The Islamic Republic’s nuclear project is not just a matter of proliferation; it is an instrument of death and captivity.
____________ _____ Abbas Mansouran
It has been 55 years since the monarchy signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which was established in 1968 and ratified by Iran in 1970. By openly flouting this Treaty in pursuit of nuclear weapons—a clear deviation from international obligations—the Islamic Republic has become one of the most destabilizing nuclear threats of our time.
Although the regime has already proven to be far more destructive and deadly than any single nuclear weapon during its nearly half-century of rule, its policies continue to escalate danger. The rule of political Islam, combined with capitalist exploitation and systematic concealment, has driven the country to a nuclear “threshold” situation through unprecedented uranium enrichment. This has not only endangered regional security but has also heightened the risk of a wider global conflict.
Since 2003, the Islamic regime has repeatedly violated its international commitments: suspending the Additional Protocol, expelling IAEA inspectors, and even threatening Rafael Grossi, the IAEA Director General—an act publicly backed by Larijani, then Secretary of the Supreme Security Council. By effectively suspending compliance with the NPT, the regime has removed itself from meaningful international supervision and turned its nuclear program into a tool of global blackmail.
According to official IAEA reports, Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium has now exceeded 9,200 kilograms, including at least 408 kilograms enriched to 60%—just one technical step below weapons-grade (90%). This is more than 22 times the JCPOA limit of 300 kilograms at 3.67% enrichment. Despite repeated warnings and documented evidence, the existence of concealed facilities at Natanz, Fordow, Lavizan-Shian, Varamin, and Turqouzabad clearly indicates a parallel and secret program designed to preserve the option of nuclear weapons and missile development.
The astronomical costs of a destructive project
Over the past three decades, Iran’s rulers have squandered billions of dollars on a clandestine nuclear program, draining national resources and exploiting the labor of workers to fund a project that has brought nothing but devastation, mass poverty, and economic collapse. Estimates suggest that the construction and maintenance of underground facilities such as Natanz, Fordow, Arak, and Isfahan have cost between $30 and $100 billion. These projects have been advanced with the technical and political support of Russia, China, North Korea, and even some Western firms.(۱)
This reckless insistence on a nuclear program has triggered unprecedented sanctions that devastated Iranian workers and producers, while generating enormous profits for regime elites. The direct damage caused by sanctions over the past 15 years alone is estimated at more than $1.2 trillion.
One clear consequence has been the collapse of the national currency: from roughly 9,000 rials per U.S. dollar in 2005 to more than one million rials in 2025. This currency implosion has fueled runaway inflation and an explosion in the cost of living, delivering misery for ordinary people while enriching the ruling class.
By 2025, the combined economic and social costs of the nuclear program and the government’s adventurism are estimated at a staggering $2 trillion—and possibly as high as $5 trillion. Russia, China, and North Korea have ensured the survival of this program, not to reduce tensions but to deepen the crisis and exploit Iran as a pawn in global power struggles. Behind this support lies a network of secret contracts, front companies, missile-for-oil exchanges, and illicit transfers of sensitive parts through Central Asia—an elaborate system of rent-seeking and corruption that has delivered astronomical profits to those in power.
Sanctions, rather than deterring or containing the corrupt ruling gangs of Iran, have become yet another source of wealth for the regime’s mafia networks. The black market in foreign exchange and large-scale oil smuggling—facilitated by brokers such as Babak Zanjani, the Shamkhani mafia, and powerful institutions like the IRGC’s Imam’s Command Executive Headquarters and Khatam al-Anbiya Headquarters—has generated billions of dollars for the military-security elite. Even IAEA reports have repeatedly indicated that covert nuclear activities are closely tied to these rent-seeking structures.(2)
The revenues from these illicit networks are channeled into repression at home. They finance the purchase of anti-protest equipment (particularly from China), advanced surveillance and Internet monitoring systems via Russian and Chinese intermediaries, and secret investments in military industries that sustain state terrorism and proxy wars.
Thus, the nuclear and missile program, combined with the arming of proxies such as the Houthis in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq, and Hamas in Gaza, has not only pushed Iran into deeper international isolation but also entrenched structural corruption, reinforced internal repression, and accelerated the destruction of society itself.
At the same time, the missile strategy is inseparable from the regime’s policy of “proxy terrorism”:
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Lebanon and Palestine: Hezbollah and Hamas were not only supplied with short-range Iranian missiles but, under the guidance of IRGC advisors, deployed increasingly accurate systems in the wars of 2006 and beyond—wars that brought devastation to Lebanon and Palestine.
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Yemen: The Houthis, equipped with Iranian-made missiles, have repeatedly targeted Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, Israel, and commercial vessels in the Red Sea and Persian Gulf.
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Iraq and Syria: Iranian-backed militias have launched Katyusha rockets and suicide drones against targets in Iraqi Kurdistan, striking villages, refugee shelters, Kurdish opposition groups such as PJAK, and the region’s vital energy and oil infrastructure.
These policies—the advancement of missile technology and the fueling of proxy wars—serve as a shield for the survival of a mafia-like, criminal, and fascist regime on the verge of collapse. In this context, the regime’s pursuit of nuclear weapons capability represents an immediate and catastrophic threat, not only to millions across the Middle East, but above all to the oppressed peoples and nations within Iran itself—those who are forced to bear the costs of sanctions, repression, and the plunder of their labor and resources by an occupying, anti-human government.
