Part 3/5: The Road to the Unthinkable: 2026 Will See The Nuclear War

Part 3/5: The Road to the Unthinkable: 2026 Will See The Nuclear War Natanz, Dimona, and the Nuclear Threshold A five-part investigative series on the US-Israel war against Iran, the death of diplomacy, and the path toward nuclear catastrophe. - Part 1 Published here : The road to unthinkable - Part 2 Published here : The road to unthinkable Published March 26, 2026 On March 21, 2026, twenty-one days into a war that had already killed thousands and destabilized the global energy supply, the conflict crossed a boundary that nuclear strategists have spent decades warning about. In the morning, Israeli and American forces bombed Iran’s Natanz uranium enrichment facility, the centerpiece of Iran’s nuclear program and the site where centrifuge cascades had brought Iran to within days of weapons-grade enrichment capability. Hours later, Iranian ballistic missiles struck the towns of Arad and Dimona in southern Israel, the latter being the location of the Shimon Peres Negev Nuclear Research Center, Israel’s primary nuclear weapons facility. Both strikes successfully reached their targets. The IAEA confirmed that no radioactive material had leaked at either site. There was no contamination event. But that fact, reassuring as it may sound, obscures the significance of what occurred. For the first time in the history of this conflict, and arguably in the history of the nuclear age, two belligerent nations engaged in the deliberate, reciprocal targeting of each other’s nuclear infrastructure during an active war. The interceptors failed. Iranian missiles reached Dimona. At least 180 people were wounded between the two towns. This third installment of the series examines the nuclear dimension of the Iran war: the weapons programs on both sides, the doctrine and capability that each possesses, the public warnings from within the Trump administration itself that nuclear weapon use is a real possibility, and the escalation dynamics that make March 21 not an endpoint but a waypoint on a trajectory that has no good destination. What Iran Had: The Nuclear Program at the Start of the War To understand what is at stake in the targeting of nuclear facilities, it is necessary to understand what those facilities contained and what they represented in strategic terms. By early 2025, Iran had accumulated approximately 408 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent purity, according to the IAEA. This stockpile represented a dramatic acceleration from the levels Iran maintained under the JCPOA, when its enriched uranium was capped at 300 kilograms at 3.67 percent enrichment. The 60 percent level is significant because the technical step from 60 percent to weapons-grade 90 percent enrichment is substantially smaller, in both time and effort, than the steps required to reach 60 percent in the first place. The physics of isotope separation mean that the closer you get to weapons-grade material, the less additional work is required at each stage. The Institute for Science and International Security, a Washington-based nonproliferation research organization, assessed in early 2025 that Iran could produce enough weapons-grade uranium for five to six nuclear weapons in less than two weeks if it chose to do so. Iran’s breakout timeline, the concept that anchored decades of diplomatic efforts, had effectively collapsed to zero. The JCPOA had maintained that timeline at twelve months. The maximum pressure campaign that replaced it had produced a timeline of days. Iran had not, as of the start of the war, assembled a nuclear weapon. It had not conducted a nuclear test. It had not, to the knowledge of Western intelligence agencies, miniaturized a warhead design to the point where it could be mounted on a ballistic missile. These are non-trivial engineering challenges. But the gap between the capacity to enrich uranium to weapons-grade and the capacity to deliver a functioning nuclear weapon had been narrowing steadily, and intelligence assessments varied widely on how much time remained. The June 2025 Twelve-Day War had damaged some of Iran’s enrichment infrastructure, but the program proved more resilient than many analysts had predicted. Underground facilities at Fordow, buried deep within a mountain, survived Israeli strikes largely intact. Centrifuge manufacturing facilities, dispersed across multiple locations, were not all identified and targeted. By early 2026, Iran had reconstituted portions of its enrichment capability. This was the context in which the White House justified Operation Epic Fury as a necessary response to an “imminent nuclear threat.” The Arms Control Association’s rebuttal was pointed: Iran’s enrichment capacity was advanced, but the program did not meet the standard of imminence that would justify preemptive military action under international law. Iran was not assembling a weapon. It was not conducting a test. It was, until the morning of February 28, engaged in diplomatic negotiations about limiting its enrichment activities. What Israel Has: The Arsenal No One Acknowledges Israel’s nuclear program occupies a unique