Thank you for giving me the chance to participate in this workshop here in beautiful Prague. 

Having in my last role in the U.S. Government served for three years as Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Nonproliferation – and having spent more than a year of that time performing the duties of the Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security – I’d like to talk specifically about nuclear weapons proliferation issues in the Middle East. 

These are only my personal views, of course, and they don’t necessarily represent those of anyone else.  Nevertheless, it’s certainly the case that the current period of strategic flux in in the Middle East could have dramatic implications, andthere’s no way to start but to note that I quite agree that there is huge uncertainty surrounding the implications of recent events in the region.  And there’s more uncertainty regarding regional proliferation risks right now, I’d say, than at any other time in many years. 

Nonproliferation as Strategic Calculus

Times of strategic change inherently raise questions about the degree to which leaders will continue to find inherited certainties and long-established approaches – including to nonproliferation questions – to be adequate to their present security needs.  For most countries, avoiding the further spread of nuclear weapons has been one of the cardinal priorities and policy objectives of the modern era for a long time, both in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Precisely because nonproliferation is a question of national security policy rather than an imperative of deontological ethics, however – that is, because real-world leaders are obliged as stewards of their countries’ security interests to weigh costs, benefits, and risks against each other and make decisions in a world in which the “perfect” answer is seldom available and they must often choose between varying degrees of unwanted alternatives – shifts in the security environment may sometimes indeed drive significant reassessments of policy approach.

It is also the case that because of the complexity of that environment and the difficulty of reaching inarguable conclusions about it, interpretations about what the situation calls for can vary significantly, not merely between the leaders of differently-situated countries but also even between i individual leaders in one country even when they face the same set of facts. There is thus nothing simple about predicting where things are going in a complex security environment in which both the “facts on the ground” and the “butts in the seats” are changing.

So as my comments today – more as a scholar’s contribution than merely than a participant’s advocacy piece – let me mention three sets of changes that it seems to me will likely affect proliferation risks and feed into the broader questions and uncertainties of peace and security in the region – specifically, with respect to Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United States itself.

The Iranian Situation

The first set of issues concerns Iran, its regional situation, and the status of the uranium enrichment program Tehran began years ago as part of its effort to develop nuclear weapons:

• Just three years ago or so, Iran could boast of leading what it described as an “Axis of Resistance” stretching all the way from the tip of Arabian Peninsula across Iran itself and on to the Mediterranean: a network of allies and proxies that included the Houthis, the government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, the Lebanese terrorists of Hezbollah, and the Palestinian terrorists of Hamas.

Today, however, with the fall of Assad’s murderous dictatorship, Israel’s deft mauling of Hezbollah, and the Israeli invasion and occupation of Gaza in response to the genocidal Hamas attack upon Israel in October 2023, things look very different. The collapse of the “Axis” is a huge shift that robs Iran of enormous strategic depth and weakens its regional power base. It also deprives Tehran of what many observers long felt was the “deterrent effect” of Hezbollah’s enormous rocket arsenal on Israel’s northern border – a force that it was presumed would protect Iran from direct Israeli attack, lest moves against Tehran confront Israel’s population with a rain of fire from southern Lebanon. 

(Nor, it has been astutely pointed out to me, did Iran’s status as a “virtual” nuclear weapons possessor provide much “deterrence” agasint Israeli or American attack.  This could be quite important, teaching Iran – and perhaps others – that a “hovering on the brink of having a weapon” status actually doesn’t provide the security benefit some might have expected.)

• As for Iran’s nuclear program, after President Trump’s withdrawal of the United States from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal in 2018, Iran went on to build an increasingly formidable fissile material production capacity and stockpile of highly-enriched uranium – just as the JCPOA would so lamentably and foolishly have permitted, but now (thanks to the U.S. withdrawal) earlier than the JCPOA would have allowed – thus dangerously positioning itself as a so-called “virtual” nuclear weapons possessor, merely a quick sprint away from weaponization.

