If Iran goes nuclear, the Middle East enters its most dangerous era

Iran’s rulers appear to be acting as though they have little left to lose, while Islamist extremist voices advocating more confrontational policies have gained the upper hand in Tehran.

By Wahied Wahdat-Hagh, Middle East Forum

Ebrahim Rezaei, spokesman for the National Security and Foreign Policy Committee in the Islamic Republic’s parliament, said on July 8, 2026, that Tehran was weighing possible responses should the United States attack again.

Among the options under consideration, he said, were withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, a change in Iran’s nuclear doctrine, and the closure of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, along with the Strait of Hormuz.

His statement did not come in isolation. Iran’s rulers increasingly are relying on revolutionary extremist Islamist figures aligned with the Paydari Front and the political camp of Expediency Council member Saeed Jalili.

In October 2024, Iranian newspapers reported that 39 members of Iran’s pseudo-parliament had called on the Supreme National Security Council to reconsider the Islamic Republic’s “defense doctrine,” arguing that Tehran’s strategy should be reassessed because Israel is widely believed to possess nuclear weapons.

Hossein Shariatmadari, a political analyst and managing editor of Kayhan, said on July 8 that technology no longer constrains Iran’s path to a nuclear weapon; political will is the major factor. He argued there is no reason for negotiations as the United States understands only “the language of power.”

Shariatmadari’s argument follows the logic of a seasoned hostage-taker: The Islamic Republic should use its ability to disrupt global energy routes as a lever of pressure. “War has its own requirements,” he said, “and each side uses the tools at its disposal to advance its objectives.”

Iran’s rulers appear to be acting as though they have little left to lose, while Islamist extremist voices advocating more confrontational policies have gained the upper hand in Tehran.

Iranian authorities apparently have dismissed the models embraced by neighbors and allies like Pakistan, China, and North Korea.

Pakistan pragmatically cooperates with the United States and Western institutions for security, financial support, International Monetary Fund access, and diplomatic legitimacy.

China built its authoritarianism upon economic expansion, state capacity, and controlled prosperity. North Korea survives through extreme isolation.

Iran cannot replicate that model. Its people have access to the outside world, memories of cultural openness, and deep ties to a diaspora.

The question, as per Shariatmadari, is no longer whether Iran can build a bomb, but rather, what type of regime a bomb would protect?

Iran is not simply another authoritarian state seeking power. It is the revolutionary epicenter and principal state patron of Islamist terrorism, a regime that has turned the sponsorship of armed proxies and the destruction of Israel into pillars of state doctrine.

That ideology leaves Tehran little room to maneuver. The Islamic Republic cannot easily abandon the very instruments that have defined its power since 1979.

It has also targeted Arab states, because Iran’s Islamist revolutionaries sought from the beginning to claim leadership over the Muslim world through intimidation, subversion, and terror.

This is why the regime continues to rely on its proxies, even when they have been weakened or defeated.

With the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and most hardline Islamist factions at the center of power, terrorism is not merely a tool of foreign policy but instead part of the regime’s identity.

A nuclear bomb in the hands of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps would not produce stability in the logic of mutually assured destruction; it would give Islamic terrorism a nuclear shield.

It would detonate the regional order. Arab states and Turkey almost certainly would seek their own nuclear deterrents. Decades of efforts to regulate and contain global armament would collapse.

Rather than constrain itself beyond a perceived deterrent, a nuclear Iran would become more menacing, a totalitarian terror state shielded by the bomb.