Time for a Nuclear Ultimatum on Iran
Talks begin today. Diplomacy should be backed by a credible threat of war. Despite all the reasons for caution, here’s why there’s no alternative.
Talks begin today in Oman between the United States and Iran — a meeting farcically described as “indirect,” yet one that is much anticipated and potentially pivotal. It’s a chance for Donald Trump, who has done a great many foolish things, to do something wise. Obviously, the odds are long.
The United States and its allies have long relied on delay, diplomacy, and deterrence to manage Iran’s nuclear ambitions — but that model has collapsed. Instead, Trump’s team should present the incorrigible regime with an ultimatum and back it up with the will to deploy massive, crippling force. Only a credible threat might move Iran from its inclination to drag things out until it gets what it wants, or at least buys time.
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I do not say this lightly. Reasonable observers will insist that diplomacy is the only path forward — and normally I’d be right there with them. I believe in negotiation, in dialogue, in finding peaceful solutions. Moreover, a military strike would be very risky, because Iran is a large and powerful nation run by a ruthless regime — that too argues for caution. And in general, countries should have their autonomy respected, however they are governed.
But there are limits and there are exceptions. The Iranian regime is a menace to its people, the region and the world. Its entire chaos project, from the nuclear program to its proxy militias around the region, is not acceptable and never should have been. And as far as negotiations are concerned, the regime has abused its interlocutors time and again, dragging out talks and lying outright. The current approach should neutralize those two stratagems.
This is a dangerous and delicate dance. It is absurd that fate has placed it in the hands of a character as clueless, capricious and corrupt as Donald Trump. But then again, a fourth “c” here be useful: Trump may be just about crazy enough to scare the Iranians into line. Either way, you fight with the army you have; in an epic tragicomedy, we have Trump.
Why the urgency? Well, Tehran is enriching uranium to 60% purity — a stone’s throw from weapons-grade — and has stockpiled enough fissile material for multiple bombs with minimal further processing. It prevents inspections, advances centrifuge technology, and embeds operations in underground facilities designed to withstand airstrikes. While the regime insists its program is peaceful, its actions scream otherwise.
Meanwhile, the existing Iran sanctions regime (known as the “snapback mechanism”) expires in October 2025, removing the last fast-track option to reimpose U.N. sanctions on Iran without a Security Council vote — where Russia or China could block action. Once it’s gone, the world loses critical leverage, and Iran gains a freer hand to escalate its nuclear program and regional aggression. Tehran is stalling for time, hoping to coast past this deadline. That’s why the clock isn’t just ticking — every alarm is ringing.
Iran is also at a moment of unusual vulnerability. Its regional proxies — Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, and even the Iraqi Shiite militias — have to various degrees suffered major blows in the war that Hamas launched on Oct. 7, 2023. Economic pressure is biting and domestic unrest simmers. The regime’s credibility is battered, its deterrent fraying. This moment offers a strategic window to act — not necessarily by rushing into an open-ended war, but by threatening it credibly.
The Iranian regime, true to the traditions of the Persian bazaar, thrives of drawing its interlocutors into exhausting negotiations, bewildering the other side with distractions and deflections. The Obama administration fell into this trap, in talks that lasted years. But there is actually not much to discuss.
The offer should be sanctions relief and trade normalization in exchange for intrusive inspections and irreversible destruction of nuclear infrastructure, as well as a complete end to the proxy militias which have sewn chaos around the region. No sunsets. No compromise. No ambiguity. No stalling.
Tehran should understand that it otherwise risks the annihilation of the project anyway in a calibrated and decisive assault which would also threaten the regime. Trump has suggested that Iran could face “bombing.” But he also doesn’t sound reluctant. The mullahs don’t do subtle; more clarity is needed.
Iran should also understand that if it makes the mistake of negotiating too hard, compelling a war, then the offer is gone and regime change is on the table. Once in conflict, the West will do everything possible to encourage the overthrow of a despotic theocracy despised by (probably) most of its people.