Today, however, that nuclear program has been to some important extent degraded, first by Israeli attacks (including the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists) and then by the “Operation Midnight Hammer” U.S. cruise missile attack on a nuclear facility at Isfahan and bunker-busting strikes against underground centrifuge cascades at Natanz and Fordow.  It’s not clear how much these attacks in the summer of 2025 set back the Iranian program, and pronouncements by the Trump Administration have been wildly inconsistent. (Sometimes they describe it as having suffered such “monumental damage” that it was “completely and fully obliterated” and at other times they merely assess that it was “significantly” degraded, being set back “one to two years at least.”  Confusingly, and hardly reassuringly, U.S. officials have sometimes even advanced such differing assessments even within the same document.)  Nevertheless, the Iranian nuclear situation is today clearly very different than it was at this point in 2025.

• In addition, European leaders have now invoked the “snapback” provisions of U.N. Security Council Resolution 2231, forcing Iran to contend with the full formal reimposition of United Nations sanctions in response to its continuing violations of its International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) nuclear safeguards obligations. Now, if Iran wishes to escape from the dire economic implications of these sanctions, it will have to reform its behavior enough to convince all the Permanent Members of the U.N. Security Council that it deserves such relief. As I have argued elsewhere, this “snapback” can be a powerful tool to incentivize nuclear negotiations, especially if deftly coupled to threats such as President Trump’s recent signal to Iran that “time is running out” in which to reach a nuclear deal.

• Iran also has also come to face domestic instability and huge popular protests against the oppressive rule of its clerical theocracy of a sort unseen since at least 2009, with the regime itself admitting that thousands of people have now been killed as a result of its harsh crackdown on the protests. It is not clear how long this instability will last, of course, and despite President Trump’s encouragement of the recent protests and proclamation that “help is on the way” for the beleaguered Iranian masses, Trump has apparently now opted to follow Barack Obama’s sad example from 2009 by simply standing by and watching as the regime crushes pro-democracy protestors.  That said, the ayatollahs and their Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps praetorians today still face a domestic legitimacy crisis without precedent in many years, even as Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – at 86 years of age and with what are rumored to be serious health challenges – faces growing questions about leadership succession.

It is far from clear what the net effect of all of these developments will be upon Iranian proliferation risks. Will Iran’s leaders, for instance, decide that their weakened position requires that they begin nuclear weaponization as a kind of last-chance insurance policy against the foreign foes who have now struck them with impunity? Or might this very weakness induce the clerical regime to negotiate and accept a deal that meaningfully and enduringly constrains Iran’s nuclear capabilities – much as Ayatollah Khomeini himself eventually opted to accept the “poison” of a ceasefire with Iraq in 1988 despite his enormous ideological commitment to the Iran-Iraq War? It’s hard to say, but viewed from Tehran, today’s greatly changed strategic circumstances presumably make some major shift in Iran’s approach more likely now than at any other time in the last decade or more. The question is: what kind of shift?

Saudi Arabia

From a nonproliferation perspective, there have also been important developments vis-à-vis Saudi Arabia. To begin with, after years of on-again/off-again efforts, the United States and Saudi Arabia announced their agreement on a package of deals that included not only a so-called “123 Agreement” for civil-nuclear cooperation pursuant to which Riyadh will purchase U.S. nuclear reactors, but also a “strategic defense agreement” that may include purchases of U.S. battle tanks and F-35 fighter aircraft.

The precise contours of these arrangements remain unclear. The United States had tried for years to get the Saudis to agree to “Gold Standard” terms such as those in the 123 Agreement with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in 2009, whereunder the UAE forswore enrichment of uranium or separation plutonium, and had also tried to get Riyadh to accept adherence to the strong nuclear safeguards of the IAEA’s “Additional Protocol” (AP). Saudi Arabia, however, always refused.

There is no sign as yet that the deal recently struck by the Trump Administration contains either of those elements – and Energy Secretary Chris Wright has said that it does not cover enrichment – so it seems likely that the United States has backed down on both counts. In that event, the new U.S. agreement seems likely to advance Saudi nuclear know-how while not precluding that country’s future ability to acquire fissile material production capabilities from other sources, even while allowing it to avoid IAEA inspections to police against undeclared nuclear activity.

And indeed, Saudi Arabia has long proclaimed its intention to acquire all elements of the nuclear fuel cycle, while also pledging to match Iran’s nuclear weapon capabilities if and when Tehran itself builds a nuclear device. Last autumn, moreover, the Saudis reached a “Strategic Mutual Defense Agreement” (SMDA) with the nuclear-armed country of Pakistan, which Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Mohammed Asif declared meant that “[w]hat we have, and the capabilities we possess, will be made available to [them] according to this agreement.”

