War Will Drive Iran Nuke Program Underground, Like North Korea's

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Will a fragile Iran-Israel ceasefire hold?

Israel declined to join, as it had developed its own undeclared nuclear arsenal by the late 1960s . India, Pakistan and South Sudan also have never signed; North Korea was a member but withdrew in 2003. Of those countries, only South Sudan does not have nuclear weapons today.

To make the obligations enforceable and strengthen safeguards against the diversion of nuclear material to non-nuclear weapons states, members were later required to sign the IAEA Additional Protocol . This gave the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) wide powers to inspect a state's nuclear facilities and detect violations.

It was the IAEA that first blew the whistle on Iran concerning uranium enrichment activity in 2003. Just before Israel's attacks this month, the organizaation also reported that Iran was in breach of its obligations under the NPT for the first time in two decades.

The NPT is arguably the world's most universal, important and successful security treaty, but it is also paradoxically vulnerable.

The treaty's underlying consensus has been damaged by the failure of the five nuclear-weapon states to disarm as required, and by the failure to prevent North Korea from developing a now formidable nuclear arsenal.

North Korea withdrew from the treaty in 2003, tested a weapon in 2006, and now may have up to 50 warheads .

Iran could be next.

How things can deteriorate from here

Iran argues that Israel's attacks have undermined the credibility of the IAEA – given that Israel used the IAEA's new report on Iran as a pretext for its strikes, taking the matter out of the hands of the UN Security Council.

For its part, the IAEA has maintained a principled position and criticized the strikes by both the US and Israel.

Iran has retaliated with its own missile strikes against both Israel and a US base in Qatar. In addition, it wasted no time announcing it would withdraw from the NPT .

On June 23, an Iranian parliament committee also approved a bill that would fully suspend Iran's cooperation with the IAEA, including allowing inspections and submitting reports to the organisation.

Iran's envoy to the IAEA, Reza Najafi, said the US strikes:

Even if Israel and the US consider their bombing campaign successful, it has almost certainly renewed the Iranians' resolve to build a weapon. The strikes may only delay an Iranian bomb by a few years.

Iran will have two paths to do so. The slower path would be to reconstitute its enrichment activity and obtain nuclear implosion designs, which create extremely devastating weapons, from Russia or North Korea.

Alternatively, Russia could send Iran some of its weapons. This should be a real concern given Moscow's cascade of withdrawals from critical arms control agreements over the last decade .

An Iranian bomb could then trigger NPT withdrawals by other regional states, especially Saudi Arabia, which suddenly face a new threat to their security.

Why Iran might now pursue a bomb

Iran's support for Hamas, Hezbollah and Syria's Assad regime certainly shows it is a dangerous international actor. Iranian leaders have also long used alarming rhetoric about Israel's destruction.

However repugnant the words, Israeli and US conservatives have misjudged Iran's motives in seeking nuclear weapons.