Missile Capabilities and Regional Threats
The development of long-range ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads, together with the regime’s systematic support for proxy groups across the Middle East, form the two strategic pillars of its destructive policy. Over the past two decades, the IRGC has openly pursued long-range capabilities, test-firing Shahab-3, Qadr, Sejil, and Khyber-Shakan missiles, as well as advanced drones. Reports by Western intelligence services—and even technical notes from the IAEA—have highlighted these systems as potentially nuclear-capable.(3)
Legal Framework and Critical Timing: The “Trigger” Mechanism
Security Council Resolution 2231 (2015) established the so-called “snapback” or automatic return of sanctions. On August 28, 2025, at the request of Germany, France, and the UK, the mechanism was activated. The Security Council now has 30 days to respond, but neither Russian nor Chinese opposition can prevent the reimposition of sanctions. The process is scheduled to conclude by October 18, 2025.
The regime’s escalating threats against the IAEA and its Director General, Rafael Grossi, have been so serious that since June 2025 the Austrian government has placed him under 24-hour protection by the EKO Cobra special unit.
Possible Scenarios
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Acceptance of renewed sanctions – leading to a severe loss of legitimacy for the regime.
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Rejection and confrontation with the Agency – resulting in deeper isolation, mobilization of world opinion, and even the risk of military intervention.
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Withdrawal from the NPT – a form of strategic suicide, inviting harsher measures by the Security Council.
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Continuation of the status quo – accelerating economic collapse, social disintegration, and the regime’s internal erosion.
In all these scenarios, the regime faces a “lose-lose” deadlock with no path to escape.
The snapback mechanism, designed by UNSC Resolution 2231, requires the automatic reinstatement of sanctions if Iran is found in serious violation of its commitments. Within 30 days, unless an extension of suspension is approved, all previous resolutions—including 1696, 1737, 1747, 1803, 1835, 1929, and 2224—return in full force. This mechanism is effectively a sword of Damocles hanging over the regime’s nuclear ambitions, immune to any great-power veto.
The Additional Protocol to the NPT grants the IAEA sweeping inspection rights, enabling unannounced visits to any facility and detailed access to supply chains, materials, and research. Iran accepted it in 2003, suspended in 2006, re-accepted under the 2015 JCPOA, and suspended again in 2021 under parliamentary approval. This suspension deprived the international community of its most effective monitoring tool and left the regime free to conceal sensitive activities.
The Broader Picture
Neither a formal NPT withdrawal, nor a return to the JCPOA, nor continuation of the current stalemate can contain the crisis. Genuine deterrence requires a fundamental change in Iran’s political and economic power structure. As long as this regime remains, every scientific and technological tool will be turned into an instrument for repression at home and aggression abroad. Silence and compromise by the international community mean handing the keys to nuclear weapons to an ideological, fascist, and terrorist regime.
The Islamic Republic’s nuclear project is not just a matter of proliferation; it is an instrument of death and captivity. Billions of dollars have been wasted to preserve a bloody rule, while society is driven into misery, poverty, and collapse. The consequences are visible everywhere:
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Social misery: Millions pushed below the poverty line.
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Death and disease: Shortages of medicine, polluted water and soil, and widespread illnesses claim thousands of lives daily.
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Environmental destruction: Water, air, and land are devastated, sacrificing future generations.
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Displacement and migration: Millions forced to flee or live as displaced people.
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Hunger and thirst: Empty tables, dry rivers and wells, starving children, dying ecosystems.
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Constant insecurity: The rulers pursue nuclear bombs while the people perish silently under poverty and disease.
The outcome is the same: currency collapse, rising costs of living, and the total destruction of livelihoods for the working poor.
This devastation has not remained confined to nuclear policy; it has torn through the very fabric of society, unraveling layer by layer like a destructive chain. The collapse is structural: it has dismantled not only the economy, but also social relations, the environment, and the everyday conditions of life. Hunger, thirst, chronic water shortages, food insecurity, diseases caused by polluted air and climate degradation, and forced migrations have created a storm of instability and despair, deepening internal fractures.
A society trapped in such a cycle of destruction does not merely lose the present—it is condemned to carry hidden and delayed consequences into the near future: accelerated deaths from unknown illnesses, widespread depression and psychological collapse, a decline in collective hope, and a proliferation of social wounds that will scar generations to come.
In an unusually candid statement, on 31st August 2025, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian acknowledged the gravity of the internal crisis, declaring: “The situation of water and electricity, the national currency, gas, and all of these are on the verge of collapse.” (Gooya News) While he did not directly utter the phrase “regime collapse,” the imagery of being “on the verge of collapse” is unmistakably a metaphor for systemic failure. It reveals not merely the breakdown of infrastructure but the creeping disintegration of the Islamic Republic itself. International observers, including Al-Monitor, have underscored this moment as a harbinger of deeper unraveling, warning that “this is only the beginning of the crisis.”
It is out of this slow death that the slogan “Women, Life, Freedom” emerged—a cry forged against four decades of devastation.
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Women, as the first victims of oppression, discrimination, and captivity.
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Life, reduced to rubble under the weight of poverty, violence, and corruption.
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Freedom, suffocated under the boots of tyranny, obscurantism, and exploitation.
