As US, regional, and global intelligence bodies assess the post-bombing state of Tehran’s nuclear capabilities, Middle East Policy’s free special issue, The Israel-Iran War, analyzes the failures of diplomacy to restore the Obama-era nuclear deal, pinpoints the nature and threat of the Islamic Republic’s program, and evaluates the potential of banning weapons of mass destruction across the Middle East.
Why did the United States fail to bring Iran to heel and forge a new Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA, or Iran nuclear deal)? Wyn Rees and Hossein Salimian Rizi analyze the travails of Joe Biden’s attempt to renew the agreement, which President Donald Trump effectively destroyed during his first term. While both the Biden and Trump administrations hoped to restore the Obama-negotiated JCPOA, Rees and Salimian Rizi argue, domestic and strategic factors led Tehran to take a harder line.
Iran’s government had shifted from a reformist president to a conservative one, and the regime was deeply skeptical that it could trust American deal making. Just as important, during the intervening period, Tehran had turned East, believing it had found allies in Russia and China that could protect the Iranian economy from its enemies in the West:
The Russian invasion of Ukraine presented a new dynamic with major implications for the global energy market. Iran’s weapons sales to Moscow helped to mitigate the pressures of sanctions on its economy. In addition, China served as a recipient of Iranian oil and an investor in its infrastructure.
However, the authors show, the Ukraine gambit left Moscow weak and distracted, and China refuses to be embroiled in regional military conflicts. They predict, in their 2024 article, American and Israeli military action—an all-too-accurate assessment.
Rees and Salimian Rizi contend that failure to act on the Iran nuclear issue could spark an arms race. But does it have to be like this? Robert Mason’s contribution to the special issue analyzes the conditions that could lead not to a balance of nuclear threat but to the banning of weapons of mass destruction across the region.
Mason proceeds to detail “a logical and formalized process that ensures that the norms and commitments of states with nuclear-power programs adhere to the international community’s standards.” Key to this is for the regional states to renounce the development, testing, and staging of WMD. There are models for this, as “there are eight nuclear-weapon-free zones around the world.”
The obstacles are considerable. Mason argues that the United States must lead the process and guarantee Israeli security as well as the right of Middle Eastern states to create nuclear power for domestic use. Regional expertise needs to develop both in diplomacy and in science. Iran and its rivals must de-escalate in order to be brought into an effective anti-WMD regime. And before such an ambitious process can move forward, Israel would have to declare its program and open it up to international scrutiny.
On this subject, Leonard Weiss reminds, “Israel is not under any international inspection regime,” despite the fact that it “has had an arsenal of nuclear weapons since the late 1960s.” Given this deterrent, Weiss argues that even if Tehran could develop a crude nuclear device, it would be unlikely to deploy it:
There is no evidence that the clerics ruling Iran, including the Ayatollah Khamenei, would launch a first-strike nuclear attack on Israel. Iran is aware of the Israeli capabilities for nuclear counterattack that would destroy Iran as a functioning entity for an indefinite period and wipe out significant parts of its national patrimony.
Of course, now that the United States and Israel have frontally attacked Iranian military, scientific, and civilian targets, it is not yet clear whether that calculation has shifted. Weiss concludes that Israel does not fear Iran as an existential threat to the state but as a threat to the Zionist project—and that “by fanning hysteria over the Iranian nuclear program,” the Israeli leadership is making the population less safe.
Was the Israel-Iran war necessary to solve the nuclear issue? At a 2015 Capitol Hill Conference sponsored by the Middle East Policy Council, a panel of experts explained the benefits of the Iran nuclear deal. James Miller, a former US defense official, thoroughly assesses the agreement and its strength. “The agreement puts in place the most extensive verification in the history of nonproliferation,” he concludes.
Two other veteran US officials, Nabeel Khoury and Paul Pillar, concur that the JCPOA eliminated the acute nuclear threat and opened the Iranian program to international scrutiny. However, Khoury argues that WMD are a “side issue” and that the deal failed to make enough progress on de-escalation and diplomacy. Pillar agrees that Washington and Tehran must “build on the agreement with a broader dialogue. But the political reality is that we should expect this to be a very slow process.”
Middle East Policy’s special issue, The Israel-Iran War, is free for all readers, even those without a subscription. Drawing on the journal’s vast archive, this new installment provides analyses of the post-October 7 regional order alongside older articles probing the key moments that sparked the unprecedented US bombing of Tehran’s nuclear capabilities.
In addition to part three, The Nuclear Confrontation, the other two sections, The Brewing Conflict and The Nuclear Confrontation, feature new and archival analyses from Thomas Juneau, Chas W. Freeman Jr., Trita Parsi, Shibley Telhami, Mark N. Katz, Gawdat Bahgat, and many other scholars and practitioners.
Middle East Policy, The Israel-Iran War—special issue!
THE BREWING CONFLICT
Iran’s Annus Horribilis in 2024: Beaten, but Not Defeated
Thomas Juneau, 2025
The Impact of Benjamin Netanyahu’s Beliefs on Israel’s War against the Axis of Resistance
Emir Hadžikadunić | Marko Ćuže, 2025
Iran’s Ballistic-Missile and Space Program: An Assessment
Gawdat Bahgat, 2019
Iran and Israel: The Avoidable War
Trita Parsi, 2007
Israeli Foreign Policy After the Gulf War
Shibley Telhami, 1992
WASHINGTON TAKES ISRAEL’S SIDE
Conjuring an Enemy: US Discourse and Policy on Iran, 1979–88
Annie Tracy Samuel, 2025
Lessons from America’s Misadventures in the Middle East
Chas W. Freeman, 2015
Iran and America: Is Rapprochement Finally Possible?
Mark N. Katz, 2005
The Strategic Functions of US Aid to Israel
Stephen Zunes, 1996
Gulf Security and US Policy
William J. Perry, 1992
THE NUCLEAR CONFRONTATION
Negotiating the Restoration of the Iran Nuclear Deal
Wyn Rees | Hossein Salimian Rizi, 2024
Negotiating the Impossible? A WMD-Free Zone in the Middle East
Robert Mason, 2025
Israel’s Future and Iran’s Nuclear Program
Leonard Weiss, 2009
Iran and the Arab World: Implications of the Nuclear Negotiations
James N. Miller | Nabeel Khoury | Paul Pillar | Sara Vakhshouri, 2015
BOOK REVIEWS
The World Powers and Iran: Before, During, and After the Nuclear Deal, by Banafsheh Keynoush
Reviewed by Mahmood Monshipouri, 2025
A New U.S. Paradigm for the Middle East: Ending America’s Misguided Policy of Domination, by Paul Pillar, Andrew Bacevich, Annelle Sheline, and Trita Parsi
Reviewed by Ken Weisbrode, 2020
Europe and Iran: The Nuclear Deal and Beyond, by Cornelius Adebahr; Nuclear Multilateralism and Iran: Inside EU Negotiations, by Tarja Cronberg
Reviewed by Naysan Rafati, 2017
Reagan: His Life and Legend, by Max Boot
Reviewed by A.R. Joyce, 2025