Executive Summary
The war against Iran, launched hours after Tehran agreed to uranium restrictions and full inspection access for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), has not curbed proliferation but accelerated it. Iran retains uranium for 12 warheads, and the strikes have exposed a double standard: non-proliferation enforced militarily against a non-nuclear state by an undeclared nuclear power. This has demonstrated to other states that possession, not diplomacy, appears to guarantee protection. The result is a regional hedging pattern spanning the Middle East, East Asia, and Europe, unfolding alongside the collapse of great-power arms control. This brief examines whether the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) core bargain still holds, and what the resulting proliferation dynamics mean for the cohesion of NATO’s collective nuclear deterrence framework.
Introduction
On 27 February 2026, Oman’s foreign minister announced that Iran had agreed to “zero enrichment, zero stockpiling” of enriched uranium, alongside full IAEA inspections (CBS News, 2026). Hours later, the United States (US) and Israel launched a coordinated military strike against Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, killing Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
A war, officially intended to prevent an Iranian bomb, has paradoxically brought one closer. Iran still possesses enough uranium for 12 warheads, and internal Iranian debate over leaving the NPT has only intensified under Iran’s new leadership (van Munster, 2026). Furthermore, it has set off regional and global reactions stretching from Seoul to Paris, raising a question the world’s nuclear powers must now answer: whether the non-proliferation regime’s core bargain still holds when the states responsible for enforcing it increasingly undermine it.
Analysis
A double standard
The war against Iran has exposed a long-standing asymmetry in how non-proliferation is enforced. Israel has previously justified military action as necessary to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, even though Israel’s own arsenal remains formally unacknowledged (Jakes, 2025). The February strikes laid this asymmetry bare when the world’s most powerful nuclear state enforced non-proliferation through military force against a non-nuclear state, in cooperation with an undeclared one.
The legal basis for the strikes reinforces this asymmetry. International law permits pre-emptive action only against an imminent security threat, yet both the IAEA and CIA assessments found no evidence (Gnesotto, 2026). The NPT itself rests on a bargain in which non-nuclear states relinquish weapons in exchange for disarmament commitments from recognised nuclear powers (IAEA, n.d.). Enforcing that bargain selectively, against a state not assessed to pose an imminent threat, weakens the treaty’s claim to impartiality.
The dangerous lesson
The lesson other states may draw from recent decades is significant. Cole (2026) identifies a troubling sequence: Ukraine relinquished its Soviet-era arsenal and was subsequently invaded; Iraq and Libya abandoned their weapons programmes and were later targeted militarily; North Korea, by contrast, developed nuclear weapons and has faced no military action since. Iran itself was struck twice while engaged in active negotiations – undermining the expectation that diplomatic engagement offers protection.
This is not to say nuclear weapons guarantee security, or that abandoning weapons causes invasion; the variables separating them are considerable. But for a state assessing its security options, the pattern is clear: diplomatic engagement with Washington did not protect Iran, while possession has so far protected Pyongyang.
The pattern
The resulting regional hedging follows three strategies. The first is extended deterrence through alliances: Saudi Arabia signed a mutual defence pact with Pakistan in September 2025, while French President Emmanuel Macron has offered to extend France’s nuclear umbrella – what he terms “advanced deterrence” – to eight European partners (Jensen, 2026). The second is the build-up of latent capacity: visible above all in East Asia, with Japan holding several tonnes of plutonium, enough to produce thousand warheads within a year (Zhen, 2026), while prominent South Korean politicians openly argue that South Korea should develop its own nuclear weapons, as Washington’s redeployment of missile defences from South Korea to the Middle East has signaled that American guarantees may be subordinated to competing priorities (Council on Foreign Relations, 2026). The third is constitutionalised deterrence, with North Korea amending its nuclear doctrine to mandate automatic retaliation should its commander be threatened (Ryall, 2026).
