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nuclear weapons
Entrapment and Self-Perpetuating Conflict Escalation in the Iran War
As the US and Iran struggle to find a way out of their war, they are being hampered by the entrapping and self-perpetuating nature of the conflict escalation process itself. Understanding this dynamic is a first step to preventing further escalation and engaging in conflict deescalation.
May 12, 2026
One of the main findings of those who study conflict resolution is that it is easier to climb up the conflict escalation ladder than to climb back down. Also, the deeply-entrenched enemy images on both sides, with Iran’s belief that the US is “the Great Satan,” and US references to Iran belonging to the “Axis of Evil,” confirm that a long history of conflict and grievances make the conflict harder to resolve.
The most significant concern in recent years has been Iran’s uranium enrichment and fear that it could be used to make nuclear bombs, a major source of angst for both the US and Israel—as presumably are Israel’s 90 or so undeclared nuclear weapons for Iran. Since the need for security and safety is one of the most fundamental issues at the heart of many conflicts, this is a classic case of the “security dilemma,” where a state’s actions to increase its security cause reactions from other parties that lead to a decrease in its security. Indeed, Iran’s nuclear enrichment led to the first iteration of this armed conflict, where in response, on June 22, the US and Israel launched a surprise airstrike on three Iranian nuclear facilities.
Of course, US President Donald Trump’s annulment (reportedly encouraged by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu) of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (painstakingly negotiated over a 20-month period with the P5+1 and European Union)—even though Iran was abiding by the agreement (as certified by the International Atomic Energy Agency)—surely undermines Iran’s trust in any agreement that it may now reach with the US.
The apparent trigger for the current hostilities was a visit by Netanyahu to Washington on February 11, where Trump and his inner circle met with Netanyahu, the director of Mossad, and Israeli military staff, in a highly unusual classified meeting in the Situation Room, in which Netanyahu made an hours-long, hard-sell pitch “suggesting that Iran was ripe for regime change and expressing the belief that a joint US-Israeli mission could finally bring an end to the Islamic Republic.” He apparently argued that this could be accomplished in three to four days. Trump (who according to an article in The Atlantic has actually supported a hard-line approach against Iran since 1980) ended the meeting by saying, “It sounds good to me.”
Although various pundits, as well as the parties themselves, are arguing that one side or the other is “winning,” in fact, both are losing—and stand to lose even more (as does the rest of the world) if they cannot find an off-ramp.
In subsequent discussions about whether to go to war, Trump’s inner circle engaged in “groupthink” by not expressing their concerns openly and mainly acquiescing to Trump’s judgment. Groupthink occurs where there is pressure to reach a consensus without critical evaluation, resulting in irrational or dysfunctional decision-making. In decisions about whether to initiate war, it typically “includes an illusion of invulnerability; an unquestioned belief in the group’s inherent morality; collective efforts to discount warnings; stereotyped views of the enemy as evil; self-censorship of deviations from the group beliefs; a shared illusion of unanimity; suppression of dissent; and the emergence of self-appointed mind guards who screen the group from dissent.”
Just over two weeks later, in Operation Epic Fury, Israeli military strikes, informed by US intelligence, assassinated a number of senior Iranian officials, including the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei—in a major breach of the international norm against the assassination of leaders. Moreover, the attacks were launched unexpectedly in the midst of an ongoing negotiation process between the US and Iran on its nuclear program, again undermining Iran’s trust in negotiations with the US. The US and Israel also targeted other military and government sites, with Iran, in turn, responding with missile and drone strikes on Israel, US bases, and US-allied Arab countries and closure of the Strait of Hormuz, disrupting global trade.
Once the threshold to armed conflict has been crossed, parties typically become caught in a rapidly-spiraling vortex of aggressive interactions, which ensure that the conflict becomes worse and worse. As each inflicts increasing damage on the other, anger and a desire for revenge grow exponentially and each sees the other’s actions as provocation that must be responded to, typically with greater intensity than the action it follows, causing the conflict to grow in size and importance.
As each experiences losses or injury at the hands of the other, the desire to punish the other and to right the wrong that has been done increases. Conflicts then begin to operate in a “retaliatory spiral,” as both now have truly hostile intentions toward one another, further poisoning the relationship, and making a peace process ever more difficult. Reduced communication also makes reality testing more dubious and allows distorted images of the other side to grow.
Threats and ultimatums grow increasingly more alarming as both attempt to use “leverage” to influence the other. Trump, for example, threatened that Iran would be “blown off the face of the Earth,” “blasted into oblivion,” and “bombed back to the Stone Ages!!!” In early March, Ali Larijani, the head of the Iranian National Security Council, posted on X: “Be careful not to get eliminated yourself.” The next day, he, too, was assassinated.