Iran’s nuclear infrastructure is both broad and hardened, but it is not invulnerable.
A focused U.S.-led campaign could set the program back years. The top priority must be Natanz, Iran’s primary enrichment site, which now includes a new underground hall carved deep into a mountain. Hitting this site would require the GBU-57 “Massive Ordnance Penetrator” (MOP), a 30,000-pound bunker-buster only the United States possesses. Fordow, buried under 80 meters of rock near Qom and enriching uranium to 60% purity using advanced IR-6 centrifuges, is similarly resilient. It, too, would require MOP-class munitions.
Other targets — such as the Uranium Conversion Facility at Isfahan, and the heavy water reactor at Arak — are more accessible and would disrupt Iran’s fuel cycle and plutonium production path. Weaponization research sites like the Parchin military complex and the Sanjarian labs are less critical but symbolically important. And missile production and storage facilities, including Khojir and the Imam Ali base, should be struck in a second wave to reduce Iran’s delivery capabilities.
A successful campaign would also require suppressing Iranian air defenses and radar systems, particularly around Natanz and Fordow, which are protected by advanced Russian-made S-300 surface-to-air missiles. These can be neutralized through a combination of electronic warfare, stealth airframes like the B-2, and preemptive cruise missile strikes (Israel already did much of the world last fall, in retaliation for the largest ballistic missile attack in history). Cyber and covert operations — building on the success of Stuxnet and various unexplained explosions — could further disable Iranian command and control systems, creating confusion and delaying retaliation.
Still, retaliation could be attempted. Iran could launch missile strikes against U.S. military bases in the Gulf — targeting troops and infrastructure in countries like Bahrain, Qatar, and Kuwait — while unleashing a barrage of rockets and drones on Israel, either directly or through proxies like Hezbollah and militias in Syria and Iraq. It could attempt to close the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of global oil supply flows, destabilizing global markets. Iran might also deploy cyberattacks or terrorist operations against Western targets, using asymmetric warfare to bypass conventional military constraints.
To contain such fallout, the U.S. would need to activate layered missile defenses across the Gulf and in Israel, potentially launching preemptive strikes on Iranian missile sites and command centers. Carrier strike groups would secure the Strait of Hormuz, while cyber capabilities would disable Iran’s launch systems and disrupt coordination with proxy forces. Also essential would be coordination with regional allies.
Any Hezbollah and Houthi reaction should be met with overwhelming response. Iranian missile launches — or stirring up of trouble in the wider region — must trigger strikes against military infrastructure, command centers, and eventually regime nerve centers. It cannot be allowed to become a prolonged war of attrition.
In an ideal world, the goal would be regime change.
But the outside world cannot do this directly. There must be a dialogue with the people of Iran, as well as regime power centers — including elements in the military and the Revolutionary Guards — who might seize the moment to rebel. A clear distinction must be drawn between Iran’s ruling clerics and its citizens, even its army. The message should be that the outside world would be delighted by their liberation, and will closely assist any new regime.
After almost a half-century of oppression (which itself succeeded a different kind of oppression under the Shah), the Iranian people deserve a chance at something better. For a sign of what may come, see my interview from last year with Reza Pahlavi, the some of the Shah, who envisions an Iran that is democratic and aligned with the West.
This would be a colossal gift to the people of Iran, for the regime has no legitimacy by any plausible measure.
The regime known as the “Islamic Republic” has been a blight upon the world since 1979. That was the year when, after the Shah fled amid massive protests against his pro-Western dictatorship, the exiled Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned from France, setting up the foundations of an Islamist theocracy. The new system was validated by a rigged April referendum. By November, the regime engineered a takeover of the US Embassy by fake students, taking 53 hostages in a crisis that helped destroy the presidency of Jimmy Carter.
It has been downhill ever since — a classic cautionary tale of one dictatorship replaced by another that’s even worse.
