Dismantle, weaponize, or rebuild: Why the Iran nuclear threat isn’t going away

Bulletin By Sina Azodi | Analysis | October 29, 2026

Iran now faces one of the most consequential nuclear decisions. In less than a year, the United States twice used military force to destroy key infrastructure and prevent Tehran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. These strikes have set Iran’s nuclear program back by severely degrading its nuclear enrichment capacity. But they have not eliminated the scientific expertise, industrial capacity, and political motivations that sustained the program for decades. Still, the attacks exposed the weakness of Iran’s previous strategy, which thought that by advancing its program but remaining below the nuclear threshold, Tehran was effectively deterring attacks from its adversaries. It failed.

Tehran now must choose between three main broad options: Dismantle its nuclear program, weaponize it, or rebuild its latent nuclear capacity while still being under the nuclear threshold. Despite its evident failure to deter foreign adversaries, the third path remains the most plausible. Dismantlement would require Iran to abandon three decades of technological investment in exchange for uncertain external guarantees of nuclear fuel delivery. Weaponization, meanwhile, would invite further military strikes and trigger a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. In contrast, rebuilding a latent capacity is already a tested strategy for Iran, allowing it to preserve its technological autonomy and leverage while avoiding immediate costs of acquiring a nuclear arsenal.

Dismantling. The first—and least likely—option resembles the so-called Libya model. Under that arrangement, Libya agreed to dismantle key elements of its nuclear infrastructure and transfer sensitive enrichment equipment abroad in return for sanctions relief and improved relations with the West. Applied to Iran, such a scenario would require Tehran to dismantle its enrichment facilities and renounce domestic uranium enrichment in exchange for sweeping sanctions relief, trade, access to civilian nuclear reactors, and guaranteed supplies of nuclear fuel from abroad………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Weaponizing. In a second and less likely scenario, Iranian leaders may conclude that the country has already absorbed the costs associated with approaching the nuclear threshold—sanctions, sabotage, diplomatic isolation, and two wars—without obtaining the deterrent protection of possessing an actual nuclear weapon. From this perspective, continuing to remain just short of the bomb could appear unsustainable and weaponization the only option to restore deterrence. While Tehran might attempt to rapidly produce a nuclear weapon using its remaining nuclear materials, acquiring a single device would not necessarily translate into a credible nuclear deterrent. Therefore, while the weaponization and rebuilding options are not mutually exclusive, their distinction lies in Tehran’s main objective………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… the weaponization scenario would also risk triggering a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. Saudi officials have repeatedly threatened to acquire their own nuclear weapons if Iran develops a bomb. This would put Iran into a nuclear arms race with Saudi Arabia and Israel, both of which have superior conventional firepower, better financial resources, and stronger military alliances…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Rebuilding. The third, and most likely, scenario is a return to pre-June 2025 threshold status, in which Iran reconstructs its nuclear capacity but refrains from crossing the finish line. Publicly available information indicates that Iran is rapidly rebuilding its pre-war nuclear infrastructure and working to finish a more fortified enrichment facility at Pickaxe Mountain. Rather than abandoning enrichment or rushing toward the bomb, Tehran could seek to restore a latent nuclear capability while making the program more resilient to future attack. Rebuilding the program may not represent a credible means of restoring deterrence, but an effort to preserve Iran’s nuclear options while avoiding the other alternatives…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

By remaining within the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and accepting robust international inspections, Tehran could negotiate limits to its nuclear program, stockpile, and inspections in return for verifiable sanctions relief, trade, and foreign investment. That flexibility could prove especially valuable after the enormous damage that the sanctions and the two recent wars have done to the Iranian economy………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

The destruction of Iran’s nuclear facilities may have bought time for Washington, but military force alone cannot resolve the Iranian nuclear challenge. If the United States is to prevent an Iranian nuclear arsenal, the central policy challenge is therefore to alter the incentives surrounding that choice. Any durable agreement would need to combine verifiable limits on enrichment and uranium stockpiles with robust inspections and tangible economic benefits for permanent restraint, while preserving substantial costs for a move toward weaponization. Without such an arrangement, repeated military strikes may delay Iran’s program without resolving the calculation that sustains it and could ultimately strengthen the argument inside Iran’s political system that only nuclear weapons can provide lasting security. https://thebulletin.org/2026/10/dismantle-weaponize-or-rebuild-why-the-iran-nuclear-threat-isnt-going-away/

https://thebulletin.org/2026/10/dismantle-weaponize-or-rebuild-why-the-iran-nuclear-threat-isnt-going-away/