What those making such threats fail to appreciate is that parties do not always respond to leverage as hoped. The use of heavy-handed leverage, especially threats and punitive measures, frequently backfires. All too often, parties react against these attempts to influence their behavior and refuse to comply—sometimes even at great cost to themselves. “Reactance” is a well-studied phenomenon that typically occurs when the party trying to achieve influence does not fully take into account all of the factors that affect the motivation of those they are trying to influence. In such cases, the blunt use of leverage is seen by the party for what it is—an attempt to “manipulate” it to act in a certain manner against its will or interests. In some cases, preserving one’s freedom of choice and control over a situation and not being seen by one’s constituents to cave to external pressure may be more important than avoiding punitive sanctions—even when they are severe. In such situations, leverage not only fails to bring about the desired result, but may even cause the party to become more entrenched in its resistance.
Reactance tends to be strongest in relation to punitive measures (“sticks”) but can also occur in relation to positive incentives (“carrots”), especially when they are perceived to be “bribes,” which erode an actor’s freedom of choice. Indeed, the creative use of incentives that are tailored to the parties’ interests will be much more likely to influence the other party than the blunt or simplistic use of leverage which may stir up resistance.
When previously defined limits to a conflict, termed “saliences,” are crossed, it tends to redefine the rules of the conflict. The US and Israeli action in breaking the taboo of assassinating leaders, and Iran’s decision to block the Strait of Hormuz—for the first time ever—represent two such saliences which caused an increased sense of outrage and injustice and more extreme retaliatory behavior in response. In frustration at the blockage in the Strait of Hormuz, Trump wrote on his social media account on Easter morning: “Open the F***in’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell—JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.” A couple of days later, he warned: “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”
At this point, the international community became concerned about what further saliences Trump might cross (e.g., committing war crimes or using a nuclear weapon) and insisted on the parties agreeing to a two-week ceasefire, which had been proposed by Pakistan. Signed on April 8, the ceasefire did calm the situation significantly, as they often do (if not egregiously violated).
Soon after, when face-to-face marathon talks were held in Pakistan (which I’ve written about elsewhere), but no agreement was reached, Trump imposed his own blockade against Iranian ports—another first. Since then, although there have been no further face-to-face negotiations, the Pakistani mediators have passed papers back and forth between the parties, outlining their latest positions. One major factor that has slowed the process is the pairing of offers with threats, since the reactance it has engendered inclines the parties to reject the other’s offers.
Although various pundits, as well as the parties themselves, are arguing that one side or the other is “winning,” in fact, both are losing—and stand to lose even more (as does the rest of the world) if they cannot find an off-ramp.
Iran’s blockage of commercial ships carrying oil, gas, and fertilizer has been very costly for the US domestically, not only at the gas pump, but in terms of an economic downturn, inflation, and projections that the war will ultimately cost $1 trillion. Iran has also caused significant damage to US military bases in the Middle East (only recently reported) and a serious depletion of US military stockpiles. Moreover, US standing in the world has suffered considerably. Finally, for Trump, his ratings have fallen and there is concern that his party could lose in the midterms.
Iran has suffered not only the obliteration of its senior leadership, but also severe damage to its infrastructure; considerable civilian and military mortality; and loss of significant military assets, such as its navy, missiles, military bases, etc. The International Monetary Fund has projected Iran's economy will shrink by over 6% n 2026, with inflation running at almost 70%. It will take years for Iran’s reconstruction.
The rest of the world has and will also suffer greatly. For example, The World Food Programme has predicted that roughly 45 million more people could be pushed into acute hunger this year, and the World Central Kitchen has warned that fertilizer shortages could lead to a multiyear famine.
To work toward a peace agreement, both the US and Iran will need to recommit to and extend their ceasefire to give themselves sufficient time to engage in a well-planned third-party mediation process. Such a process would include adequate time to create an agenda of issues acceptable to both; exploration of the interests of each party in relation to each agenda item; discussion of creative problem-solving options that might meet their respective interests; and an innovative integration of proposed options into a more comprehensive agreement, acceptable to both.
Although it’s advisable for the Pakistani mediators, who have been committed and involved throughout, to continue in this role, it might be best to choose a venue such as Geneva rather than Islamabad that would allow both delegations to feel safe and have sufficient time for the process to unfold. Finally, technical experts, such as senior staff from the International Atomic Energy Agency, should be included to ensure understanding of the technical issues with regard to uranium enrichment and to propose new ideas.
To arrive at such an agreement, the parties will also need to reduce the number of tit-for-tat attacks on one another; lower their threats and hostile rhetoric; and do their homework to consider what inducements they could offer to one another.
Of course, another danger that will need to be anticipated is the possibility that either Netanyahu, who has recently said that “it’s not over”—or hardline factions in the US or in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps—could act as “spoilers.”
