In the US-led campaign against Iran, the risk of nuclear war demands rigorous strategic analysis, not presidential intuition. Professor Louis René Beres argues that only science-based reasoning can navigate the escalatory dangers ahead.
A scientist, whether theorist or experimenter, puts forward statements or systems of statements, and tests them step by step.
Karl R. Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1959)
In the many-sided conflict now underway against Iran (i.e., simultaneous and complementary operations led by the United States and Israel),[1] little concern has been expressed for a nuclear war. To be sure, keeping Iran non-nuclear remains a preeminent objective of Washington and Jerusalem, and nothing plausible suggests any short-term nuclear threats from Teheran. Still, the strategic situation between multiple belligerents is dynamically unstable,[2] and could be continuously undermined by US President Donald J. Trump’s openly unscientific approach to war and peace.[3]
There are tangible particulars.[4] In the 2025 film A House of Dynamite, an unidentifiable nuclear missile is heading for the United States. For the American president and his operational chain of command, there is no way of determining if incoming weapons have been launched intentionally or as the result of accident or inadvertence. While the film lacks substantive analytic content, its underlying warning is nonetheless clear, commendable and suitably “on-point”: In a global military universe of belligerent nationalism and expansive complexity, something vast and irremediable will inevitably go wrong.
This is not “just” an academic conclusion. In essence, science-based policies are prerequisite to global survival. What, therefore, should be done by the United States, Israel and other belligerent states, nuclear and non-nuclear, to prevent a nuclear war? There could not possibly be a more urgent policy question.
More particulars warrant attention. To grapple with this core survival imperative, a primary distinction should be introduced. Immediately, it needs to be understood, the risks of an intentional nuclear war are never the same as ones of an unintentional or accidental nuclear war. Scholars who are capable of deciphering increasingly complex nuclear war scenarios (by definition, a tiny universe) will need to acknowledge this clarifying bifurcation. Always, in such hyper-challenging intellectual tasks, pride of place should be accorded to seriously disciplined thinkers, not to viscerally clamoring politicians.[5]
There is more. If political leaderships take comfort from assumptions of enemy rationality, they would ignore indispensable calculations. More precisely, even perfectly rational adversaries could commit consequential errors in strategic reasoning and thereby fail to prevent certain miscalculated or accidental firings.
In dealing with nuclear weapons, anything less than perfect “reliability of intercept” would be unacceptable. Operationally, however, even a presumptively flawless system of missile defense (e.g., Donald Trump’s “Golden Dome”) could never be 100% effective. It follows, inter alia, that American survival in our currently-dissembling nuclear “balance” must depend on credible nuclear deterrence.
Further nuances and details deserve reference. For the United States, an accelerating threat of a nuclear war ought never to be dealt with as a “one-off” peril. Instead, this threat should always be assessed as part of a comprehensive systemic obligation; that is, to ensure national survival in a global “state of nature.”[6]
Impacted by the structural limitations of global anarchy – limitations highlighted by the continuous absence of any centralized world authority[7] – no state belligerent should be expected to prioritize considerations of international law.[8] Nowhere should this warning be more obvious than in the case of Donald J. Trump’s United States, a self-imperiling country where the incumbent president no longer even pretends to abide by long-settled civilizational rules. This assertion is offered here not as a narrowly ad hominem or politically partisan judgment, but only as an evident and incontestable fact.
More questions warrant thoughtful replies. What is there to learn about nuclear war avoidance? What can be discovered by science? To respond, because a nuclear war has never been fought, gainful national security policies will need to be based on variously abstract deductions.[9] Significantly, this limitation does not signify any automatic absence of science-based inquiry, but it does render impossible any logic-based appraisals of nuclear war probabilities.[10]
Expectations of ‘Escalation Dominance’
There is more. In the inherently ungovernable “state of nature,” international crises and belligerent confrontations are inevitable. Ipso facto, the historically “correct” way for powerful states like the United States to remain powerful is by demonstrating both the capacity and the willingness to dominate all “high-value” crisis escalations. To best ensure perceived capacity and willingness, this country will at times need to take exceptional risks, but to simultaneously avoid nuclear warfare.
