Consider This from NPR - What's at stake in the conflict between Israel and Iran?

Episode Date: June 17, 2025

The United States has worked for decades to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon. Now Israel says it is attacking Iran to remove that threat. What are the stakes in this conflict, not only for the two nations directly involved, but for the US and the world?Mary Louise Kelly speaks with Aaron Stein, the President of the Foreign Policy Research Institute about those stakes and the history of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East.For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

As Israel and Iran continue to exchange deadly missile salvos, President Trump had a straightforward message. This is him speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One early Tuesday morning. Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. It's very simple. They don't have to go too deep into it. They just can't have a nuclear weapon. Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. That has been U.S. policy for decades. Same with U.S. ally Israel since Iran was first suspected of working towards a nuclear weapon. We have refused to cooperate with Iran on sensitive matters such as nuclear energy and

have tightened trade restrictions on items that might be used to build weapons. Then President Bill Clinton in 1995 speaking at an event hosted by the World Jewish Congress. So tonight, in honor of, in this great dinner, in honor of this champion of freedom, I am formally announcing my intention to cut off all trade and investment with Iran. Fast forward 20 years. In 2015, President Obama announced the Iran nuclear deal aimed at making sure Iran did

not develop a nuclear weapon. With this deal, Iran will face more inspections than any other country in the world. The agreement required Iran to submit to checks from the International Atomic Energy Agency. President Trump famously called it one of the worst deals the U.S. had ever entered. He abandoned it during his first term in office. But the overarching goal remained. Here's President Biden speaking in 2022 in Jerusalem with then-Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid. You and I also discussed America's commitment to ensuring Iran never obtains a nuclear weapon. This is a vital security interest to both Israel and the United States, and I would

add for the rest of the world as well. Consider this. The United States has worked for decades to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon. Now Israel says it is attacking Iran to remove that threat. What are the stakes in this conflict? Not only for the two nations directly involved, but for the U.S. and the world. From NPR, I'm Mary Louise Kelly. The best kind of celebrity interview is one where you find out that the person who made

a thing you love also thinks in a way that you love. Nothing is more foreign than when Ariel says in The Little Mermaid, I want to be where the people are. I don't want to be where the people are. I just don't. I'm Rachel Martin. Listen to the Wild Card Podcast only from NPR. It's Consider This from NPR. The enmity between Israel and Iran is complex and longstanding,

but the stated reason for Israel's preemptive attack on Iran boils down to this, the decades-long fight to keep Iran from building a nuclear weapon. This operation will continue for as many days as it takes to remove this threat. That's Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaking last Friday as Israel's attack got underway. To talk through the stakes and the history of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East, we have called Aaron Stein, president of the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Aaron Stein, welcome. It's my pleasure to be here. Thank you. I want to start

with Israel, which is the only country in the region with nuclear weapons, although they have never admitted it. How did that come to be? Well, it's a policy of opacity where the Israelis, largely in conjunction, I wouldn't say with the acquiescence, but the rather sort of forced hand of the United States, said, the United States came to the Israelis and said, look, we know that you're building nuclear weapons. We don't agree with it, but we don't want a cascade of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East. So let's agree to disagree that you should have nuclear weapons. But if you do go ahead and pursue nuclear weapons, let's just keep it in the closet for as long as possible. And hence you have the policy of opacity that was born and that we're still

living with today. Although part of the point of nuclear deterrence is to show everyone you have nuclear capabilities. So don't attack us because we have nukes Oh, sure. You know the Israelis don't really make a secret that they have it. They just don't really talk about it It's like Fight Club the movie was just like everybody You know, the first rule of Fight Club is that you don't talk about Fight Club The first rule of Israeli nuclear weapons is that you don't really talk about them in public even though everybody knows that you have them nuclear weapons is that you don't really talk about them in public, even though everybody knows that you have them. Yeah.

So to Iran then, which we are told is very close to having a nuclear weapon, has assembled the fissile material, they would need to have a nuclear weapon. What's your understanding of how close they are? Well, Iran had an active nuclear weapons program up until 2003. The US intelligence say that Iran halted that nuclear weapons program, which I like to think of as a pause. So if you're watching a DVD or you're streaming something, you pause it. And so the screen remains on your television as a clear image. And so they have all the requisite capabilities to build a nuclear weapon. They just decided not to. What the Israelis are

talking about is that they've accumulated enough enriched uranium to where if they wanted to enrich it to weapons grade, they could do so very quickly and then thereafter assemble it into a nuclear weapon. If Iran is taking any lesson from this moment with Israel raining down missiles on their capital, on their nuclear facilities, would that lesson be that nuclear capabilities matter? That they will make your enemy think twice before attacking? That is my personal opinion. Now look, when you're sitting in Tehran, you're suggesting that look,

we didn't really trust the United States, but we reached the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the Iran nuclear deal with the Obama administration, only for it to be ripped up by the Trump administration, even though we were abiding by it. And then we engaged again with the Obama administration only for it to be ripped up by the Trump administration even though we were abiding by it and Then we engaged again with the Trump administration with Negotiations to return to something like the agreement that the United States left only to be attacked by the Israelis The idea would be something along the lines of well, maybe we need nuclear weapons to not be attacked by the Israelis

So that that is an inherent risk here, that by attacking Iran, it will cause Iran to race for a nuclear bomb. That will be my personal metric of success for the Israelis. Everything that we're watching is defining expectations. The Israelis have established air superiority over Western Iran and Tehran in ways that we didn't really think possible, or at least would take longer.