Obviously, the fundamental issue is the need for a better understanding and institutionalization of the knowledge and practice of conflict prevention and resolution, so that such incredibly destructive and senseless wars can be prevented and disputes of the future more sensibly settled by constructive rather than destructive means.
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‘An Almost Unthinkable Threat’: Trump Warning That Iran Will ‘Glow’ Sparks Latest Fears of Nuclear Attack
“It again raises urgent questions: Is this president fit to lead and make consequential decisions that impact countless lives?” said the National Iranian-American Council.
May 08, 2026
As he struggles to force Iran’s capitulation, US President Donald Trump issued what seemed to be yet another threat to commit an act of mass destruction against the country through nuclear warfare.
When negotiations have faltered in recent weeks, Trump has on multiple occasions defaulted to genocidal threats—including that the “whole civilization” of Iran would “die,” and that the whole country would be “blown up"—which have only seemed to anger and galvanize his Iranian adversaries rather than make them quake with fear.
While the Trump administration has continued to insist that the ceasefire with Iran was still in effect, the two countries have exchanged significant fire this week.
On Thursday, the US launched what it said were "self-defense" strikes on military facilities it claimed were responsible for attempting to attack three US Navy ships in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran called the attacks a violation of the ceasefire and said its attacks on US ships were in response to American bombings of Iranian oil tankers the previous day.
Trump told reporters on Thursday that if the ceasefire were truly over, everyone would know. "If there's no ceasefire, you're just going to have to look at one big glow coming out of Iran," he said. "They'd better sign the agreement fast… If they don’t sign, they’re going to have a lot of pain.”
To many observers, this sounded like a threat from Trump to carry out a nuclear holocaust, though it could also be a redux of Trump's threats to attack civilian energy infrastructure, which would still be a war crime.
Kelley Beaucar Vlahos, the editor-in-chief of Responsible Statecraft, noted that if it were indeed a nuclear threat, it would be "ironic since the war today supposedly is to prevent Iran from getting... a nuclear weapon."
The National Iranian-American Council (NIAC) said that “threatening to make Iran glow—with nuclear weapons or otherwise—is an almost unthinkable threat to commit a mass war crime against 92 million people. It must never be normalized.”
“It again raises urgent questions: Is this president fit to lead and make consequential decisions that impact countless lives?” the group said. “Would the chain of command refuse unlawful orders to make Iran ‘glow,’ killing millions of people?”
Trump's pledge to wipe out Iranian civilization last month drew widespread condemnation and led dozens of Democratic members of Congress to call for his Cabinet to remove him from office using the powers of the 25th Amendment.
“Our leaders need to interrogate these questions seriously, and not write them off as the ramblings of a madman,” NIAC said. “Trump is the president, and may seek to act on these horrible, contemptible threats. This war needs to end, and so [does] Trump’s horrific threatening of war crimes.”
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The Climate Reckoning That the Nuclear Arms Control Can’t Ignore
Climate change and nuclear weapons reinforce one another in dangerous ways: Environmental stress increases the risk of conflict, while nuclear conflict would produce environmental consequences on a planetary scale.
May 07, 2026
At 8:15 AM on August 6, 1945, a 9,000-pound atomic bomb detonated 1,900 feet above Hiroshima, instantly killing 70,000 people. Three days later, a second bomb exploded over Nagasaki, killing another 40,000.
The sheer scale of destruction—that humans could annihilate each other by means as violent as a nuclear blast—ensured that Hiroshima and Nagasaki would become the defining images of nuclear weapons in the American imagination. According to a 2025 Pew Research survey, 83% of Americans reported knowing at least something about the use of nuclear weapons in Japan. However, increasingly large numbers of younger Americans don’t know enough about nuclear weapons today to give an opinion on their role in national security.
What is often remembered as the only detonation of nuclear weapons in history remains the sole use of nuclear weapons in warfare. While Americans looked overseas at the devastation in Japan, fewer recognized that nuclear weapons were also transforming the American environment at home.
For decades after World War II, nuclear weapons reshaped landscapes and communities across the United States. Between 1945 and 1992, the United States conducted 1,030 nuclear tests, while producing tens of thousands of warheads during the Cold War. At its height, the US nuclear stockpile comprised 31,255 warheads, with the last fully functional nuclear weapon being produced in 1989. The environmental and human consequences of this effort extended far beyond test sites and production facilities. Yet, the US government kept the public in the dark, leaving a generation born in the 21st century to bear the consequences of its obfuscated proliferation campaign.