It will be a delicate balancing act. In nuclear matters, decisional errors could prove unforgiving and irreversible. Always, above all, such potentially existential errors will need to be unraveled intellectually before they could ever be manageable politically.
In world politics, nothing is more practical than good theory. To figure out what is actually happening or about to happen between the United States and its adversaries, both non-nuclear and nuclear, it will be necessary to situate pertinent crises within broad theoretical frameworks. What should be the optimally useful framework?
Whoever the specific adversaries, American strategists seeking to protect the United States from a deliberate nuclear attack (unintentional nuclear attack risks will pose different risks and remedies) will have to accept facilitating assumptions of adversarial rationality.[11] Without such assumptions, ipso facto, there could be no meaningful theory of nuclear strategy and nuclear warfare.[12] At the same time, such reassuring assumptions display no recurring basis in world history and might not hold up in certain still-foreseeable confrontations.
For all countries, there is a common dilemma. Going forward, critical dangers will be created by enemy hacking operations, variously unrelated computer malfunctions and/or decision-making miscalculations[13] In each relevant scenario, certain damaging synergies could arise that would prove difficult or impossible to reverse.
Historical Context and Expanding Threats
In such bewildering matters, history will deserve some recognizable pride of place. Since 1945, the global balance of power has been transformed, in considerable measure, to a “balance of terror.”[14] In crisis circumstances where at least one adversarial state party is already-nuclear, an uncontrolled search for “escalation dominance” would enlarge the risks of unintentional or inadvertent nuclear war. Though widely overlooked and underestimated, these risks include nuclear war by accident or decisional-miscalculation (there are not the same problem) and could be incurred in different parts of the world. As a clarifying point of terminology, in cases where only one state party was already-nuclear, risks would define an “asymmetrical nuclear war.”
The “solution” to now-proliferating nuclear crisis risks is not to wish-away any adversarial search for “escalation dominance” (such a wish would be contrary to the internal “logic” of anarchic or chaotic world politics[15]), but to manage all prospectively nuclear confrontations at their lowest possible levels of destructiveness. Wherever feasible, therefore, it would be best to avoid such confrontations altogether and to maintain “circuit breakers” against both strategic hacking and technical malfunction.[16]
In world politics, US survival planning has granted conspicuous importance to presumptively still-worrisome Iranian nuclear plans. Plausibly, the prospect of a nuclear Iran[17] has already encouraged counter-vailing nuclearization planning by Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey. In this connection, moreover, non-Arab Pakistan[18] could become a direct adversary of the United States and/or Israel.[19]
Pakistan is an already-nuclear Islamic state with close ties to China. Like Israel, Pakistan is not a party to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). Nuclear China has never renounced its presumed right to “recover” Taiwan by military force.
More from Clausewitz
“Everything is very simple in war,” says Carl von Clausewitz in On War, “but the simplest thing is very difficult.” With America “in the loop,” Israel will continue to prioritize those circumstances wherein nuclear threats against a still pre-nuclear adversary in Tehran would seem gainful. In part, at least, Israeli conclusions would depend on the Jewish state’s prior transformations of “deliberate nuclear ambiguity” (the “bomb in the basement”[20]) into schematized variants of “selective nuclear disclosure.”[21] Though such considerations would concern matters that are sui generis or without historical precedent, Israel could at some point have no rational alternative.
International relations have reached a point where country-strategists must become more theoretical and more specific. What is the analytic difference between a deliberate or intentional nuclear war and one that would be unintentional or inadvertent? Without considering this vital distinction, little of calculable policy use could be said about the likelihood of nuclear conflict. Still, because there has never been an authentic nuclear war (Hiroshima and Nagasaki don’t “count”),[22] scientifically determining relevant probabilities will remain technically impossible.
