{"id":1620,"date":"2025-06-19T22:25:22","date_gmt":"2025-06-19T22:25:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/iranians.global\/news\/?p=1620"},"modified":"2025-06-19T22:30:50","modified_gmt":"2025-06-19T22:30:50","slug":"iran-israel-threshold-war-has-rewritten-nuclear-escalation-rules","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iranians.global\/news\/iran-israel-threshold-war-has-rewritten-nuclear-escalation-rules\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran-Israel \u2018threshold war\u2019 has rewritten nuclear escalation rules"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Farah N. Jan, Senior Lecturer in International Relations, University of Pennsylvania<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

\n

Israel\u2019s conflict with Iran<\/a> represents far more than another Middle Eastern crisis \u2013 it marks the emergence of a dangerous new chapter in nuclear rivalries that has the potential to reshape global proliferation risks for decades to come.<\/p>\n

What began with Israeli strikes<\/a> on Iranian nuclear facilities and other targets on June 13, 2025 has now spiraled into the world\u2019s first full-scale example of what I as an expert in nuclear security<\/a> call a \u201cthreshold war\u201d \u2013 a new and terrifying form of conflict where a nuclear weapons power seeks to use force to prevent an enemy on the verge of nuclearization from making that jump. As missiles continue to rain down on both Tehran and Tel Aviv \u2013 with hundreds dead in Iran<\/a> and at least 24 killed in Israel<\/a> \u2013 the international community is witnessing the collapse of traditional deterrence frameworks in real time.<\/p>\n

Unlike traditional nuclear rivalries where both sides possess declared arsenals \u2013 like India and Pakistan<\/a>, who despite their tensions operate under mutual deterrence \u2013 this new threshold dynamic creates an inherently unstable escalation spiral. Iran increasingly believes<\/a> it cannot deter Israeli aggression without nuclear weapons, yet every step toward acquiring them invites more aggressive Israeli strikes. Israel, for its part, cannot permanently eliminate Iran\u2019s nuclear knowledge through military means \u2013 it can only delay it through means that would seemingly guarantee future Iranian determination to acquire the ultimate deterrent.<\/p>\n

Under this dynamic, neither side can step back<\/a> without accepting an intolerable outcome: for Israel, an Iran more determined than even in becoming a nuclear weapons nation capable of deterring Israeli action and ending its regional military dominance; for Iran, the risk of regime change through devastating Israeli strikes. The consequences of this deadly logic extend far beyond the Middle East.<\/p>\n

The preventive strike precedent<\/h2>\n

The stakes could not be higher, as Iranian officials have called the attack \u201ca declaration of war<\/a>\u201d and vowed that destroyed nuclear facilities \u201cwould be rebuilt.\u201d Israel, meanwhile has warned its campaign will continue \u201cfor as many days as it takes<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Most ominously, the scheduled nuclear talks between the U.S. and Iran were called off, with Tehran dismissing any such dialogue as \u201cmeaningless<\/a>.\u201d This may suggest diplomacy\u2019s window \u2013 which opened for just a few months under Trump\u2019s second administration, after being closed during his first \u2013 was deliberately slammed shut.<\/p>\n

More broadly, the Israeli strikes mark a dangerous evolution in international norms around preventive warfare. While Israeli officials called this a \u201cpreemptive strike<\/a>,\u201d the legal and strategic reality is different. Preemptive strikes respond to imminent threats<\/a> \u2013 like Israel\u2019s 1967 Six-Day War<\/a> against Arab armies preparing to attack. Preventive strikes, by contrast, target distant future threats when conditions seem favorable \u2013 like Japan\u2019s attack on Pearl Harbor<\/a> in 1941.<\/p>\n

