to have been done to centrifuge cascades at Natanz, those at Fordow are, for now, undamaged. Fordow is deeply buried and will take much more to damage.

It is not certain if there are (or are not) other, deeply buried and invulnerable cascades that might be used for enriching weapons grade uranium.

As things currently stand, there is an Islamic 'Fatwa' (legal judgement), that says that nuclear weapons are un – Islamic. So far as we can tell it is this, and not any diplomatic considerations, that really prevents Iranian acquisition of a nuclear weapon. Iran has taken decades – decades in which it has completed all the steps EXCEPT the actual construction of warheads – to not construct warheads. This fragile legal judgement is in reality the ONLY obstacle to warhead assembly.

It seems Iran has been doing the necessary implosion testing to design warheads that will work.

You can bet there are powerful sections of Iran’s military who even before the current crisis, have urged the Fatwa be set aside and warheads assembled.

Now, it would be amazing if they are not already in the drivers seat.

Overt war with the US is all they need to put them there, if they aren’t there already.

The war by Netenyahu has already shown that Iran will be anything but a military pushover.

Iran has already succeeded to inflict punishment on Tel Aviv that cannot have been anticipated by Israeli military planners, and that sows doubt as to the effectiveness of 'Iron Dome'.

Both sides need to step back from confrontation and de-escalate immediately, not escalate further and go deeper into a war in which it is hard to see how there could be a victory for either side.

At the same time it is easy to construct frightening escalatory sequences that could create a much much wider conflict, possibly involving the use of nuclear weapons.

The US Congress would be wise to adopt the draft legislation submitted by Rho Khanna and others that reserves to Congress alone the right to go to war with Iran.

It is to be fervently hoped that Australia will have the good sense to have absolutely nothing to do with this senseless conflict – unless we chose to act as a mediator or in a peacekeeping capacity.

Australia should however, bend all its diplomatic effort to end the conflict and offer our services as a mediator, giving us a role as a peace-maker not a war-monger.

John Hallam

Nuclear Disarmament Campaigner

People for Nuclear Disarmament

Human Survival Project

Co-Convenor, Abolition 2000 Nuclear Risk Reduction Working Group

Australian Convenor, PNND,

Member, No First Use Global Steering Committee

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