Now in the “final innings” of an incomparably important competition, capable American thinkers will have to identify optimal strategies for anticipating and averting nuclear warfare. Among other things, this task will vary according to (1) presumed enemy intentions; (2) presumed plausibility of accident or enemy hacking intrusions; and/or (3) presumed plausibility of decisional miscalculation. Considered together as cumulative categories of nuclear threat, these component risks of a nuclear war should always be described as “high-urgency.”
There will need to be associated linguistic clarifications. Any particular instance of accidental nuclear war would be inadvertent, but not every case of an inadvertent nuclear war would be the result of accident. Most worrisome could be damage-limiting strikes that leave the target state unsure about launching follow-on strikes. Here, to protect itself against such more-or-less plausible escalations, the target state could launch a massive or all-out retaliation.
A Double-Edged Sword
Recalling Prussian strategist Carl von Clausewitz, certain fundamental nuclear issues will still need to be “pondered and analyzed” in Washington and Jerusalem. Such existential matters should never be approached by American or Israeli national security policy-makers as a political or tactical problem. Rather, informed by in-depth historical understandings and refined analytic capacities, pertinent military decision-makers should prepare to deal with a large variety of overlapping threat-system hazards. At unpredictable times, the analyzed intersections would prove “synergistic”[23] or force-multiplying.
For the United States and Israel during the 2026 war against Iran and its proxies (Operations “Epic Fury” and “Roaring Lion”), Washington and Jerusalem should expect the unexpected. In this connection, North Korean intervention as an Iranian nuclear proxy should not be dismissed out of hand. And unless synergistic interactions are figured in,[24] American and Israeli decision-makers could seriously underestimate the total or cumulative impact of belligerent engagements with Hezbollah, Houthis and variously assorted other sub-state foes.
Staying on a Collision Course
In the global “state of nature,” unprecedented dynamics of nuclear risk-taking and nuclear deterrence will not fade away on their own. Operating rationally in our centuries-old world system of belligerent nationalism, the US president and Israeli prime minister likely face a rational Iranian leader, but still remain subject to accidents, ambiguities and miscalculations. If for any reason the Iranian adversary does not remain similarly rational, (1) the traditional logic of deterrence would be undermined; and (2) Washington and Jerusalem will need to re-define traditionally accepted criteria of “escalation dominance.”
To employ a nautical metaphor, this result would mean sailing in uncharted waters. Among new threats, Sunni Arab states that had formerly shared Israeli and American fears of a nuclear Iran, could coalesce into a new and even greater danger. Recalling the portentous designations on medieval maps, this ironic outcome (remember the so-called “Abraham Accords”?) would reveal “dragons.”[25]
There is more. Over time, no matter how carefully, responsibly and rationally military survival preparations are carried out, an international order based on an unmanageable “state of nature” will fail. For the moment, certain risks of catastrophic failure concerning an unintentional nuclear war with North Korean[26] or Pakistani surrogacy seem unrealistic. Still, conflict with a pre-nuclear Iran could at some not yet determinable point become an “asymmetrical nuclear war” (because Israel and its US ally would see no other way to achieving “escalation dominance”), and even a one-sided advantage for Israel and the United States would not preclude extensive harms to the already-nuclear belligerents.
Recalling philosopher Karl Popper’s succinct summation, the analytic task for Washington and Jerusalem should be to advance serial statements of interrelated hypotheses, and test these linked propositions “step by step.” At its core, this task would underscore a preeminently scientific responsibility[27] for disciplined thinkers and strategic theorists.[28] Though counter-intuitive, the only role for national political leaders should center on interpretation, clarification and policy-implementation.[29]
It’s time for a summing up. In choosing survival over extinction, the United States and Israel should grasp that growing nuclear war risks are “vast” and “impersonal,”[30] and that even a non-nuclear Iran could at some point precipitate a nuclear war. Immediately, therefore, strategic thinkers should clarify analytic distinctions between an intentional and unintentional nuclear war.
