Articles and leaks have proliferated suggesting that the possibility of Trump using nuclear weapons against Iran has become part of the military options under consideration.
Many have speculated about what Trump might do after the US midterm elections, anticipating that he would deploy the “Mother of All Bombs,” as he called it, the most powerful non-nuclear explosive ever developed. Trump has threatened to strike Iran with a devastating blow unlike anything previously inflicted. The attack, he suggests, would be militarily decisive, allowing him to declare the war over and proclaim ultimate victory. This would leave, at the very least, the prospect of resorting to the “Mother of All Bombs,” if not nuclear weapons themselves.
Yet despite its enormous destructive power, the “Mother of All Bombs” is not the appropriate weapon if the target is Axe Mountain. Designed to destroy targets above ground, it cannot penetrate a mountain rising dozens of meters, or more, above rocky terrain, beneath which the nuclear facility is believed to be located. This has revived speculation about the use of nuclear weapons, or nuclear bunker-busters, whose effects would extend both deep underground and across vast territories through radioactive fallout spreading hundreds or even thousands of kilometers.
But this raises a fundamental question: What could justify the use of nuclear weapons today, given that they have been used only once, in 1945? International law prohibits their use, while the major nuclear powers have pledged not to be the first to deploy them. They have also devoted considerable effort to securing second-strike capabilities, ensuring that no adversary can initiate a nuclear attack without facing devastating retaliation.
More important still has been the global consensus, among peoples, states, and public opinion alike, against their use. Nuclear weapons are understood as a threat to the very survival of human and nonhuman life on Earth. This consensus explains why neither the United States nor the Soviet Union dared to use them during the most acute crises of the Cold War, for fear of triggering a global nuclear war.
This balance has governed the conduct of nuclear-armed states capable of delivering their weapons anywhere on Earth, particularly the United States, China, and Russia, whose arsenals could destroy the planet several times over. Khrushchev is said to have once joked to the Americans that the Soviet Union could destroy the Earth once over, while the United States could destroy it four times.
Russia may today be the only country to have threatened the use of nuclear weapons in the course of a conventional war, warning that it would resort to them if attacked by any European country or if it faced defeat in Ukraine. This is an extraordinary declaration, unprecedented in its explicitness, and one that no other country had previously dared to make in such terms.
Ultimately, the world should be expected to rise up if Trump dares to use nuclear weapons. Iran, for its part, would endure even catastrophic losses, leaving Trump and the United States facing disastrous consequences, potentially even their own political collapse. The mere use of nuclear weapons would plunge the entire world into the threat of mass annihilation, making a worldwide mobilization against such an act imperative.
This is precisely why neither the United States nor the Soviet Union dared to use nuclear weapons throughout the Cold War, not even small tactical nuclear bombs. Both feared the global catastrophe that would follow, as well as the responsibility of being the first to cross a threshold that could open the way to the annihilation of life on Earth.
