For over two decades, Iran’s nuclear program has been subjected to intense international scrutiny, sanctions, and diplomatic negotiations. In stark contrast, Israel, widely believed to possess nuclear weapons – an assertion it consistently refuses to confirm or deny – faces minimal to no international pressure for transparency.
Over the past ten months, Israel and the United States have waged two conflicts against Iran, alleging without evidence that the country was on the verge of developing nuclear weapons capability. These conflicts – the 12-day skirmish last June and the month-long fighting this year – have resulted in over 2,600 Iranian deaths and plunged the world into an unprecedented energy crisis.
This disparity has led to complaints of double standards from Iran, as well as from global proponents of nuclear non-proliferation. Observers note that the differing treatment of Iran and Israel is evident not only within international legal frameworks like the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) but also reflects geopolitical realities and global power dynamics.
So, what is known about Israel’s nuclear arsenal, the scrutiny and debate surrounding Iran’s nuclear program, and why critics argue a double standard is at play concerning the threat posed by these two long-standing adversaries?
What do we know about Israel’s nuclear weapons?
It is an “open secret” that Israel is the sole country in the Middle East possessing nuclear weapons, despite its decades-long policy of opacity on the matter, according to observers.
When pressed in a 2018 interview with former CNN anchor Chris Cuomo about whether his country possessed nuclear capability or weapons, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated: “We have always said that we won’t be the first to introduce it, and we haven’t introduced it … It’s as good an answer as you will get.”
Despite Israel’s lack of transparency regarding its nuclear program, experts trace its origins back to the 1950s under founding Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, when Israel began developing nuclear capabilities with foreign assistance, notably from France.
The Dimona nuclear facility in the Negev desert has long been suspected of producing plutonium for weapons. Experts estimate Israel possesses between 80 and 200 nuclear warheads, though precise figures remain undisclosed.
In 1986, Israel’s policy of secrecy was severely undermined when Mordechai Vanunu, a technician at the Dimona facility, leaked information and photographs from the reactor to the United Kingdom’s Sunday Times newspaper.
He was subsequently abducted by Israeli agents, tried in secret, and spent 18 years in prison.
Further contributing to the ambiguity surrounding its nuclear capabilities is Israel’s refusal to sign the NPT, which came into force in 1970. This means it is not subject to the same international inspections as signatory member states.
The NPT is a global agreement designed to curb the spread of nuclear weapons, commit to nuclear disarmament, and encourage the peaceful use of nuclear energy. A total of 191 United Nations member states are signatories to the treaty, including Israel’s long-time adversary, Iran.
According to analyst Shawn Rostker, Israel’s policy serves multiple purposes.
“The logic is fairly straightforward: Ambiguity is meant to preserve deterrence while avoiding some of the diplomatic, legal, and political costs that would come with an open declaration, especially given that Israel is not a party to the NPT and continues to sit outside that framework,” Rostker, an Astra fellow with the Constellation Institute, told Al Jazeera.
The analyst suggests Israel is unlikely to join the NPT in the near future.
“Israel’s position has been tied for decades to its regional security environment, and there is little sign that it sees strategic benefit in giving up ambiguity or joining the NPT,” Rostker said.
“A real shift would probably require a much broader regional security arrangement, potentially tied to a Middle East WMD-free zone or a major change in the threat environment, not outside pressure alone,” he added.
What do we know about Iran’s nuclear program?
Iran’s nuclear program began in the 1950s under former leader Reza Shah Pahlavi, with US support, but expanded significantly after the 1979 Islamic revolution.
Iran, which remains a signatory to the NPT, has consistently maintained that its nuclear program is for civilian purposes only, such as energy production and medical use.
In 1974, it signed a comprehensive safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and in the decades since, both under the former shah and the Islamic Republic, it has been regularly monitored by the UN agency.
Iran also joined the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2015 along with the US and other nations, under which Iran agreed to restrict the enrichment of uranium and to be subject to inspections by the IAEA.
Key provisions of that agreement included:
Capping uranium enrichment at 3.67 percent for 15 years, levels unsuitable for nuclear weapons.
Reducing centrifuge numbers.
Allowing extensive monitoring by international inspectors, such as the IAEA, including 25 years of monitoring of Iran’s uranium mills and mines.
Also under the JCPOA, IAEA inspectors – who were already in Iran monitoring its nuclear program – began daily inspections of the country’s facilities to ensure Tehran adhered to its commitments.
They found that it did.
The US, under President Donald Trump, withdrew from the agreement in 2018, despite the IAEA stating Iran had complied with the agreement up to that point.
Iran nevertheless continued to adhere to its JCPOA commitments for one year after the US exited the deal, according to the IAEA, before restarting heightened levels of enrichment.
Indeed, the US argument for why Iran represents a nuclear weapons threat – that it holds 400kg of 60 percent enriched uranium – is based on an IAEA report from 2025, underscoring how the UN agency has far greater visibility into Iran’s nuclear program than the world has into Israel’s. Uranium needs to be enriched to levels higher than 90 percent to become weapons-grade. The removal of this 60 percent-enriched uranium has been one of the US’s key demands during talks with Iran.
While the US and Israel have targeted Iran’s nuclear facilities during the 12-day war in 2025 and the most recent strikes this year and claim to have destroyed a large part of them, this map shows what we know of the positions of Iran’s nuclear facilities up to this year:
What proof is there that Iran has the capacity to build nuclear weapons?
While Israel and the US have claimed for some time that Iran is close to building nuclear weapons, they have not offered any meaningful proof.
In fact, in March 2025, Tulsi Gabbard, the US director of national intelligence, testified to Congress that the US “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorised the nuclear weapons programme he suspended in 2003.”
Iran has long maintained that it has no plans to build a nuclear weapon. In 2003, then-Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in US-Israeli attacks on Tehran on February 28, publicly announced prohibiting the pursuit of such a weapon, saying it was against Islamic law.
After the US and Israel launched their latest war on Iran on February 28, Gabbard, in a new testimony before Congress, said the US intelligence community did not believe that Iran had resumed its nuclear program after the bombings of June 2025.
Are different standards being applied to Israel and Iran over nuclear weapons?
Palestinian analyst Ahmed Najar is one of many experts who say there is “clearly a double standard” in how Israel’s nuclear program is treated compared with Iran’s, arguing that politics rather than international norms drives this.
In his view, Israel has been granted an exemption from the global non-proliferation regime because of its role as a Western-aligned power in the Middle East, while Iran’s status as a perceived “foe” invites maximum pressure.
“In that sense, international norms are applied selectively – rigorously enforced in some cases, and quietly set aside in others.”
Beyond the political double standard, Najar argues that Israel’s long-standing policy of “nuclear ambiguity” raises deeper concerns about transparency amid the “opacity of Israel’s nuclear doctrine itself.”
“There is ambiguity not only around capability, but around thresholds for use – and that exists without the accountability mechanisms applied elsewhere,” he added.
Najar said he is pessimistic about the prospects of any change to this approach without a “broader transformation” of international politics and power dynamics.
“As long as strategic interests take precedence over consistent application of international law, Israel’s nuclear posture is likely to remain largely shielded from scrutiny,” he concluded.
#NuclearWeapons #DoubleStandards #IranNuclearProgram #IsraelNuclear #NPT #NonProliferation #Geopolitics #MiddleEast #InternationalLaw #IAEA
Leave a Reply