Simultaneously, these thinkers will need to assess corollary risks, both separately and in all ascertainable forms of intersection. Unless this primary intellectual responsibility is accepted, no American president’s assurances of “peace through strength” (assurances that Trump claims he would “feel in his bones”) could ever represent anything more than a caricature of science-based reasoning. From presidential strategic doctrine based on “feelings,” there could be neither escape nor sanctuary.
Notes
[1] Known formally as “Epic Fury” (United States) and “Roaring Lion” (Israel).
[2] See by this author, Louis René Beres, at the University of Cambridge (UK): https://manaramagazine.org/2026/03/israel-iran-and-nuclear-war-part-i/
[3] On US presidential “whims” that could at some point become genuinely irrational, see by this author, Louis René Beres, at Israel Defense: https://www.israeldefense.co.il/en/node/67659
[4] A recent particular was Trump’s March 13, 2026 declaration that he would end the growing conflict with Iran only when he feels advantageous war termination “in his bones.” If this is sincerely his selected standard of judgment, it could make no intellectual or scientific sense.
[5] “Whether we are awake or asleep,” instructs René Descartes, “we should never let ourselves be persuaded except on evidence of our Reason” (Discourse on Method, 1637).
[6] Seventeenth-century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes notes that although the “state of nations” is in the anarchic “state of nature,” it is still more tolerable than the condition of individuals coexisting in nature. With individual human beings, Hobbes instructs, “…the weakest has strength enough to kill the strongest.” But with the continuing advent of nuclear weapons, there is no persuasive reason to believe that the state of nations remains more tolerable. Now, nuclear weapons are bringing the state of nations closer to the true Hobbesian state of nature. See, in this connection, David P. Gauthier, The Logic of Leviathan: The Moral and Political Theory of Thomas Hobbes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), p. 207. As with Hobbes, philosopher Samuel Pufendorf argues that the state of nations is not quite as intolerable as the state of nature between individuals. The state of nations, reasons the German jurist, “lacks those inconveniences which are attendant upon a pure state of nature….” In a similar vein, Baruch Spinoza suggests “that a commonwealth can guard itself against being subjugated by another, as a man in the state of nature cannot do.”
[7] Traditionally, visions of an improved world system were based on replacing the “balance of power” with some promising form of world government authority. In this connection, notes Sigmund Freud: “Wars will only be prevented with certainty if mankind unites in setting up a central authority to which the right of giving judgment upon all shall be handed over. There are clearly two separate requirements involved in this: the creation of a supreme agency and its endowment with the necessary power. One without the other would be useless.” (See: Sigmund Freud, Collected Papers, cited in Louis René Beres, The Management of World Power: A Theoretical Analysis, University of Denver, Monograph Series in World Affairs, Vol. 10 (1973-73), p, 27.) Albert Einstein held similar views. See, for example: Otto Nathan et al. eds., Einstein on Peace (New York, 1960).
[8] Nonetheless, international law is part of US domestic law. In the precise words used by the U.S. Supreme Court in The Paquete Habana, “International law is part of our law, and must be ascertained by the courts of justice of appropriate jurisdiction, as often as questions of right depending upon it are duly presented for their determination. For this purpose, where there is no treaty, and no controlling executive or legislative act or judicial decision, resort must be had to the customs and usages of civilized nations.” See The Paquete Habana, 175 U.S. 677, 678-79 (1900). See also: The Lola, 175 U.S. 677 (1900); Tel-Oren v. Libyan Arab Republic, 726 F. 2d 774, 781, 788 (D.C. Cir. 1984) (per curiam) (Edwards, J. concurring) (dismissing the action, but making several references to domestic jurisdiction over extraterritorial offenses), cert. denied, 470 U.S. 1003 (1985) (“concept of extraordinary judicial jurisdiction over acts in violation of significant international standards…embodied in the principle of `universal violations of international law.’”).