position in international relations: it is one of the worst-kept secrets in the world and simultaneously one of the most consequential areas of official silence. Israel has never formally acknowledged possessing nuclear weapons. Its standard formulation, repeated for decades, is that “Israel will not be the first country to introduce nuclear weapons to the Middle East.” The word “introduce” is interpreted by Israeli officials to mean that Israel will not be the first to test or publicly declare its arsenal, a semantic distinction that allows the maintenance of a policy known as “nuclear ambiguity” or “opacity.” The ambiguity is a diplomatic construct. The underlying reality is well-documented. In 1986, Mordechai Vanunu, a technician at the Dimona facility, provided photographs and technical details of Israel’s weapons program to the British press. His revelations confirmed what intelligence agencies had long assessed: Israel possessed a sophisticated nuclear arsenal, produced from plutonium generated at the Dimona reactor. Current estimates of Israel’s arsenal vary. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) estimates approximately 80 warheads. Other assessments range from 80 to as many as 400, depending on assumptions about production rates and weapons design. Israel possesses multiple delivery systems: land-based Jericho III ballistic missiles with an estimated range exceeding 5,000 kilometers, submarine-launched cruise missiles deployed on its fleet of Dolphin-class submarines (widely believed to be nuclear-capable), and air-delivered weapons carried by its F-15 and F-35 fleets. The submarine capability is particularly significant in the context of nuclear doctrine. Submarine-launched weapons provide what strategists call a “second-strike” capability: even if an adversary were to destroy all of Israel’s land-based forces and air bases in a first strike, nuclear-armed submarines at sea could still deliver a retaliatory response. This capability exists to ensure that no adversary can eliminate Israel’s nuclear deterrent through a preemptive attack. It is, by design, a guarantee of mutually assured destruction. Israel’s nuclear doctrine has never been officially articulated. But a concept associated with it, known as the “Samson Option,” has been described by journalists and analysts for decades. The term refers to a strategy of massive nuclear retaliation in the event that the State of Israel faces existential destruction, a reference to the biblical figure Samson, who destroyed the temple of his captors and killed himself along with thousands of Philistines. Whether the Samson Option represents an actual operational plan, a deterrent posture, or a cultural metaphor is debated. What is not debated is that Israel possesses the means to implement it. March 21: The Day Both Sides Targeted Nuclear Sites The significance of March 21 cannot be overstated. The sequence of events was as follows: In the morning, Israeli and US forces struck Iran’s Natanz nuclear complex. Natanz is the facility where Iran had concentrated much of its advanced centrifuge capacity and where the bulk of its 60 percent enrichment had been conducted. The strike was part of a broader pattern of targeting Iran’s nuclear infrastructure that had been ongoing since the start of the war, but Natanz represented the most symbolically and strategically important target in Iran’s nuclear program. Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization stated that there had been no leakage of radioactive materials. The extent of the physical damage to the facility was not independently confirmed, though satellite imagery analysis by commercial providers was ongoing. Hours later, Iran launched a salvo of ballistic missiles at targets in southern Israel, including the towns of Arad and Dimona. Dimona is home to the Shimon Peres Negev Nuclear Research Center, the facility where Israel’s nuclear weapons are produced and stored. The Israeli Ministry of Health reported at least 180 people wounded between the two towns, with 116 in Arad and 64 in Dimona. The IAEA stated that it had received no indication of damage to the reactor itself and that no abnormal radiation levels had been detected. IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi urged “maximum military restraint” in the vicinity of nuclear facilities. The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) described the exchange as “tit-for-tat strikes against nuclear plants,” a framing that captured the reciprocal nature of the escalation. Al Jazeera reported it as Iran striking towns near Israel’s key nuclear site “in escalating tit-for-tat.” