A New Chapter for West Asia?
A New Chapter for West Asia?
The Potential Implications of the Snapback
At 89 seconds to midnight, along with two long term conflicts, 2025 has also seen tensions surrounding Iran’s nuclear program reaching a critical point. With the NPT (The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons) up for review, speculations about Iran exiting the NPT and what the implications would be are becoming increasingly common.
The Doomsday Clock is a symbol created by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists that is supposed to represent how close humanity is to self-destruction. Today, the clock thinks we’re the closest we have ever been.
The situation reached a zenith after the 12 day conflict between Israel and Iran in June, during which Israel targetted Iranian nuclear facilities and justified it as an attempt to prevent Iran ffrom acquiring a nuclear weapon which would be an existential threat to the state of Israel. Iran denied these claims, and the aftermath of the clashes resulted in Iran suspending all cooperation with the IAEA (the International Atomic Energy Agency). While reports confirmed that Iran is not currently building a bomb, Israel remains skeptical.
Despite the fact that the JCPOA (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) or the Iran Nuclear Deal has been non-functional since 2018 courtesy President Trump’s withdrawal, its architecture theoretically remains functional. JCPOA participants Germany, France, and the United Kingdom called for the initiation of the ‘snapback’ mechanism in August on the grounds that Iran is not upholding its commitments and deliberately being uncooperative with the IAEA. The snapback enforces pre-2015 sanctions against Iran. The reimposition of the sanctions as of late September is likely to have a significant impact on Iran’s economy, and Iran has criticised them for being unfair and unjustified.
The JCPOA was an accord between Iran and China, Russia, France, the US, the UK and Germany inked in 2015. Under the agreement Iran accepted strict limits on its nuclear program in order to prevent it from developing a nuclear weapon, in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions.
Following Israel’s attacks on Iran and Iran’s refusal to cooperate with the IAEA, the organisation’s inspectors can no longer verify the peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear program. The reimposition of the sanctions is only more likely to force Iran into a dangerous corner. If Iran were to withdraw from the NPT in retalliation at this time, it would be potentially destabilising but unsurprising. If Iran were to exit the treaty now, it would only exacerbate the information vaccum, leading much more room for the world to assume worst-case scenarios that could result in inadvertent escalation. The ambiguity would also likely be perceived by Israel as intent to build a bomb, which would almost certainly lead to military action. The broader domino effect would be the change of dynamics with the rest of West Asia. As it is, Saudi Arabia’s recent mutual defence agreement with Pakistan has raised questions about what the entry of another nuclear power in the region would mean. A potentially nuclear Iran? That would be likely to force other players in the region like Turkey and Egypt to evaluate their own strategies. On an even broader level, the global non-proliferation regime would have to bear the brunt of a less-credible NPT. Perhaps other nations with nuclear ambitions or territorial tensions would see this as an opportune time to withdraw from the NPT.
There is no denying that a shaky balancing act is at play. The question of how to hold Iran accountable to its nuclear obligations without pushing it too far hangs in the air.