After US and Israeli strikes, some nuclear experts say Iran could be more dangerous

Nearly two weeks after the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran’s nuclear facilities, it remains unclear how much of a setback it dealt the country’s ambitions to obtain the ultimate weapon.

Some nuclear proliferation experts told ABC News they believe the strikes could lead to a “fork-in-the-road” moment that results in Tehran taking a more dangerous and secretive path to obtaining nuclear arms if it chooses to do so.

On Wednesday, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian signed a bill approved last week by Iran’s parliament to halt cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog. Iran’s powerful 12-member Guardian Council, half of which is appointed by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has also signed off on the bill.

“This suspension will remain in effect until certain conditions are met, including the guaranteed security of nuclear facilities and scientists,” Iran’s state television reported, quoting from the bill.

In the meantime, Iran is allowing no outside independent body into the country to verify the status of its nuclear program, leaving the country to rebuild its nuclear infrastructure virtually in secret.

The State Department called the move “unacceptable,” saying that Iran “has a window of opportunity to reverse course and choose a path of peace and prosperity,” spokesperson Tammy Bruce said Wednesday.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar slammed Iran’s decision as “scandalous,” saying in a social media post, “This is a complete renunciation of all its [Iran’s] international nuclear obligations and commitments.”

“The international community must act decisively now and utilize all means at its disposal to stop Iranian nuclear ambitions,” Sa’ar said.

Some nuclear arms experts said they’re worried the move could also prompt Iran to pull out of the 57-year-old Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty (NPT).

“The last country to pull out of the NPT was North Korea,” Howard Stoffer, a professor of international affairs at the University of New Haven and former deputy executive director of the U.N. Security Council’s Counter-Terrorism Committee, told ABC News.

Iran is still evaluating whether it will stay in the NPT, Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said on Iranian state TV following the vote by parliament last week. The NPT also requires inspections by the IAEA to verify compliance with the treaty, so it remains unclear how Iran will comply with this aspect of the treaty, given the new law.

Whether or not Iran will stay in the NPT needs to be investigated, according to Araghchi, who added that Iran will “act accordingly with the interest of the country.”

The NPT, signed by 191 countries in 1968, said countries, other than those certified as nuclear powers, cannot develop nuclear weapons.

The NPT, however, allows countries to pursue peaceful civilian nuclear programs, like those for energy use.

“They can go right up to the brink, and basically do everything except assemble the weapons in their final form and still be technically in compliance with the treaty. That frightens a lot of countries that are Iran’s neighbors, Israel in particular,” John Erath, senior policy director for the Center for Arms and Non-Proliferation, told ABC News.

In 2015, Iran and several world powers, including the United States, signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) limiting Iran’s civilian nuclear program to peaceful purposes in exchange for lifting economic sanctions imposed on the country. In 2018, President Donald Trump withdrew from the accord, calling it “defective to its core” and reimposed U.S. sanctions.

Trump’s withdrawal from the JCPOA was the start of a series of events leading up to the 12-day war this June. When Trump returned to office in January, negotiating a new nuclear deal with Iran was one of the items at the top of his foreign policy agenda.

After several rounds of talks between the U.S. and Iran that ended with no agreement — along with the rising tensions between Israel and Iran-sponsored actors of terrorism in the region — Israel ultimately decided to attack Iran directly on June 13, leading to the 12-day war.

The United States decided to join Israel’s military campaign against Iran on June 21 with targeted airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Now that the dust has settled, Israel is again calling on European nations that are still part of the Obama-era JCPOA to reimpose U.N. sanctions against Iran.

Erath said that if Iran pulled out of the NPT, it would send a dangerous signal to the world.

“It would signal they are serious about acquiring nuclear weapons. It would be serious and would get the attention of a lot of people,” Erath told ABC News. “Thus far, they have avoided doing so because it’s an international standard that is very important to a lot of people worldwide.”

Erath added, “They [Iran] don’t want to put themselves in a category with North Korea as a state that withdrew from the NPT and cast themselves as an international pariah.”