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty described it as heightening “the specter of disaster.” Middle East Eye reported it as Iran attacking Israel’s Dimona nuclear site “in retaliation.” The Military.com headline read: “Strikes Near Israel’s Nuclear Research Center Mark New Phase of War.” That assessment is correct. The war entered a new phase on March 21. Prior to that date, nuclear facilities had been struck, but the targeting had been asymmetric: Israel and the US hitting Iranian enrichment sites, with Iran retaliating against conventional military and civilian targets. On March 21, both sides were targeting each other’s nuclear infrastructure within the same 24-hour period. The escalation was no longer asymmetric. It was reciprocal. And the targets were no longer just the buildings where nuclear materials are processed. They were the buildings where nuclear weapons are stored. David Sacks: The Warning From Inside the Administration On or around March 14, 2026, David Sacks, the White House’s Special Advisor for Artificial Intelligence and Cryptocurrency (colloquially known as the “AI/Crypto Czar”), appeared on the All In podcast, a widely followed technology and business show. During the conversation, Sacks made statements about the trajectory of the war that no other figure in the Trump administration has publicly echoed. Sacks warned that if the war continued for an extended period, “Israel could just be destroyed or very large parts of it.” He then stated: “And then you have to worry about Israel escalating the war by contemplating using a nuclear weapon, which would truly be catastrophic.” The statement was reported by Fortune, Haaretz, ScheerPost, and numerous other outlets. It was remarkable not because the scenario Sacks described was novel. Nuclear strategists and arms control experts had been raising the possibility since the war began. It was remarkable because Sacks was, at the time of the statement, a senior official in the Trump administration. His warning contradicted the administration’s public posture, which was that the war was proceeding according to plan and that Iran’s military capacity was being systematically degraded. Sacks also warned about what he called Iran’s “dead man’s switch”: the capability to target and destroy desalination infrastructure across the Gulf states, rendering countries like Bahrain and Qatar, where 100 percent of fresh water comes from desalination, effectively uninhabitable. This was not a hypothetical. Iran had already struck desalination plants in Bahrain and its own Qeshm Island plant had reportedly been hit by the US. When asked about Sacks’ nuclear warning, Trump responded: “Israel would never.” Two words. No elaboration. No engagement with the strategic logic. No indication that the possibility had been analyzed, war-gamed, or planned for. The contrast between Sacks’ assessment and Trump’s dismissal illuminates something fundamental about how this war is being managed. Sacks, whatever his other qualifications, was engaging with the actual strategic dynamics of the conflict: a regional war in which one party possesses nuclear weapons and is sustaining escalating damage to its territory and population. Trump was not engaging with those dynamics. He was issuing a statement of faith. The Escalation Logic: Why Nuclear Use Becomes Thinkable The conditions under which a state might use nuclear weapons have been studied exhaustively by strategists, game theorists, and policy analysts since the dawn of the nuclear age. While the specific formulations vary, the general framework is consistent. Nuclear use becomes more likely when a nuclear-armed state faces what it perceives as an existential threat to its survival, when it believes that conventional military options have been exhausted or are insufficient to address the threat, when its leadership is under political or psychological pressure that rewards decisive action over restraint, and when there is no credible external power capable of imposing restraint. As of March 24, 2026, the situation in Israel intersects with several of these conditions to a degree that is historically unusual. Israel is Damaged Israel is sustaining damage to its population and infrastructure from Iranian missile and drone attacks at a scale and frequency that exceeds any previous military challenge in its history. The June 2025 Twelve-Day War was intense but brief. The current conflict is now in its fourth week with no end in sight. Iran’s demonstrated ability to strike Dimona, however imprecisely, has introduced the possibility that Israel’s nuclear infrastructure itself could be damaged or compromised by conventional attack. Israel’s conventional military capacity, while formidable, is engaged across an enormous geographic area. Israeli forces are conducting operations against Iran, maintaining readiness against Hezbollah in Lebanon, managing security in the West Bank and Gaza, and defending against attacks from Iranian proxies in Iraq and Yemen. The strain on air defense systems, documented by the fact that Iranian missiles penetrated defenses around Dimona, suggests that the technological advantage Israel has long relied upon is being tested by the sheer volume of projectiles in this conflict. The political environment in Israel is one of crisis. The elected government is prosecuting a war on multiple fronts simultaneously. Public opinion, shaped by the ongoing attacks and by the memory of the October 7, 2023, Hamas assault, is deeply supportive of military action and deeply fearful of existential threats. There is no significant domestic political constituency for de-escalation. And the external power that has