The regime is murderously brutal to its own people, leading the world in executions per capita — at least 972 in 2024 alone, many for non-violent or politically motivated charges. Protesters, women, and minorities face harsh crackdowns, including torture, public hangings, and death sentences.
The morality police enforce strict dress codes, and women defying them risk arrest or worse. Ethnic and religious minorities like Kurds and Baha’is suffer systemic discrimination and are overrepresented among the executed. The judiciary lacks transparency, using vague charges and forced confessions to silence opposition. Internet censorship and surveillance deepen the repression. Iran’s government rules through fear, punishment, and control. Periodic outbreaks of courageous dissent are cruelly crushed, with activists and journalists imprisoned or killed.
As if this were not enough, the regime has also been determined to export its brand of Islam around the regime. Its determined campaign of mischief, sporting labels like “resistance” and “revolution,” has featured shameless bellicosity and yielded uniformly catastrophic results.
In recent years 400,000 Yemenis have died as a result of a war caused by the Iran-backed, Iran-armed Houthis (see video below from AP’s Pulitzer prizewinning package on the country, from 2018, when I was the agency’s Middle East Editor).
In Syria even more people have died, and millions have been displaced in a war to preserve the despotic rule of Iran-backed Bashar Assad, finally deposed in December. Lebanon has been devastated by the Iran proxy Hezbollah, which has practically occupied the country. Iran-backed Shiite militias, over 200,000 strong, undermine any hope of democracy in Iraq. Iran-backed Hamas started a war it could not win on Oct. 7, 2023, massacring over 1,000 Israelis in one day and bringing about a war that has flattened Gaza.
All of this madness can be tolerated no more.
And it is the Iranians and the Arabs who should be screaming the loudest.
Some will say a tough line on Iran is warmongering. But the alternative is handing a criminal mafia nuclear weapons. That would trigger a regional arms race, likely drawing Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and possibly Turkey into the nuclear club. It would embolden more aggression, shielding the clerical regime from retaliation. And it would mark the final failure of the global nonproliferation regime. Inaction risks destabilization and ultimately a more difficult war.
Some will prefer to leave this to Iran’s neighbors — and that may include Trump, who said last week, needlessly and recklessly, that Israel would be a ‘leader” of any attacks.
Israel can hit many targets, but not the deepest, and its involvement would confuses and dilute the main issue because it is a red flag across the Muslim world. Its military is exhausted and its economy and society cannot sustain a prolonged war, after the nightmare of the past 18 month. Nonetheless, if America and the West don’t act, Israel may try. Not the worst outcome, but far from the best.
The irony, for me, is that I’ve long argued that the 2018 US withdrawal from the first nuclear deal was a strategic blunder — one of the dumbest in Trump’s dazzling gallery of dumb moves. It allowed Iran to resume uranium enrichment without limits, accelerating its path toward nuclear capability while abandoning the monitoring mechanisms that at least kept things in check. But it’s also true that the deal itself was flawed. It front-loaded restrictions on enrichment but let Iran’s destabilizing behavior elsewhere — its support for militias, missile development, and regional interference — go unchecked. That imbalance weakened the deal politically and gave reckless actors like Benjamin Netanyahu the ammunition they needed to undermine it. The result is as I (and others) predicted: Iran continued its crimes, and is now far closer to a bomb.
That’s why a do-over should be different — in the very approach to negotiation (an ultimatum), the scope of the ambition (the entire panoply of misbehavior) and the willingness to use force (public, credible and massive).
Christian philosophers from Augustine to Thomas Aquinas argued that violence can be morally justified under specific conditions — a doctrine known as Just War Theory: It must be declared by a legitimate authority, waged for a just cause, conducted proportionally and undertaken as a last resort. While these conditions are rarely all satisfied, there are moments when they apply.
We may be approaching such a moment. Courage and caution are advised, in equal measure.