Iran is already a nuclear ‘threshold state’. Can Israel live with it?

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The epicenter of the core of Israeli policy on Iran’s nuclear ambitions and program can be reduced to one sentence: “Israel will never allow Iran to become a nuclear power.” A sentence that says it all despite the inherent vagueness, and accurately reflects Israeli interests and its mode of thought.

This dictum is a concise history of 30 years’ worth of military, intelligence and diplomatic policies, public and covert, and will almost certainly be the number one item on the agenda when Prime Minister Naftali Bennett meets U.S. President Joe Biden in Washington later this month.

But what does it really mean? What exactly does “never allow” involve and entail, and what constitutes a “nuclear Iran”? While this may look simple enough to define, it is anything but.

Let’s start with the bottom line: Iran is already a nuclear state. That cannot be preempted, prevented or undone. By some definitions, it can also be considered a “threshold state.” But Iran has no military nuclear capability, which is exactly why there is terminological confusion and where imprecise policy statements are made.

When Israel repetitiously declares that it will not acquiesce to a nuclear Iran and assiduously proclaims that a militarized nuclear Iran is totally unacceptable, it is serious. When President Biden states that Iran will not get nuclear weapons under his watch, he means it. The thing is, both statements are consistent with the current situation of Iran being a “threshold state.” That is something leaders, politicians, generals and ex-generals, and foreign policy wonks fail to clarify when they ceremoniously make these pledges, leading the public to assume this is a binary state of affairs: either Iran disarms by virtue of a renewed JCPOA (the nuclear deal), denuclearizes, or risks war.

Beneath the clear surface of the stated strategy, there is jargon that is often misleading. Terms are used interchangeably and freely to emphasize and dramatize the point the speaker is trying to make. Nuclear power, nuclear state, threshold state, old and new centrifuges, uranium enrichment, nuclear reactor, weapons-grade material, sufficient fissile material, breakout time, delivery system, nuclear warhead, ballistic missile – all roll off tongues too casually and create a misguided and murky vocabulary.

As the Americans and Iran prepare to resume a seventh round of talks on the U.S.’ reentry into the nuclear deal, from which the U.S. unilaterally withdrew in 2018 and whose principles and limitations Iran has been violating since 2019, the most pertinent term is “threshold state.”

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To be a “threshold state” – also known as “nuclear latency” or “a screwdriver’s turn away” – means to possess the technology, knowledge, components and have readily available (or have the capability to relatively quickly produce) the required quantities of enriched uranium, and be limited only by a decision not to proceed.

This is roughly where Iran is today. That does not yet constitute military nuclear capability.

To produce a weapons-grade device – a bomb in layman’s terms – you need roughly 220 kilograms of uranium enriched to 20 percent, and the technological ability to further enrich it to 93 percent. While arms control purists may define “threshold” as being in possession of 93 percent-enriched uranium, others will define it as having enough kilos of uranium at 20 percent and the proven ability to further enrich quickly.

Iranian President-elect Ebrahim Raisi waving to reporters in May. Ebrahim Noroozi/AP

This is before there is a dependable delivery system. Attaching a nuclear warhead to a ballistic missile is not a simple screw-on process by any measure, since these missiles leave and reenter Earth’s atmosphere. Believe it or not, it is even more complicated than assembling IKEA cabinets, and Iran skipped the airborne option – like those used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 – in favor of leaping straight into the missile realm.

Once a decision has been made to produce a weapon, irrespective of the delivery system, the time interval between 20 and 93 percent-enriched uranium is called the “breakthrough time.” The difference between the definitions of “threshold” explains the gaps in intelligence assessments and the selective use by politicians of Iran’s overall breakout time.

Think of four separate auto-repair shops: one hosts the frame and chassis; the second has the engine; the third stores the electrical and steering systems; and the fourth has low level but upgradable gasoline.

Is that a car? Yes and no. It’s more like Schrodinger’s Iran.

The knowledge to assemble the car exists and the threshold is the decision to do so and having the gasoline to make it run. This is where Iran is.

In professional literature and jargon, a threshold state is also described as “the Japan Option”: Having the scientific knowledge, technological capabilities, necessary components, inventories and access to fissile material, but self-constrained by a decision not to develop a military option. The reason could either be to circumvent the limitations and stipulations of the NPT (Non-Proliferation Treaty), foreign policy, regional sensitivities or an aversion to provocations that could generate a nuclear arms race.

Alongside Japan, Australia, Germany, Canada and South Africa (which dismantled its nuclear arsenal in 1989) are all considered threshold states. None of these countries is bellicose, threatens another country, has a vast missile development program, or active regional destabilization and terror-sponsoring foreign policy practices as Iran does. However, in terms of military nuclear capability, they are no different.

The main challenge of living beside and dealing with a “threshold” Iran isn’t the breakout time or an instant decision to proceed. Iran is aware of the repercussions stemming from Israeli and U.S. deterrence. The problem is the shield it provides adversarial policies. Under the threat of crossing the threshold, without a binding, verifiable agreement, Iran feels emboldened and empowered to pursue the various policies it engages in: subversion, terrorism, destabilizing regimes, supporting militias from Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Gaza to Yemen.

Israel’s biggest diplomatic and military challenge is, therefore, to prepare for two contingencies, both based on Iran already being a threshold state, in two different stages:

First, if the U.S. eventually reenters the JCPOA in the coming weeks, the parameters of the deal and mechanisms of supervision and verification will significantly limit Iran’s capabilities and stockpiles. But what is the viable deterrent against violations? Will the U.S. and Israel have a set of agreed benchmarks and standards that define transgressions?

Second, if the U.S. concludes that there is no point making a deal under the current circumstances and given Iranian intransigence, what then? Iran remains a threshold state, but what if it further makes progress and shortens the breakout time? Do Israel and the U.S. have a similar approach to such a script?

Both these scenarios require the establishment of a high-level consultation mechanism to sort things out and avoid disparities of interpretation – and critically, to avoid a U.S. miscalculation of Israel’s response and Israel underestimating American interests.