War & proliferation of nuclear weapons

All the geopolitical conflicts going on in the world are likely to lead to authoritarian governments to seek a nuclear weapon as the only way to ensure the West does not support your enemy.

Iran cancelled all flights in and out of the country at all airports over the weekend in anticipation of an Israeli counter strike following last week’s missile attack.

It was Jewish new year at the end of last week which delayed the decision on a strike that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says is coming. Everyone is on tenterhooks waiting to see what will get hit. One possibility is Iran’s expensive oil refinery network, but the White House is pushing hard for that not to be on the list as it would cause prices to spike just ahead of the US elections if Iran’s 1.6mbpd were taken off the market.

As we reported another target could be Iran’s six uranium refining facilities, which to me seems much more likely. I have been thinking about this and it seems increasingly obvious that one of the outcomes of these conflicts is that it will push emerging powers to seek a nuclear weapon. It’s the defining characteristic of these wars.

Russia attacked Ukraine and while Nato has helped Ukraine, as we have been complaining, that help is half hearted and restrained. The West will not give Ukraine what it needs to win, despite promising that to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy during the Istanbul peace deal in 2022. It’s because of Russia’s nuclear arsenal: if Russia is about to lose the war against Ukraine there is a non-zero chance it could use a nuclear bomb to change the game. Russia would only need to explode one over Siberia in a test, no need to take out downtown Kyiv, for this to work. The threat of the bomb has very effectively curbed Western support for Ukraine and if I were Zelenskiy I’d be pulling my hair out as he can’t win and won’t get what he needs to win.

Now compare this to Iran’s situation. It has very large convention resources, if you include those of Hamas and Hezbollah, but it doesn’t have a bomb. It’s close, but not there yet. As a result the US has not only given Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu everything that he asked for – the US has committed $18bn in military aid since October 7 last year, plus another $8.7bn last week – but more than that US pilots flew alongside Israeli F-16s and F-34s both in April and in the latest attack last week.

The US has no compunction about sending in troops and planes to help Israel as nothing can happen. Iran doesn’t have the bomb.

As an aside, Zelenskiy has also being playing the nuclear card: he claims that Russia has been using Chinese satellites to map Ukraine’s four remaining nuclear power plants (NPPs) and intends to hit them to take the other half of Ukraine’s generating capacity out before winter and potentially causing another Chernobyl. But no one seems to be taking this particularly seriously.

Of course, as I have speculated earlier, the chances of Russian President Vladimir Putin actually using a nuke, even in a Siberian test, is very low indeed in my opinion, as all it would do is bring Nato into the war in some way and then Zelenskiy might get what he needs to win, or at least make some real progress against the Armed Forces of Russia (AFR). At the moment Putin is winning the war, as the front in Donbas continues to crumble, so he has no need to escalate.

Now the veneer of building an international rules-based order that started with the Helsinki Accords has been dropped and we in a straight up might-makes-right geopolitical tussle between the developed world and the emerging markets, having a nuclear weapon has become the defining difference between the being able to resist the US hegemony or being the victim of some potential missile-backed bullying.

Put yourself in Ayatollah Khomeini’s shoes now: if he had a bomb then there is no way that the Israelis could hit his country, or those of Iran’s friends, with impunity. Moreover, the US would not be in support. It would stand off and supply Israeli, but not openly get involved.

This means that it's now in Russia’s interest to supply all the friendly countries with nuclear technology to build a club of nuclear enabled emerging markets that can resist the US’ overwhelming military firepower – the proliferation of nuclear weapons. To some scary regimes.

This process has already started when Moscow stationed some nuclear weapons in Belarus last year. Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko keeps bragging about how he will nuke Europe if Nato attacks him, which of course is all bravado at this point, until it isn’t.

But more subtly, as bne IntelliNews has been reporting, uranium is the new gas and Russia’s exports of nuclear technology are booming. Russia is building over two dozen NPPs around the world, mostly in developing markets. And although Kazakhstan dominates the supply of raw uranium ore, it is Russia that dominates the capacity to refine the ore into U235. It could in theory arm every one of its friends.

Even more worrying, is the fact that North Korea has a bomb and in theory could supply countries like Iran with a ready-made weapon, which has become easier to do now that North Korea and Russia have tied their military supplies together; North Korea has supplied Russia with an enormous amount of artillery shells.

Currently there are only eight officially declared nuclear powers – US, Russia, UK, France, China, India, Pakistan, and North Korea, although it’s an open secret that Israel also has nuclear weapons. Less publicly knowledge is that Japan also certainly has nukes on its soil – US weapons – that are there to protect against China.

In the case of Pakistan and Israel, it’s the same logic as both countries needed a bomb to counter their enemies that had one. The proliferation was supposed to stop there, but now there will be a strong impetus for more countries to get a weapon, starting with Iran. And with all this Russian nuclear tech and refined uranium sloshing about it is going to get easier to organise.

Finally, it should be said that this is not definitely going to happen, nor if it does will it happen quickly. The Kremlin is not crazy and is well aware how dangerous it is to arm a dozen more countries, many with balmy authoritarian regimes, with nuclear weapons. The key to watch for is someone suspending the nuclear test ban treaty. The Kremlin was specifically asked about this last week and came back with a deafening silence. I see it was asked in Washington too last week too, again to no comment. But the mere fact that this question has now come up, and come up twice in a week, suggests that we have moved a step closer to that red line.