On June 21, the United States carried out coordinated strikes on three key nuclear sites in Iran at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan, marking a dangerous escalation in an already volatile region.
US President Donald Trump declared the operation a success, describing it as a “decisive blow” to Iran’s nuclear ambitions. But beneath the display of force lies a deeper strategic unraveling of deterrence, legality and diplomacy. The implications are not just regional; they strike at the foundations of international order.
Since withdrawing from the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the US has steadily dismantled the diplomatic architecture meant to prevent Iran from building a nuclear bomb.
That agreement, brokered under the Obama administration, had imposed limits on enrichment levels, centrifuge capacity and stockpiles while subjecting Iran’s program to the most intrusive international inspections regime in history.
When Trump exited the deal in 2018, there remained a fragile understanding that military strikes would be a last resort, triggered only by the imminent threat of weaponization. That threshold, too, has now been obliterated. The US attack did not respond to an active Iranian assault nor any verified and credible evidence of an impending breakout.
It was a preventive strike,an action taken not against what Iran had done but what it might someday do. In doing so, Washington has helped normalize a dangerous precedent: the use of force against nuclear latency. If left unchallenged, this will become a new standard where mere suspicion or potential capability is sufficient to justify armed intervention.
Such actions make a mockery of international law, as under the UN Charter military action is permissible only in self-defense against an armed attack or with UN Security Council approval. Preemptive war, particularly in the absence of imminent danger, sits well outside those bounds.
Legal scholars and former officials have pointed to the lack of Congressional authorization as yet another red flag. While some key Republican lawmakers were briefed, the broader legislature was bypassed. For a democracy that proclaims its commitment to constitutional checks and balances, the executive branch’s unilateral decision to strike another sovereign nation’s territory risking regional war should be cause for alarm.
What the strike reveals most clearly, however, is the erosion of nuclear deterrence theory itself. Kenneth Waltz, the late realist theorist, famously argued in his 2012 essay “Why Iran Should Get the Bomb” that nuclear weapons stabilize international politics by imposing extreme caution on all sides.
The logic was simple: no state would launch a major war if the cost could be its own destruction. But this only works if the threat is credible. Iran, despite years of enrichment and hardened facilities, still lacks a nuclear weapon. And that is precisely why it could be bombed. Had it crossed the threshold into full deterrent capability like North Korea, it would likely have been spared.
The consequences of this inversion are profound – the global non-proliferation regime, already weakened, now faces a grim paradox: states that forgo the bomb can be attacked, while those that acquire it are tolerated. This does not incentivize restraint; it rewards defiance. It tells every state watching that nuclear ambiguity is a liability, not a buffer, and it pushes them closer to the edge.
Meanwhile, Israel’s role in this escalation has gone largely unexamined in US discourse. For over a week, Israeli jets and missiles pounded Iranian targets with near-total impunity, including strikes on airports and suspected military sites deep inside the country.
The US not only failed to restrain this aggression is now fully aligned with it. The Israeli campaign, undertaken under the pretext of self-defense, has already killed hundreds and widened the scope of the conflict. Yet international condemnation has been sparse, while the US has provided both rhetorical and operational cover.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant called the US intervention a “bold decision for all of humanity,” confirming that the strikes were carried out in full coordination with Tel Aviv. But this coordination isn’t mere partnership – it reflects a troubling permissiveness that allows Israel to act with impunity while escalating conflicts that ultimately entangle Washington.
This pattern is not new. From the 1981 Osirak reactor strike in Iraq to recent operations in Syria and Lebanon, Israel has regularly launched unilateral military action under the banner of preemption. But the current episode is different in scale and consequence.
The integration of US firepower into Israel’s campaign now gives this war a global dimension, destabilizing not only Iran but a broader region reaching at least from southern Lebanon to western Iraq.
The risk of broader escalation is now centered on the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly 20% of the world’s traded oil passes. Iran has placed its Revolutionary Guard naval units on high alert, and though no direct response has occurred yet, just the hint of disruption in the Strait has sent oil prices soaring, with Brent crude rising by over 12% since the initial Israeli strikes began.
The strikes may have delayed Iran’s technical progress by months, perhaps even a year, but the long-term damage is incalculable. Iran is now more likely to accelerate its nuclear program, less likely to negotiate and more inclined to retaliate via asymmetric or regional means. Every calculation that previously constrained escalation – mutual deterrence, global norms, political cost – is now in flux.
The true casualty is not Iran’s nuclear infrastructure but the idea that global security can be managed without resort to force. The US has made clear: those who hesitate are targets while those who cross the nuclear line are immune. That is not a doctrine of peace; it is a blueprint for proliferation.