That said, the text of that agreement apparently makes no reference to any specific military capability and Asif later retracted his comment about providing nuclear weapons to the Saudis, leaving the situation notably unclear. Nevertheless, especially given that rumors have swirled for many years of just this sort of nuclear weapons understanding between Islamabad and Riyadh, and that the 2025 SMDA apparently does declare that “any aggression against either country shall be considered an aggression against both,” it seems that at least some aspect of “extended nuclear deterrence” has indeed now been injected into Middle Eastern affairs.

Whether this encourages regional nuclear weapons proliferation in the Middle East by making nuclear weapons a critical currency of power and influence there – and easier to acquire – or whether it makes regional proliferation less likely by helping Saudi Arabia feel less need to for indigenous weaponization is at this point anyone’s guess. There can be no question, however, but that 2025 has been a year of significant developments.

The United States

Finally, it has also been a time of important shifts with respect to the United States and questions of Middle Eastern nuclear proliferation, for American thinking on regional security and nonproliferation strategy seems to have shifted in significant ways under the Second Trump Administration. On the one hand, with its “Midnight Hammer” strike against Iran last summer, the Trump Administration has now created a precedent for a very active form of counterproliferation engagement against the nuclear program of a state that is in violation of its nonproliferation obligations. This is a hugely significant step, though it is not clear whether Trump would have taken it had not the Israelis begun by striking Iran’s nuclear program first. (Even if attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities was unwisely provocative, there was a compelling logic to the United States helping out once the Israelis began to attack, since for an “angry Iran [to have] a small, bashed-up nuclear capability” was better “than [for it] to have a large and intact one.”)

Those strikes, however, do not necessarily signal the continuation of a powerful general U.S. commitment to nonproliferation, in the Middle East or elsewhere, for American thinking appears to be shifting in other respects. For one thing, as I have suggested elsewhere, in the current strategic environment of triangular great power rivalry it is hard to imagine nonproliferation retaining quite the top-shelf priority it was after the end of the Cold War and during the United States’ “Global War on Terrorism.” As new strategic threats or points of strategic focus evolve – whether that is great power competition vis-à-vis China  and Russia (for the First Trump Administration and then the Biden Administration) orthe alleged need to focus upon homeland security and an American sphere of influence in the Western Hemisphere (for the Second Trump Administration) – it is all but inevitable that the relative priority of nonproliferation in the U.S. policy agenda will shrink.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that U.S. officials feel nonproliferation to be unimportant, but it does mean that nonproliferation is likely to stack up differently against other policy priorities now than it did before. In particular, given the Second Trump Administration’s palpable distaste for bearing significant burdens to defend traditional U.S. allies – as well as the increasing sense of existential threat faced by those allies in the face of growing Russian, Chinese, and North Korean threats – it feels to me as if Washington is gradually shifting from regarding nonproliferation as a per se good to assessing nonproliferation questions more on a “case-by-case” basis.

American officials may remain committed to preventing Iranian proliferation, for example – and indeed the recently-released 2026 National Defense Strategy (NDS) still proclaims that “Iran will not be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons” – but their desire to prevent some other countries from taking such a step may lack quite that intensity. Notably, neither the new NDS nor the 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS) specifically mention either “proliferation” or “nonproliferation” at all; the issue seems to have slipped off the roster of the United States’ highest-priority national security concerns, and this could of course have implications in the Middle East.

Relatedly, but more broadly, the shift of the Second Trump Administration’s focus from the wider international arena to a more constricted horizon concerned primarily with homeland security, trade policy, and “hemispherist” regional self-aggrandizement also has the potential to affect how American leaders approach and prioritize proliferation questions in the Middle East. Though the recent NDS says that the United States will not permit Iran to acquire nuclear weaponry, it also seems to treat the Iranian nuclear problem as one that President Trump has basically already solved by “obliterating” Iran’s nuclear program, though the NDS still notes the possibility that the Iranians “may … seek to rebuild devastated infrastructure and capabilities.” The NDS also seems to herald a declining U.S. military concern for the Middle East, observing that there exist “opportunities for us to enable individual partners to do more for their defense,” and seeming to suggest that this will permit the United States to reduce its own involvement.