This hedging behaviour is unfolding alongside a collapse in great-power disarmament. New START, the last bilateral nuclear treaty between the US and Russia, expired in February 2026 without replacement. That same month, the US accused Russia and China of conducting undeclared nuclear tests, after President Trump instructed the Pentagon to resume test detonations for the first time in three decades (Cole, 2026). This faltering effort was further demonstrated when the NPT’s 11th Review Conference opened in New York on 27 April: all parties rejected the sections they found critical of themselves, and negotiations ended in deadlock (van Munster, 2026). Two weeks later, Russia and Belarus launched joint exercises deploying tactical nuclear weapons from Belarusian soil (ICAN, 2026).
Policy Recommendations
This pattern does not make proliferation inevitable. The costs of pursuing a nuclear weapon remain severe, from sanctions to the collapse of security and trade relationships built over decades (Cole, 2026). But the deadlock in New York makes this argument harder to sustain, and the NPT’s core bargain – non-proliferation in exchange for disarmament – increasingly rests on the major powers’ words rather than their actions.
For Europe, the consequence is concrete. As France offers “advanced deterrence” to eight partners, while the collective American security guarantee is weakened by competing priorities elsewhere, NATO’s non-proliferation stance risks being hollowed out from within, as members seek borrowed deterrence outside the collective framework. This is not proliferation in the traditional sense, but it normalises the logic that security requires individual nuclear insurance – which the NPT was created to reject.
Three steps could restore some of this credibility:
- The US and Russia should resume New START negotiations, this time seeking to involve China, to show the disarmament obligation still applies to the major powers themselves.
- NATO should explicitly address how Macron’s “advanced deterrence” relates to its collective nuclear planning, so European cooperation does not become an uncoordinated patchwork of bilateral deals.
- European states involved should ensure open parliamentary debate on the decision – a transparency largely absent so far.
Bibliography
CBS News (2026) ‘Full transcript: Omani foreign minister Badr Albusaidi’, 27 February. Available at: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/full-transcript-omani-foreign-minister-badr-albusaidi/
Cole, G. (2026) ‘The Iran war risks triggering a new wave of nuclear proliferation’, Chatham House, 30 March. Available at: https://www.chathamhouse.org/2026/03/iran-war-risks-triggering-new-wave-nuclear-proliferation
Council on Foreign Relations (2026) ‘Why U.S. Allies in Asia Are Chasing Nuclear Energy—And Eyeing Nuclear Weapons’, 6 April. Available at: https://www.cfr.org/articles/why-u-s-allies-in-asia-are-chasing-nuclear-energy-and-eyeing-nuclear-weapons
Gnesotto, N. (2026) ‘Europe faces war in Iran’, Jacques Delors Institute, 9 March. Available at: https://institutdelors.eu/en/publications/europe-faces-war-in-iran/
International Atomic Energy Agency (no date) ‘The IAEA and the Non-Proliferation Treaty’. Available at: https://www.iaea.org/topics/non-proliferation-treaty (Accessed: 5 August 2026).
ICAN (2026) ‘NPT Review Conference ends with no plan for disarmament’, 22 May. Available at: https://www.icanw.org/npt_review_conference_ends_with_no_plan_for_disarmament
Jakes, L. (2025): “As Israel Targets Iran’s Nuclear Program, It Has a Secret One of Its Own”, The New York Times, 17 June. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/17/world/middleeast/israel-nuclear-weapons.html
Ryall, J. (2026) ‘North Korea ‘will fire nuclear weapon’ if Kim is killed’, The Telegraph, 8 May. Available at: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2026/05/08/north-korean-nuclear-retaliation-if-kim-jong-un-killed/
van Munster, R. (2026) ‘I 2026 har vi set de åbenlyse fordele ved at være en stormagt’, RÆSON, 14 July. Available at: https://www.raeson.dk/2026/rens-van-munster-i-raesons-nye-trykte-nummer-i-2026-har-vi-set-de-aabenlyse-fordele-ved-at-vaere-en-stormagt/
Zhen, L. (2026) ‘Japan has enough plutonium to make 5,500 nuclear warheads, PLA Daily says’, South China Morning Post, 31 March. Available at: https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3348518/japan-has-enough-plutonium-make-5500-nuclear-warheads-pla-daily-says