Israel justified its action by claiming Iran could rapidly assemble up to 15 nuclear bombs<\/a>. Yet, as the International Atomic Energy Agency director, Rafael Grossi<\/a>, warned beforehand, an Israeli strike could solidify rather than deter Iran\u2019s nuclear ambitions, potentially prompting withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. True to that warning, on June 16, Iran announced it was preparing a parliamentary bill that would see the country leave<\/a> the 1968 treaty.<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s calculations in opting to strike build on the same erosion of international legal frameworks that has legitimized preemptive warfare since the United States\u2019 military action in Afghanistan and Iraq after the Sept. 11, 2001 attack. America\u2019s \u201cwar on terror\u201d fundamentally challenged sovereignty norms through practices like drone strikes<\/a> and preemptive attacks<\/a>. More recently, operations in Gaza and elsewhere have demonstrated that violations of international humanitarian law<\/a> carry limited consequences in practice. For Israel, this permissive environment has seemingly created both opportunity and justification regarding striking Iran \u2013 something that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been pursuing for decades<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Already, Russia\u2019s attacks on Ukraine\u2019s Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant<\/a> demonstrated nuclear facilities\u2019 vulnerability in modern warfare. I believe Israel\u2019s actions further risk normalizing attacks on nuclear infrastructure, potentially legitimizing similar preventive actions by India, China or the U.S. against emerging nuclear programs elsewhere.<\/p>\n

From strikes to regional conflagration<\/h2>\n

Israel\u2019s initial strike quickly triggered inevitable escalation. Iran\u2019s retaliation came in waves<\/a>: first hundreds of drones and missiles on June 13, then sustained barrages throughout the following days. By the morning of June 15, both countries were trading strikes on energy infrastructure, military bases and civilian areas, with no immediate end in sight.<\/p>\n

The Houthis in Yemen have since joined the fight<\/a>, by launching ballistic missiles at Tel Aviv. Notably absent are Hezbollah, Hamas and Iran\u2019s Iraqi militias \u2013 all significantly damaged by recent action by Israel. This degradation of Iran\u2019s \u201caxis of resistance<\/a>\u201d \u2013 its traditional forward deterrent \u2013 fundamentally alters Tehran\u2019s strategic calculations. Without strong proxies to threaten retaliation, Iran is more exposed to Israeli strikes, making nuclear weapons seem like the only reliable deterrent against future attacks.<\/p>\n

The escalation pattern illustrates what can happen when when a government casts aggression as prevention. Having initiated the recent escalation of hostilities, Israel now faces the consequences. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian\u2019s vow that destroyed facilities \u201cwould be rebuilt<\/a>\u201d underscores that Israeli action designed to prevent nuclearization may instead result in Iran pursuing it with renewed determination.<\/p>\n

The commitment trap<\/h2>\n

This creates what strategists call the \u201ccommitment trap<\/a>\u201d \u2013 a dynamic where both sides face escalating costs but cannot back down. Israel faces its own strategic dilemma. The strikes may ultimately accelerate rather than prevent Iranian nuclearization, yet backing down would mean accepting a nuclear Iran. Netanyahu\u2019s promise that current strikes are \u201cnothing compared to what they will feel in coming days<\/a>\u201d shows how quickly strikes sold as preventative escalate toward total war.<\/p>\n

Unlike established nuclear powers that can negotiate from positions of strength, threshold states, such as Iran, face a stark choice: remain vulnerable to preventive strikes and regime change or race toward the protection that nuclear deterrence provides.<\/p>\n

North Korea offers the clearest example of this dynamic. Despite decades of sanctions and military threats, Pyongyang\u2019s nuclear program<\/a> has made it essentially immune to preventive strikes. Iranian leaders understand this lesson well \u2013 the question is whether they can reach the same protected status before suffering decisive preventive action.<\/p>\n

Traditional nuclear deterrence theory assumes rational actors operating under mutual vulnerability. But threshold wars break these assumptions in fundamental ways. Iran cannot fully deter Israeli action because it lacks confirmed weapons, while Israel cannot rely on deterrence to prevent Iranian weaponization because Iran\u2019s nuclear program continues advancing.<\/p>\n

This creates \u201cuse it or lose it\u201d dynamics: Israel faces shrinking windows to act preventively as Iran approaches weaponization; Iran faces incentives to accelerate its program before suffering additional strikes.<\/p>\n

