MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
It's been a day of saber-rattling on Iran. President Trump took to social media to demand unconditional surrender - all caps. Trump wrote, quote, "we know exactly where the so-called supreme leader is hiding. He is an easy target but is safe there. We are not going to take him out - kill - at least not for now."
JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Elsewhere on the show today, we'll take a deeper dive into what Trump is saying about U.S. involvement in this conflict. Right now, we want to step back and mark this fifth day of deadly missile salvos between Iran and Israel. The stated reason for Israel's preemptive attack boils down to this - the decades-long fight to keep Iran from building a nuclear weapon.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: This operation will continue for as many days as it takes to remove this threat.
KELLY: 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.
AARON STEIN: It's my pleasure to be here. Thank you.
KELLY: 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?
STEIN: Well, it's a policy of opacity, where the Israelis, you know, largely in conjunction - I wouldn't say with the acquiescence, but the rather sort of, you know, forced hand of the United States said - you know, 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.
KELLY: Although part of the point of nuclear deterrence is to show everyone you have nuclear capabilities, so don't attack us 'cause we have nukes.
STEIN: 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, where it's just like everybody - 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.
KELLY: Ah. 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?
STEIN: Well, Iran had an active nuclear weapons program up until 2003. The U.S. 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.
KELLY: 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?
STEIN: 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 Trump administration 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.
KELLY: So that is an inherent risk here, that by attacking Iran, it will cause Iran to race for a nuclear bomb.
STEIN: That will be my personal metric of success for the Israelis. Everything that we're watching is defying expectations. The Israelis have established air superiority over western Iran and Tehran in ways that we didn't really think possible. 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.
KELLY: 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.
STEIN: 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, is that this could start off a cascade. The U.S. and its allies at the time, ironically including the Soviet Union, were able to head that off. Now, you know, we're in the Wild West here, which is the capabilities to develop nuclear weapons have proliferated around the world. And so one of the dangers here is that the allure of nuclear weapons as sort of this symbol to deter conflict from external actors becomes all enticing for people in the Middle East, but also for other nonnuclear countries around the world.
KELLY: 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?
STEIN: Well, that's why we invest or we elect leaders who ostensibly care about these things. Look, the United States and the international community has tools, the Non-Proliferation Treaty, all the other things to try and head this off. It's just that the barriers to build nuclear weapons are not what they once were.
KELLY: So what are you watching for next as these nuclear stakes play out?
STEIN: 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, though 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.
KELLY: Their program will have been slowed but not stopped.
STEIN: Correct.
KELLY: Aaron Stein - he's president of the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Thank you.
STEIN: My pleasure. Thank you for having me. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