[9] In the clarifying words of mathematical strategist Anatol Rapaport, “Formal decision-theory does not depend on data…. The task of theory is confined to the construction of a deductive apparatus, to be used in deriving logically necessary conclusions from given assumptions.” (Strategy and Conscience; 1964).
[10] In logic and mathematics, probabilities are based on the determinable frequency of pertinent past events. Prima facie, on the question of nuclear war, there have been no such events.
[11] Expressions of enemy irrationality could take different and/or overlapping forms. These include a disorderly or inconsistent value system; computational errors in calculation; incapacity to communicate efficiently; random or haphazard influences in the making or transmittal of particular decisions; and internal dissonance generated by any structure of collective decision-making; i.e., assemblies of pertinent individuals who lack identical value systems or whose organizational arrangements impact their otherwise willing capacity to act as a single (unitary) national decision maker.
[12] “Theory is a net,” says philosopher of science Karl Popper in The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1934): “Only those who cast, can catch.” Interestingly, Popper drew this metaphor from the German poet, Novalis.
[13] See by this writer, Louis René Beres, at Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: https://thebulletin.org/biography/louis-rene-beres/
[14] This term was originally popularized by distinguished political scientist Albert Wohlstetter in his classic article “The Delicate Balance of Terror” (1959): Vol. 37, No. 2 (Jan., 1959), pp. 211-234 (Council on Foreign Relations).
[15] See by this author, Louis René Beres, at JURIST, 2022: https://www.jurist.org/commentary/2022/01/louis-beres-international-law-state-of-nature/
[16] Under international law, the question of whether or not a “state of war” obtains between states is different but also ambiguous. Traditionally, it was held that a formal declaration of war was necessary before a true state of war could be said to exist. Hugo Grotius divided wars into declared wars, which were legal, and undeclared wars, which were not. (See Hugo Grotius, The Law of War and Peace, Bk. III, Chaps. III, IV, and XI.) By the start of the twentieth century, the position that war obtains only after a conclusive declaration of war by one of the parties was codified by Hague Convention III. This treaty stipulated that hostilities must never commence without a “previous and explicit warning” in the form of a declaration of war or an ultimatum. (See Hague Convention III Relative to the Opening of Hostilities, 1907, 3 NRGT, 3 series, 437, article 1.) Currently, declarations of war may be tantamount to admissions of international criminality, because of the express criminalization of aggression by authoritative international law, and it could therefore represent a clear jurisprudential absurdity to tie any true state of war to formal and prior declarations of belligerency. It follows that a state of war may now exist without any formal declarations, but only if there exists an actual armed conflict between two or more states, and/or at least one of these affected states considers itself “at war.”
[17] Earlier, in deterring a nuclear Iran, see Louis René Beres and General John T. Chain, “Could Israel Safely Deter a Nuclear Iran?” The Atlantic, August 2012; and Professor Louis René Beres and General John T. Chain, “Israel and Iran at the Eleventh Hour,” Oxford University Press (OUP Blog), February 23, 2012. General Chain (USAF/deceased) had served as Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Strategic Air Command (CINCSAC).
[18] Pakistan has reaffirmed its right to “fist-use” of nuclear weapons, and has been deploying nuclear warfighting weapons for the past several years. https://www.jurist.org/commentary/2025/04/pakistans-first-use-nuclear-policy-in-conflicts-with-india/ In this connection, conspicuous preparations for nuclear war fighting could be conceived not as provocative alternatives to nuclear deterrence, but rather as essential and integral components of nuclear deterrence. Some years ago, Colin Gray, reasoning about U.S.-Soviet nuclear relations, argued that a vital connection exists between “likely net prowess in war and the quality of pre-war deterrent effect.” (See: Colin Gray, National Style in Strategy: The American Example,” INTERNATIONAL SECURITY, 6, No. 2, fall 1981, p. 35.) Elsewhere, in a published debate with this writer, Gray said essentially the same thing: “Fortunately, there is every reason to believe that probable high proficiency in war-waging yields optimum deterrent effect.” (See Gray, “Presidential Directive 59: Flawed but Useful,” PARAMETERS, 11, No. 1, March 1981, p. 34. Gray was responding directly to Louis René Beres, “Presidential Directive 59: A Critical Assessment,” PARAMETERS, March 1981, pp. 19 – 28.).