The absence of effective external mediation compounds these risks. U.S. President Donald Trump\u2019s response to the strikes reveals this dynamic starkly. Initially opposing military action and preferring diplomacy to \u201cbombing the hell out of\u201d Iran<\/a>, Trump pivoted dramatically after the strikes began, and warned that \u201cthere\u2019s more to come. A lot more<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

His post on Truth Social \u2013 \u201cTwo months ago I gave Iran a 60-day ultimatum to \u2018make a deal.\u2019 They should have done it<\/a>!\u201d \u2013 demonstrates how quickly diplomatic efforts can collapse once threshold wars begin.<\/p>\n

Global implication<\/h2>\n

The international response reveals how thoroughly Israel\u2019s Operation Rising Lion<\/a> has normalized aggression against nuclear facilities. While European leaders called for \u201cmaximum restraint<\/a>,\u201d none condemned Israel\u2019s initial attacks. Russia and China condemned the attacks but took no concrete action. The U.N. Security Council produced only statements of \u201cconcern\u201d about \u201cescalation.\u201d<\/p>\n

This normalization sets what I believe to be a catastrophic precedent. The threshold war model threatens to unravel decades of nuclear governance based on deterrence rather than preemption.<\/p>\n

Indeed, the Iran-Israel threshold war sets dangerous precedents for other regional nuclear competitions. Successful preventive strikes could incentivize similar actions elsewhere, eroding diplomatic nonproliferation efforts. Conversely, rapid nuclearization by Iran could encourage other threshold states, like Saudi Arabia<\/a>, to pursue nuclear capabilities swiftly and secretly.<\/p>\n

When preventive strikes become the enforcement mechanism for nonproliferation norms, the entire architecture of nuclear governance begins to crumble. Without these frameworks, the world faces an unstable future defined by cycles of preventive strikes and accelerated nuclear proliferation \u2013 far more dangerous than the Cold War-era standoffs that shaped nuclear governance.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

This article written by Farah N. Jan, Senior Lecturer in International Relations, University of Pennsylvania<\/strong> and is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Farah N. Jan, Senior Lecturer in International Relations, University of Pennsylvania Israel\u2019s conflict with Iran represents far more than another Middle Eastern crisis \u2013 it marks the emergence of a dangerous new chapter in nuclear rivalries that has the potential to reshape global proliferation risks for decades to come. What began with Israeli strikes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":179,"featured_media":1621,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"inline_featured_image":false,"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[117],"tags":[964,981,979,976,978,977,970,935,963,967,960,966,980,969,973,975,971,876,959,962,968,982,961,965,974,972],"class_list":["post-1620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-editorials","tag-collapse-of-nuclear-deterrence","tag-commitment-trap-nuclear-conflict","tag-drone-warfare-in-nuclear-crises","tag-eu-response-to-israel-iran-strikes","tag-global-nuclear-governance-collapse","tag-iaea-warnings-iran-nuclear-program","tag-international-norms-preventive-war","tag-iran-nuclear-crisis-escalation","tag-iran-nuclear-program-retaliation","tag-iranian-withdrawal-from-npt","tag-israel-iran-threshold-war-2025","tag-israel-preemptive-strike-legality","tag-israeli-military-strikes-june-2025","tag-middle-east-nuclear-proliferation-risks","tag-north-korea-deterrence-strategy","tag-nuclear-escalation-spiral-iran-israel","tag-nuclear-facility-attacks-in-warfare","tag-operation-rising-lion-israel","tag-preventive-nuclear-strike","tag-preventive-warfare-and-international-law","tag-regional-implications-of-israel-iran-war","tag-strategic-implications-of-nuclear-thresholds","tag-threshold-nuclear-conflict","tag-trump-iran-nuclear-diplomacy-2025","tag-us-role-in-threshold-conflicts","tag-use-it-or-lose-it-nuclear-doctrine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iranians.global\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iranians.global\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iranians.global\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iranians.global\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/179"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iranians.global\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1620"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iranians.global\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1620\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iranians.global\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iranians.global\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iranians.global\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iranians.global\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}