This theme of reduced American interest in the Middle East – whether with regard to proliferation or in other respects – is even more pronounced in the 2025 National Security Strategy. In terms of American national security or foreign policy interests in the region, the NSS articulates only one: the importance of preventing any “adversary power” from dominating the region. Beyond that, however, little reason is given for the United States to care about events there.

Indeed, while the NSS explicitly notes that while U.S. strategists have traditionally “prioritized” the Middle East on account of its being (1) “the world’s most important supplier of energy,” (2) a “prime theater of superpower competition,” and (3) “rife with conflict that threatened to spill into the wider world and even to our own shores,” it also observes pointedly that “at least two of those dynamics no longer hold” today. Specifically, the United States no longer particularly needs Middle Eastern oil, and the region is today merely the locus of “great power jockeying” – whatever that means, though this odd term seems intended to sound more playful than threatening – rather than actual competition, and because in such “jockeying” the United States has the strongest position. As the NSS notes, in fact, as U.S. energy production increases, “America’s historic reason for focusing on the Middle East will recede” even further.

According to the NSS, therefore, the only reason for Americans to care about the Middle East today is the danger that local conflicts there could spread into broader realms. Even in that regard, however, there is said to be “less to this problem than headlines might lead one to believe,” because Iran has been gravely weakened by recent events. All in all, the National Security Strategy thus seems to suggest, the Middle East has lost its importance for strategists in Washington: one way or the other, events there simply don’t seem to matter to U.S. leaders the way they used to.

This does not necessarily bespeak a general lack of concern for regional proliferation, but it certainly signals a conclusion by the Second Trump Administration that Middle Eastern issues of any sort are of merely secondary or tertiary importance for the American national security agenda. To the extent that U.S. officials have traditionally been closely engaged with Middle East proliferation risks and have made regional nonproliferation an extremely high priority for decades, this American shift could be very significant over time. If the attitudes expressed in the 2025 NSS and the 2026 NDS persist, Washington’s willingness to devote time, energy, and resources to restraining regional proliferation in the future may be reduced.

It is also a time of considerable flux in U.S. strategic thinking on nuclear matters more generally – and in ways that are also likely to affect whether, how, and the degree to which leaders in Washington focus upon nuclear proliferation relative to other challenges.

Faced with the unprecedented problem of having to deter two nuclear near-peers simultaneously, for instance, U.S. strategic thinkers on both sides of the political aisle – as can be seen, for instance, in the 2023 report of the Strategic Posture Review Commission and the 2025 report of the U.S. Institute of Peace Senior Study Group on Strategic Stability – have warmed to the idea of increasing the size of the American nuclear arsenal for the first time in decades, even as the New START agreement expires later this week. 

Apparently reacting to what are now longstanding U.S. assessments that Russia at the least – and possibly China, too – have been conducting secret low-yield nuclear tests, American officials have also suggested the possibility that we might feel the need to do something of the sort as well, though any such U.S. plans, if indeed there are any, remain quite opaque. 

The Second Trump Administration is also keen to reduce the costs and scale of U.S. commitments to defending our allies, even while these allies feel more threatened by Russian and Chinese military aggression than at any other time since the Cold War.  This could well create new incentives to undertake or accept what might be termed “friendly proliferation,” pursuant to which one or more of our allies might consider nuclear weaponization because it felt there was no other way to protect itself from Russia or China.

I believe we can be less certain today of the central role of nonproliferation in American thinking than at any time in a great many years.

Conclusion

Together, these developments suggest that we are indeed at least at a potential watershed from the perspective of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East. The watershed could remain only potential, of course, and nothing guarantees that some spike in regional proliferation will occur. As I have argued for some time now – including here, here, here, and here– I still think we have a chance to leverage Iran’s present weakness into a diplomatic solution if we take the trouble to develop a clear and thoughtful negotiating strategy and are willing actually to work with the Europeans to implement it; it’s also conceivable that the clerical regime of the ayatollahs could simply collapse. But who knows?

What is clear, however, is that the strategic terrain here has been shifting rapidly, even as important attitudinal adjustments are occurring or seem likely in both the United States and Iran. Where this ends up going, I cannot prophesy.  But today’s Middle East is clearly now in an unusual state of strategic flux, and the proliferation implications could be quite dramatic – for good or for ill.

—Christopher Ford