[19] See by this writer, Louis René Beres, https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2021/09/12/can-israeli-nuclear-threats-protect-against-non-nuclear-attacks/#_ftn
[20] See, by this writer, Louis René Beres, at Strategic Assessment (Israel): 2014: https://www.inss.org.il/wp-content/uploads/systemfiles/adkan17_3ENG%20(3)_Beres.pdf
[21] The security benefits to Israel of any explicit reductions in nuclear secrecy would remain dependent, more or less, upon Clausewitzian “friction.” This refers to the inherently unpredictable effects of errors in knowledge and information concerning intra-Israel (IDF/MOD) strategic uncertainties; on Israeli and Iranian under-estimations or over-estimations of relative power position; and on the unalterably vast and largely irremediable differences between theories of deterrence and enemy intent. See: Carl von Clausewitz, “Uber das Leben und den Charakter von Scharnhorst,” Historisch-politische Zeitschrift, 1 (1832); cited in Barry D. Watts, Clausewitzian Friction and Future War, McNair Paper No. 52, October, 1996, Institute for National Strategic Studies, National Defense University Washington, D.C. p. 9.
[22] The atomic attacks on Japan in August 1945 represent nuclear weapons use in an otherwise conventional war.
[23] By definition, the “whole” of any synergistic effect would be greater than the sum of its “parts.” Accordingly, focused attention on pertinent synergies should become a primary national security objective for the United States.
[24] See by this author, at Harvard National Security Journal (Harvard Law School): Louis René Beres, https://harvardnsj.org/2015/06/core-synergies-in-israels-strategic-planning-when-the-adversarial-whole-is-greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts/
[25] Hic Sunt Dracones, “Here be dragons,” was the precise cartographic inscription.
[26] Earlier, North Korea helped Syria build a nuclear reactor, the same facility that was destroyed by Israel in its Operation Orchard, on September 6, 2007. Following Operation Opera against Iraq on June 7, 1981, this defensive attack by Israel in the Deir ez-Zor region of Syria was a second major expression of the “Begin Doctrine.”
[27] It must not be forgotten,” writes French poet Guillaume Apollinaire in “The New Spirit and the Poets” (1917), “that it is perhaps more dangerous for a nation to allow itself to be conquered intellectually than by arms.”
[28] Rabbi Eleazar quoted Rabbi Hanina, who said: “Scholars build the structure of peace in the world.” See: The Babylonian Talmud, Order Zera’im, Tractate Berakoth, IX.
[29] On the seekers of political power, it is instructive to read Friedrich Nietzsche’s brief essay (“On the New Idol”) in Zarathustra: “Watch them clamber, these swift monkeys! They clamber over one another and thus drag one another into the mud and the depth. They all want to get to the throne; that is their madness….”
[30] Recall poet T.S. Eliot, “…those vast impersonal forces.” (Notes toward the Definition of Culture, 1948).
Louis René Beres (Ph.D., Princeton, 1971) is Emeritus Professor of International Law at Purdue University. He is the author of twelve books on nuclear strategy and international law, including Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016). In Israel, he served as Chair of Project Daniel (PM Sharon, 2003). His work has appeared in the Harvard National Security Journal, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, International Security, The Atlantic, The New York Times, World Politics, and Parameters: Journal of the US Army War College, among other publications.
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