The war with Israel has shown Iran that nuclear weapons will make them safer. “Countries with nuclear weapons are not attacked in that way,” says researcher.

– That's the point of nuclear weapons, they act as a deterrent, says Professor Jo Jakobsen at the Department of Sociology and Political Science at NTNU to NTB.

From Iran's perspective, nuclear weapons will make them safer and impossible to attack, Jakobsen believes. He points out that Israel is estimated to have around 90 nuclear weapons.

– Israel is the only country in the Middle East with nuclear weapons and can act extra offensively and expansionist because everyone knows they have these weapons. The same applies to Russia. They have several thousand nuclear weapons, which is the main reason why other countries do not want to be directly involved in the war in Ukraine.

– Nuclear weapons have a stabilizing effect

Paradoxically, nuclear weapons have a stabilizing effect.

– You can't really use nuclear weapons if the enemy also has nuclear weapons. That would be collective suicide. It seems to make states moderate. It's safer if more than just one state has nuclear weapons, says Jakobsen.

The question now is whether Iran will decide to develop nuclear weapons.

– It is important to point out that Iran has not decided to have a nuclear weapons program, they have a nuclear program. They have an official ban on nuclear weapons. It can be lifted, but that decision has not been made, says Jakobsen.

Iran has insisted that what they are doing is completely legal.

– At the same time, they have done a little extra in case they want to turn this into a nuclear weapons program, he says.

Enriched uranium

This primarily concerns enrichment capacity. In order to utilize uranium for power generation, it must be enriched to between 3 and 20 percent.

Iran has about 400 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), just a few steps away from the 90 percent enrichment level required to produce nuclear bombs.

400 kilograms is enough for about nine nuclear bombs.

The last time inspectors from the IAEA inspected Iran's uranium stockpiles was on June 10, according to the AFP news agency.

Now no one but Iran knows where the enriched uranium stocks are located, points out Jakobsen.

According to the New York Times, intelligence indicates that Iran may have moved equipment and uranium from its nuclear facilities before the US attack. Intelligence sources also say that the US attack did not result in the destruction of Iran's nuclear facilities.

Bombs alone do not destroy nuclear programs

– The Defense Intelligence Agency's (DIA) assessment is that the US has set them back perhaps a couple of months at most, a source tells CNN.

Experts in both intelligence and nuclear physics have said for many years that bombing alone is not enough to destroy the nuclear program, according to Jakobsen.

– You have to bring in ground troops to complete the job, for example to find the uranium, the most important component.

He believes there is reason to assume that Iran is storing the uranium in a secret location, and that it could be used if the decision is made to develop nuclear bombs.

Should Iran decide to develop nuclear weapons, they would have no interest in using them against Israel, says Jakobsen.

– Common rhetoric from Israel and the US is that Iran will annihilate Israel if they get nuclear weapons, but there is absolutely no indication of that. It would lead to Iran being annihilated as a state because Israel has enough nuclear weapons to annihilate most of Iran, he says.

Think the war is over

He does not believe in new attacks from Israel or Iran now.

– This war is probably over in the sense that all parties are reasonably satisfied, after all, with what has happened. Especially since the US is completely unwilling to continue now, there is reason to believe that this phase of the war is over and that the so-called ceasefire will last, he says.

New negotiations are probably unlikely.

– It's difficult to see what they will negotiate about, says Jakobsen.

He believes Israel attacked to stop the negotiations that were underway between Iran and the United States.

– Israel was probably afraid that the negotiations would end in a situation that was a little too good for Iran. Just before the sixth round of negotiations, Israel started the war, he says.

He believes Iran will remain low for a while to come.

– They want to lick their wounds and begin reconstruction. If that requires some dialogue with the United States, then it could be strategic and useful for Iran now. But it is difficult to imagine real negotiations.