The Nuclear Transformation of Marginalized America
Consider that the plutonium used in the first nuclear test in New Mexico and in the Nagasaki bomb was produced at the Hanford Site in Washington State. Between 1945 and 1970, Hanford’s reactors discharged roughly 444 billion gallons of radioactive wastewater into the Columbia River basin, a watershed that today supports over 8 million residents.
Other sites tell similar stories. In South Carolina and Georgia, rural communities were displaced to make way for the Savannah River Site nuclear weapons facility, where millions of gallons of radioactive waste were stored in underground tanks.
Make no mistake, the United States federal government was calculated in its targeting of marginalized communities to isolate radioactive material from the general population. These facilities were often located in rural or economically disadvantaged areas, where political resistance was limited and land was cheaper.
Nuclear weapons represent one of the most profound environmental risks humanity has ever created.
Currently the only permanent waste site for nuclear material in the United States, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in Carlsbad, New Mexico, collects plutonium-contaminated waste to be buried over 2,000 feet underground a salt flat formation. Framed as a barren wasteland far from major population centers, WIPP is in Eddy County, New Mexico—home to a population of over 61,000 people, of which 64% identify as people of color. Many communities face contaminated water supplies and elevated rates of respiratory illness, kidney disease, and cancer: a pattern sometimes described as “radioactive colonialism.”
Despite the government’s efforts to isolate nuclear activities and waste disposal, radioactive contamination did not respect geographic boundaries. Research released in 2023 found that nuclear tests conducted between 1945 and 1962 distributed radioactive fallout across 46 of the lower 48 contiguous states in the United States, as well as parts of Canada and Mexico. As a result of nuclear tests conducted by both the United States and other nuclear-armed powers, radioactive isotopes released into the atmosphere spread throughout the world in communities far from test sites. By the 1960s, “there was no place on Earth where the signature of atmospheric nuclear testing could not be found in soil, water, and even polar ice.” Radioactive isotopes entered the food chain through plants and animals, creating pathways of exposure far from any test site.
For most people living far from testing areas, these exposures were small. But they illustrate a fundamental reality of nuclear weapons: Even carefully controlled programs produce global environmental consequences. Even when the government attempted to isolate radioactivity and testing in supposedly remote communities, contamination from weapons production, testing, and disposal still spread far beyond those sites, affecting environments across the world.
The Renewed Nuclear Arms Race
While the United States has not conducted a full-scale nuclear test since 1992, nuclear competition is accelerating again.
China is rapidly expanding its nuclear arsenal, with estimates suggesting that its stockpile could exceed 1,000 warheads by the early 2030s. At the same time, arms control agreements that once constrained the world’s largest nuclear powers are eroding. The expiration of the New START treaty in February 2026 removed the last formal limits on US and Russian strategic nuclear forces.
Even if informal limits remain in place, the collapse of binding agreements signals a shift toward a less regulated nuclear environment. Some policymakers have suggested that renewed nuclear testing may be necessary in response to foreign advances, which would risk repeating many of the mistakes of the Cold War.
Consider that for the first time in history, the new nuclear proliferation environment includes a three-way standoff between three major armed powers: the United States, China, and Russia.
Mutually Assured Climate Destruction
A global nuclear war alone would be enough to trigger catastrophic climatic effects. Even a limited nuclear exchange could inject vast quantities of smoke and soot into the upper atmosphere, blocking sunlight and lowering global temperatures. The use of a mere 2% of the world’s current arsenal could trigger severe cooling and agricultural disruption, leaving 2 billion people at risk of starvation in just the following two years. If nuclear winter renders any use of nuclear weapons as unsurvivable, then deterrence may be an inadequate strategy, since the consequences of a miscalculation or accidental launch would increase dramatically.
This erosion of international nonproliferation channels comes as climate change fuels geopolitical instability by intensifying resource competition, migration pressures, and regional conflicts, increasing the risk of confrontation among nuclear-armed states. Climate change and nuclear weapons therefore reinforce one another in dangerous ways: Environmental stress increases the risk of conflict, while nuclear conflict would produce environmental consequences on a planetary scale.
Bridging the Gap: Building the Next Generation of Advocates
Despite these connections, environmental and social justice concerns remain peripheral in most nuclear policy debates. Discussions of deterrence and arms control typically focus on military balance and strategic stability, while the environmental legacy of nuclear weapons receives far less attention.
This gap may help explain why nuclear policy often struggles to engage younger generations.
Surveys consistently show that climate change is one of the defining concerns of younger voters. Roughly 70% of young people report deep anxiety about environmental degradation and say they are likely to support candidates who prioritize climate policy. Nuclear weapons policy rarely speaks to these concerns directly. Yet nuclear weapons represent one of the most profound environmental risks humanity has ever created.
Reframing nuclear policy to include environmental and social justice considerations would not only reflect historical reality, but also make nuclear policy more relevant to the challenges of the 21st century.
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