What the attack on Iran’s nuclear sites means for the non-proliferation regime

On March 2, just a few days into the ongoing war, the United States and Israel carried out attacks on Iran’s Natanz nuclear enrichment facility.

After initially disputing the claims, the IAEA later confirmed damage to the entrance buildings of the underground fuel enrichment plant at Natanz, located on the outskirts of Qom. The attack came several months after the 12-day standoff between Iran and Israel, when a similar attack was carried out on the Natanz uranium enrichment site’s underground structures.

These attacks have established a dangerous new precedent in global nuclear politics. The targeting of Iranian nuclear facilities — Natanz, Fordow and Isfahan — operating under the IAEA safeguards renders irrelevant the very system designed to ensure nuclear programmes remain peaceful. “Again, they attacked Iran’s peaceful safeguarded nuclear facilities yesterday. Their justification that Iran wants to develop nuclear weapons is simply a big lie,” said Reza Najafi, Iran’s envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

These escalations go far beyond immediate military confrontation. For decades, the international nuclear order has rested on a simple bargain: states that renounce nuclear weapons and accept intrusive international inspections will be protected by international law and norms. The strikes on Iran, however, directly challenge this premise.

If facilities operating under international safeguards can still be bombed, what incentive remains for states to accept those safeguards at all?

If facilities operating under international safeguards can still be bombed, what incentive remains for states to accept those safeguards at all?

At the same time, the attacks highlight a deeper contradiction at the heart of the global non-proliferation regime: nuclear-armed states and their allies have freedom of action while non-nuclear states remain vulnerable to coercion, intervention and even military attacks. The message that many states are likely to draw from recent events is stark: adherence to non-proliferation norms does not guarantee security, but possession of nuclear weapons might.

This article examines how recent geopolitical developments have systematically undermined the foundational principles of the non-proliferation regime, what these developments imply for the upcoming 2026 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference, and what this means for a world where might increasingly trumps right.

Selective use of force

If the nuclear deterrence theory holds that a nuclear-armed state would refrain from waging war against a nuclear-armed adversary because the consequences of such an act would outweigh the potential benefits, then North Korea vindicates this theoretical assumption.

Despite decades of flouting international law, withdrawing from the NPT, conducting multiple nuclear tests, and developing intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the continental United States, Pyongyang has faced sanctions and diplomatic isolation but not military invasion. Its growing nuclear arsenal, despite its comparatively small size, has provided the authoritarian regime with a shield against the kind of forcible regime change that has befallen other states.

This contrasts with the fate of states that are rich in resources but lack a nuclear deterrent, case in point: Venezuela. Even protection under international law could not protect the country, which hosts the world’s largest oil reserves, from US military intervention and the subsequent kidnapping of its head of state.

Two decades ago, Iraq and Libya, both possessing substantial oil wealth, faced devastating wars despite abandoning their nuclear programmes.

The 2003 US invasion of Iraq, which was justified with unfounded and non-existent allegations of “weapons of mass destruction”, resulted in the death of more than a million Iraqis. Similarly, even after Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi voluntarily dismantled his nuclear programme in exchange for normalised relations with the West, his fate remained the same:........

© Dawn Prism