historically played the role of restrainer, the United States, is not restraining. It is co-belligerent. The United States launched this war alongside Israel. It is not in a position to tell Israel to stand down because it is standing alongside it. The traditional dynamic in which Washington applies pressure on Jerusalem to prevent escalation has been replaced by a dynamic in which Washington and Jerusalem are escalating together. This combination of factors does not make nuclear use inevitable. It does not even make it probable in any given week. But it makes it thinkable. And in the field of nuclear strategy, the distance between “unthinkable” and “thinkable” is the most important distance there is. Once a nuclear option enters the realm of active strategic consideration, the barriers to its use begin to erode. Taboos weaken under sustained pressure. Red lines move when the alternative is perceived as worse than crossing them. The Jacobin article titled “Israel Has Nuclear Weapons. It May Use Them,” published in March 2026, argued that the war had created conditions in which the longstanding taboo against nuclear use was being tested more directly than at any point since the Cuban Missile Crisis. The JURIST legal commentary, titled “Iran, Israel, and the Risks of Nuclear War,” similarly concluded that the tit-for-tat targeting of nuclear facilities represented a qualitative escalation that increased the probability of a catastrophic miscalculation. The Middle East Monitor published a commentary on March 11 titled “Even off-hand talk about Israel’s nuclear option is obscene,” arguing that the mere public discussion of nuclear use by figures like Sacks normalizes the unthinkable and lowers the psychological barriers to action. The Al Jazeera opinion piece from March 22, “Why the world should worry about Israel’s nuclear doctrine,” traced the specific doctrinal pathways through which Israel’s longstanding nuclear ambiguity could transition into active nuclear threats, and from threats into use. The IAEA and the Absence of a Neutral Arbiter Throughout the conflict, the International Atomic Energy Agency has attempted to maintain its monitoring and verification role. Director General Grossi has issued multiple statements urging restraint, particularly around nuclear facilities. The IAEA confirmed no radiation leaks from either Natanz or Dimona following the March 21 strikes. But the agency’s ability to function as a neutral arbiter is severely compromised by the circumstances of the war. IAEA inspectors have not had unimpeded access to Iranian nuclear sites since the start of hostilities. Communication with Iranian counterparts has been disrupted. The inspection regime that was supposed to verify Iranian compliance with any future agreement, and that had been the backbone of the JCPOA’s verification mechanism, has been physically dismantled by the bombs that destroyed the facilities it was designed to monitor. This is not a minor point. The diplomatic framework for resolving the Iranian nuclear crisis was always premised on international inspection as the mechanism of trust. Sanctions would be eased in exchange for verified constraints on enrichment. The IAEA was the guarantor of that verification. Now the enrichment facilities have been bombed, the inspectors are unable to access the sites, and the trust mechanism has been replaced by military force. Even if the war ends tomorrow, the institutional infrastructure for a diplomatic solution has been significantly degraded. Where the Threshold Stands As of this writing, no nuclear weapon has been detonated in the Iran war. The stated objective of Operation Epic Fury is to destroy Iran’s nuclear program, not to use nuclear weapons. Israel has not threatened nuclear use. The scenario David Sacks described remains a warning, not a prediction. But warnings matter. And the trajectory matters. Every week that this war continues without a ceasefire, the probability of a catastrophic escalation increases. The targeting of nuclear sites on March 21 established a precedent that did not previously exist. The next exchange could be larger, more accurate, or aimed at more sensitive components of either nation’s nuclear infrastructure. A radiation release from a damaged reactor or enrichment facility would transform the conflict from a conventional war into a nuclear emergency. A sufficiently devastating conventional attack on Israel’s population centers could trigger the doctrinal threshold at which nuclear retaliation becomes, in the calculus of Israeli war planners, the only remaining option. None of this requires anyone to be irrational. It only requires the continuation of the current conflict on its current trajectory, with its current participants, under its current leadership. The logic of escalation does not require madness. It requires only the absence of an exit. Part 4/5: “God’s Divine Plan: The Religious and Political Architecture of an Unnecessary War” will examine the role of Christian Zionism in shaping US policy toward Iran, the religious rhetoric of senior military leaders, and the domestic political forces that made this war politically possible.