Guns in a Rough Neighborhood

Is Nuclear Proliferation Now Inevitable?

Let’s try a brief thought experiment. Imagine you live in a rough neighborhood. Some of you may not have to imagine it. You know that just a few households are armed with guns, while the others are armed with whatever they could cobble together. In this rough neighborhood, there are some rich folks who have paid for private security. That private security definitely has guns.

As happens in rough neighborhoods, a fight breaks out. The fight is getting out of hand, and it looks like the private security can’t actually protect the people it’s been contracted to.

If you don’t have a gun in this scenario, what would you do, assuming you can’t flee?

Astute readers may have ascertained that this blunt but straightforward metaphor is about the Middle East and nuclear proliferation. The nukes are the guns in this scenario. As it stands, I see no reason to not expect nuclear proliferation across multiple countries over the next few years, or even less.

The whole purported casus belli of this Israeli-American war against Iran is the notion that Iran might be making a nuclear bomb. Never mind that Netanyahu has been peddling this line for decades, and even said the exact same thing about Iraq in the leadup to the 2003 invasion. Let’s take things as they are.

For the record, this war shouldn’t come as a surprise to longtime readers. I wrote in 2024 that fighting Iran is a historically bad idea, and I stand by that.

But let’s continue the thought experiment. If you were leading Iran right now, after being attacked for the potential for building a bomb (twice in a year!), why wouldn’t you just go ahead and do it? Let’s assume for a moment that Netanyahu was right and that Iran was indeed a threat. Wouldn’t these strikes simply accelerate demand for nuclear weapons?

Similarly, if you were Turkey, who Israeli President Naftali Bennett recently said “Is the new Iran,” wouldn’t you consider getting yourself some nukes? Watch the video below and pretend you’re the leader of Turkey for a moment:

Erdogan has already publicly complained about the hypocrisy of being held back from developing nuclear weapons (2019 article). The United States has shown itself to be a poor ally, allowing its allies to be attacked by other, more preferred allies. Remember when Israel bombed Qatar to kill Hamas negotiators? That wasn’t long ago. Recall the current US president has insulted NATO (not that it shouldn’t be insulted), and you’re a member. Why stay?

Consider further: The US ambassador to Israel recently said, on a podcast heard by millions, that he is in favor of the Greater Israel project. When asked what he thought about Israel taking all the land promised to it in the book of Genesis — from the Nile to the Euphrates — Ambassador Huckabee replied, “It would be fine if they took it all.” That’s official US support. And he said it just one week before the war began.

Accomplishing this feat would require the conquest of Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Kuwait, parts of Saudi Arabia and Iraq, and Turkey. Netanyahu said on April 1st he wanted to make Israel into a “Supernation in the region.”

Israel is currently invading southern Lebanon, has taken parts of Syria, and has waged a multi-year against Gaza. In the context of the videos above, check the map that shows the region between the Nile and Euphrates, as described in the Book of Genesis:

Now, I don’t know about you, but if I were in charge of the countries in the red boundary — and cared about my people — I’d do anything to resist being conquered. That “anything” would most certainly involve acquiring nuclear weapons.

Does Iran have designs in the region? Quite clearly. Historically, when it’s healthiest, Iran has had its population and economic center in Mesopotamia. So, countries across the region have far more than one country to fear.

But you notice how nobody is messing with North Korea? Of course you do. Everyone does, and is taking notes. The takeaway is dead simple: “If you have nukes, no one will dare attack you.”

Comes the reply: But Russia is at war, and no nukes have flown!

Yes, indeed. That’s because Russia is holding back. A nuclear launch from Russia would lead to literal armageddon, and we’d all die, since they have thousands, and so does the US. This has been war-gamed to death.

But a country with a few, or several, or even a few dozen nukes? That’s a different story. A scenario in which regional powers like Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, or, yes, Iran, build nukes makes sense. We’re not looking at an end-of-the-world scenario here — merely invasion deterrence. Maybe.

These don’t need to be massive, Tsar Bomba-style nukes either to deter military aggression. Now that the US has shown it’s unable to protect its quasi-vassal states like Bahrain, the UAE, and even Saudi Arabia from Iran…well, what are they to do?

To be clear: I don’t like this scenario one bit. Nuclear proliferation is something the world has been working to prevent for decades, and this conflict in the Middle East could undo those decades of work.

Worst of all, this proliferation could have been avoided. It could have been avoided by not attacking Iran in the first place. It could have been avoided by preventing Israel from acquiring nuclear weapons at all. But here we are — alea iacta est.

Even if the Iran war were to end tomorrow (and I pray it does) the long-term implications for the region’s security are profound. Civilian infrastructure, for one thing, has proven too vulnerable to be left to air defenses alone as a deterrent. And strikes on civilian infrastructure are only beginning.

Now, consider other regions. What would you do if you were South Korea, or Japan, or Taiwan, or even Singapore?

I don’t have an answer to where this goes, and I don’t think anyone else does either. But it appears clear that nuclear proliferation is back on the table, even if it’s not widely being discussed yet.

What do you think? Can proliferation be avoided? Is there a better alternative? I’m all ears.