They've attrited Iran's missile forces, but if they don't get after certain nuclear facilities and Iran has the capability at the end of this thing to rapidly build a nuclear weapon, I will have judged this a failure on the Israeli side. What about the rest of the region? How closely are Saudi Arabia or Turkey or Egypt watching? They're watching Israel, which doesn't admit it but has nuclear weapons Iran Which doesn't admit that they are moving toward a nuclear weapon, but could do so if they wished Oh, I think everybody's watching, you know, one of the big concerns with when the Israelis

Pakistanis the Indians, you know back in the 1970s were openly flirting with nuclear weapons It said that this could start off a cascade the US and its allies at the time, ironically, including the Soviet Union, were able to head that off. Now, we're in the Wild West here, which is the capabilities to develop nuclear weapons have proliferated. The technology is 70 plus years old. It would be in the nursing home on Medicare.

And so the capabilities have proliferated around the world. And so one of the dangers here is that the allure of nuclear weapons as sort of the symbol to deter conflict from external actors becomes all enticing for people in the Middle East, but also for other non-nuclear countries around the world. I just want to let the gravity of what you're saying sink in. I mean, how do you think about that? The risk of a nuclear arms race potentially in a region that is already so volatile? Well, that's why we invest or we elect leaders who essentially care about these things. Look,

the United States and the international community has tools, the non-proliferation treaty, all other things to try and head this off. It's just that the capabilities, the technical expertise, again, is close to being an octogenarian and so that the barriers to build nuclear weapons are not what they once were. How close have other countries in the Middle East come to having a nuclear weapon, either through their own program and capabilities or through buying it from somewhere else? The big wave of proliferation was the purchasing of nuclear weapons plans and infrastructure. Here I'm talking about centrifuge designs, equipment, and the network with which to buy

the components to build centrifuges out of Pakistan. So you had Libya. This is AQ Khan. AQ Khan, yeah. So you had Libya, Iraq, and Iran. Iran is the most advanced. Iraq was dealt with through international sanctions, through inspections, and then obviously done away with with the 2003 invasion by the United States and its allies, leaving Libya.

In Libya, I wouldn't say it was very close at all, but they traded away the capabilities that they had acquired from Aukon, largely still in boxes for security guarantees from the UK and from the US. Obviously, Gaddafi met his match in 2011 at the hands of his own people. Last thing, Ehrenstein, I was reading the statement out of Canada. This is G7 leaders, including President Trump. They just signed it and it reads, Israel has a right to defend itself.

It also reads Iran can never have a nuclear weapon. The message being, hey, look, many of us can have them, but you can't. How is that heard if you are sitting in Tehran or you're sitting in one of the Arab capitals? Well, all of the countries in the Middle East, with the exception of Israel actually, are signatories to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which means that when they did that, they

had, you know, forsworn their ability to acquire nuclear weapons, you know, basically as part of the human good to sign up for this treaty. And so in a way, they signed up for this. I think what they're saying now, or at least the fissures around the end, is that countries can cheat in the case of Iran. Many Gulf countries have always said when Iran cheated, they got rewarded by the Obama administration because of the implicit right to enrichment. Countries are trying to figure out where they stand with trying to keep up their nonproliferation

agreements, but with their sort of flirtation, let's say, with the right to enrich. So what are you watching for next as these nuclear stakes play out? Saudi Arabia, you know, they're a long ways away, but, you know, they have been in intermittent negotiations with the Biden administration and now with the Trump administration. And it's really centered around, you know, that they have the right to enrich uranium. That doesn't mean that they will, they mean they will quickly, but they have said if the Iranians can do it, we can do it.

And so why are you treating us sort of as second class citizens in our own neighborhood? And so that's what I'm watching first and foremost, which is where the sort of proliferation dynamics that take place after this war ends. Second of all, will the Israelis be able to knock out all of Iran's enrichment capability? You know, we've talked a lot about the deeply buried bunker in Fordow, it's under a mountain. And if they don't get that, Iran will come out of this with the capability to continue to enrich uranium at high levels. Say Israel does manage to take out the facility of Fordow. Does that mean Iran's nuclear weapons ambitions will have been stopped?

Again, think about a nuclear weapon program as a DVD that you put on pause. Now, yes, they're attracting nuclear scientists. Yes, you can take away some of the infrastructure that supports it, but the picture is all still there, right? So somebody can hit pause. So estimates, it still depends, but let's say two to three, three to five years, because centrifuges are things that spin. They have the ability to build those centrifuges. And so if the Israelis miss centrifuge shops, they can build them someplace else. Iran's a very large country, and there's lots of places to hide them. Danielle Pletka So as the saying goes, you can take out the

facilities. It's very difficult to eliminate the know-how. David Erickson The Israelis are trying. I mean, they've certainly taken out a bunch of scientists, but the Center for Youth Program is 30 years old. It would be well out of college. It would be their second job if you were to compare it to an American entering the workforce. Aaron Stein, he's president of the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Thank you. My pleasure.

Thank you for having me. This episode was produced by Megan Lim and Noah Caldwell with audio engineering by Simon Laszlo Jansen. It was edited by Justine Kennan and William Troup. Our executive producer is Sammy Yenigan. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Mary Louise Kelly.