‘Fork-in-the-road moment’

Without the IAEA being allowed into Iran to assess the damage caused to the country’s three nuclear facilities, it has been difficult to accurately ascertain the extent of the damage caused in the June 21 attack ordered by Trump on Iran’s nuclear facilities at Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan.

Iran retaliated on June 23 by firing missiles at the U.S. Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar. U.S. officials said the missiles were intercepted with assistance from Qatar and that no injuries resulted from the attack.

It is unclear the extent of damage caused to Iran’s nuclear program by Israel’s military campaign. Israel killed several of Iran’s top nuclear scientists during the 12-day war, along with targeted attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities. The extent to which this combined military action set back Iran’s nuclear program is unknown at this time.

Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have said the U.S. attack “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program and set it back by years.

A leaked classified preliminary damage assessment produced by the Defense Intelligence Agency with the help of U.S. Central Command indicated that the U.S. strikes did not completely destroy Iran’s nuclear program but likely set it back by months.

At a news conference last week, Hegseth told reporters that the report had not been coordinated with the intelligence community and that its findings were labeled “low confidence.” He told reporters “new intelligence” estimated Iran’s program had been knocked back by years, not months.

Esmaeil Baghaei, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson, is the only Iranian government official to say the bombing “severely damaged” the nuclear facilities.

“Whatever they settle on doesn’t interest me because, whatever the degree of damage, they can rebuild. It’s a question of time, longer or shorter, but they can rebuild. If they do rebuild without the IAEA monitoring, how will the world know anything?” Erath said. “What they are signaling is that they are going to be more dangerous the next time around. It really puts us at a kind of fork-in-the-road moment.”

Stoffer said there is a “trust deficit” between Iran and the IAEA because Iran blames the IAEA and its director, Rafael Grossi, for giving Israel the final pretext to start a war with Iran by providing what it calls a false report about Iran’s nuclear program.

“They felt that he was complicit in the attacks that led to the destruction or damage of the Iranian facilities,” Stoffer said.

Grossi has rejected Iran’s accusations, saying in an interview with Al Jazeera on June 19, two days before the U.S. strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, “To pretend that a report by the IAEA in any way is a green light or enabler of an attack is absolutely absurd.”

“In this report, we said very clearly and very objectively that Iran was not informing the IAEA about a number of things, which are very, very important, and we were not getting the transparency we needed for that,” Grossi said. “And at the same time, we said very clearly in that report that preceded these dramatic events and the attack, that we did not find in Iran elements that indicate there is an active, systematic plan to build a nuclear weapon.”

Iran also criticized the IAEA, and Grossi directly, for not condemning the U.S. and Israel for attacking its nuclear facilities, which Iran considered a violation of international law.

In May, the IAEA censured Iran, claiming the country had stockpiled enriched uranium to near weapons-grade levels of 90%.

“They concluded that Iran was moving fissile material from a place where they can inspect it, and it was highly enriched to 87%, to some other place that they had never seen before,” Stoffer said, describing the series of events that prompted the first IAEA censure in 20 years.

After the IAEA report, Israel launched its attack on Iran on June 13, killing senior Iranian security officials and nuclear scientists, and laying the groundwork for the U.S. bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Are negotiations still possible?

On Sunday, French President Emmanuel Macron said in a message posted on the social media platform X that he had spoken by phone to Pezeshkian and urged him to return to the negotiating table and hash out a deal to allow the IAEA to resume inspections of its nuclear program.

“Iran’s nuclear program is a serious concern and must be resolved through negotiation,” Macron said in the post. “I therefore invited President Pezeshkian to return swiftly to the negotiating table to reach an agreement — the only viable path to de-escalation.”

Erath said that in the absence of negotiations, Israel and the United States could opt for a military solution again if Iran repairs its nuclear capabilities.

“As a professional diplomat, I’d prefer a diplomatic solution,” Erath said. “But that is going to be much harder to reach for the next time around, and there will be a next time.”