By Henry Sokolski
Late last month, the House Intelligence Committee chairman volunteered that Iran could declare itself a nuclear weapons state by the end of the year. And earlier this month, the U.S. intelligence community warned that Iran has “undertaken activities that better position it to produce a nuclear device, if it chooses to do so.’’ How quickly? Experts now say 12 weeks or less.
The mullahs might alert us or stay mum. Either way, the next president’s challenge won’t be how to prevent Iran from going nuclear but deciding what to do after it gets nuclear weapons. The next president will have to focus and take several minimal steps.
First, Iran. The president and the congressional leader of the party that fails to win the White House should select three experts each to form a panel to report on what the United States and its allies should do once Iran goes nuclear. How should we prevent Tehran from using nuclear weapons? Should we dissuade Iran’s neighbors from following Iran’s model? How? What of other allied nuclear aspirants outside the Middle East? A report will help define the terrain of what’s possible.
Second, the panel should examine whether the uranium enrichment aid that presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump both considered giving to Saudi Arabia makes sense. Benjamin Netanyahu’s top nuclear experts told the Israeli prime minister to oppose such aid — that no “safeguards’’ could prevent the Saudis from using it to make bombs. The Saudis, however, insist that if Iran goes nuclear, they must follow suit. For Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, enrichment is his critical hedge. So should we follow Netanyahu’s advisers or help the Saudis enrich? The next president will likely have to decide.
It’s even more complicated. Some in Congress insist we must sell the Saudis enrichment plants — or else China and Russia will. But if Iran goes nuclear, will blocking Chinese and Russian nuclear sales be our top concern? Unlike Beijing and Moscow, Washington has nuclear agreements with the United Arab Emirates and South Korea, who will ask for whatever we allow the Saudis. Turkey, Poland, Egypt — all Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) members interested in bombs — will be restless. How should we proceed?
The new administration will also have to lock down U.S. and allied civilian nuclear commerce from bolstering Chinese and Russian bombmaking. Congress denounced Russia’s fueling of China’s “peaceful’’ fast reactors, which make weapons-grade plutonium. But it has said nothing about Canada helping China make weapons-grade tritium in Canadian reactors, or selling China’s nuclear-weapons vendor massive amounts of uranium. Congress has similarly been mum about Westinghouse (now, a wholly Canadian-owned entity) selling China power reactors, even though we have no effective way to monitor their ‘’peaceful’’ use (a legitimate worry, given the end-use pledges China violated with earlier U.S. nuclear exports).
We also complain about Vladimir Putin’s nuclear threats but still allow U.S. utilities to buy hundreds of millions of dollars of uranium annually from Rosatom, Russia’s main nuclear weapons maker. This gives hypocrisy a bad name. The next president must cut the knot: Suspend U.S. nuclear cooperation with China and Russia until they can certify that none of the United States’ or Canada’s nuclear commerce is helping their weapons efforts. Given Washington temporarily withdrew such cooperation with Russia in 2008, there is a precedent to act.
Finally, we will need to toughen our stance on nuclear weapons sharing and the NPT’s enforcement. Early in 2026, the treaty undergoes formal review. China and Russia are already cynically steering a self-serving narrative in arguing that the United States hasn’t disarmed as the NPT requires, and that it is violating the treaty by sharing nuclear arms with NATO and not precluding redeployments to Japan and South Korea. Never mind that Russia’s repositioning of its nuclear weapons to Belarus is driving Polish interest in getting U.S. nuclear weapons on its soil. And that China’s nuclear buildup is driving similar South Korean and Japanese interest. Or that Beijing and Moscow have refused to negotiate nuclear arms limits as the NPT calls for.
It’s time to call the bluffs of both Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping. The next president should offer to make NATO, Japan, and South Korea free of U.S. nuclear weapons if Putin moves his nuclear arms east of the Ural Mountains in a verifiable fashion, and if Xi freezes his fast reactor and reprocessing activities.
Ambitious? Sure. But also necessary. Pray our next president has the backbone to take it all on.
Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, served as deputy for nonproliferation in the Defense Department and is the author of Underestimated: Our Not So Peaceful Nuclear Future. This column originally appeared in the Washington Post.
Kennedy Maize