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In a speech on 9 September 2026, Trump made the following statement:

“If [Iran] had a nuclear weapon, I’d be calling the Supreme Leader and I’d be saying, ‘Mr. Supreme Leader, how are you, sir? Is there anything we can do for you?’—as opposed to bombing the crap out of him.”

There is probably no worse statement to make if one is committed to stopping the spread of nuclear weapons. In essence, Trump is saying that if Iran had developed a nuclear weapon, it is highly unlikely that he would have approved the attack on Iran. The ghosts of Saddam Hussein and Muamar Ghadafi would agree because if both Iraq and Libya had possessed nuclear weapons, they would probably still be in power.

North Korea is the poster child of that claim. It is an unlikely developer of nuclear weapons since the country is so poor and cut off from modern technology. But with the assistance of other countries, as well as a willingness to starve its population in order to afford the expensive equipment to develop the bomb, it was able to develop a nuclear capability that led Trump to be the first US President to enter North Korean territory. North Korea is a cantankerous and unpredictable power that was not high on the list of countries to develop nuclear weapons. It is also a country that is now insulated from an armed invasion since there is really nothing to be gained from controlling North Korean territory at the price of a single nuclear retaliation.

This insight deserves greater attention. The current war against Iran initiated by Israel and the US was justified by what was termed an “existential” threat to both countries by a nuclear-armed Iran. In the case of the US, there is little evidence that Iran would have been to attack the US homeland with nuclear weapons. It lacked the means to deliver such a weapon. Israel was more vulnerable since it is closer to Iran and much smaller than the US–any nuclear bomb exploded on Israeli soil would have been catastrophic to the Israeli state.

Israel was the object of much hateful rhetoric from Iran, based on the Islamic Republic’s belief that Israel was illegitimately created by the United Nations in 1948 without any consultation with the people who lived in what was known as Palestine at the time. There is no question that Iran is dedicated to this cause, and has armed its proxies in Lebanon, the Gaza Strip, Syria, and Lebanon to accomplish this aim. However, one should be prepared to admit that the rhetoric on both sides has been inexcusably inflammatory (Trump’s threat to end a “civilization” was utterly chilling).

Iran has been quite careful in the current war to limit its attacks on Israel, despite the fact that Israel serves as the principal US ally in the region and hosts a wide variety of US armaments. Writing for The Conversation, Shahram Akbarzadeh, points out the logic of Iran’s restraint:

“Iran is a hostage of its own inflammatory rhetoric. The regime has made its political fortune on rejecting the West and Israel. The Palestinian cause has been trumpeted as central to its worldview.

“This posture has attracted a following in the Muslim world. And Iran shamelessly exploits this to gain advantage over its Arab rivals, whom Tehran accuses of betraying Palestinians and their plight.

“Yet, the Iranian leadership is fully aware that crossing red lines and engaging in open confrontation with Israel (or the US) could pose an existential threat to the regime. That is why Iran has consistently pulled back from the brink of war and opted for low-intensity skirmishes via its proxies that serve its ideological grandstanding but do not jeopardise its survival.

Iranian restraint is easy to explain. Iran faces two nuclear-armed adversaries, and there is no Iranian objective that would justify an invitation to a US or Israeli nuclear attack on Iran. If Iran used a nuclear weapon to attack Israel, there is no question in my mind that either or both of those states would respond in kind.

That logic pervades the reality of a nuclear-armed world, and we have a name for this condition: mutual assured destruction (MAD). If two states have nuclear capabilities, they are unlikely to use them because the consequences of such actions would vitiate whatever gains were expected from an initial attack. But MAD only works if both sides have nuclear weapons: conventional weaponry does not create a similar condition.

So, I sincerely doubt that Iran would use nuclear weapons against Israel as long as it is vulnerable to a nuclear counterattack. What, then, explains the US and Israeli position of attacked Iran to prevent it from developing a nuclear weapon?

The answer is that both Israel and the US fear that a nuclear Iran would limit their ability to use conventional force. Their use of conventional war against Iran (as well as Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and the Occupied Territories) can only work if Iran does not have a countervailing threat. And Israel has certainly used its military to expand its territory. It now occupies the Gaza and the West and the “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians from these areas is quite clearly a war crime. It also commands large swathes of Syrian and Lebanese territory and there is no evidence that it intends to leave these areas.

We all need to ask a counterfactual question: would Israel have conducted it military response to the horrific attacks of 7 October if Iran had a nuclear weapon? I believe the answer is most emphatically no. And that is the real reason why Israel and the US attacked Iran.