Why Iran’s Emergence as a Nuclear Power Appears Inevitable, According to an American Professor

According to the political desk of Saednews, citing Fars News Agency, Professor Robert Pape first explains that Iran has removed nuclear negotiations from the agenda and made them conditional on the lifting of maritime blockades.

Second, Iran’s effective control over the Strait of Hormuz has become an unprecedented economic and strategic lever, making the international costs of its nuclear program more tolerable.

Third, Iran is deepening its relations with nuclear powers such as Russia and Pakistan.

Fourth, the United States is no longer in a position to build an effective coalition similar to the JCPOA era.

His conclusion is that when motivation (power expansion), opportunity (weak external pressure), and geopolitical cover (support or neutrality of major powers) are simultaneously present, Iran’s movement toward nuclear capability is not only rational but, under the current trajectory, highly likely and difficult to contain.

He further argues that the core of the crisis is that the United States has effectively lost control over the Iran conflict. Evidence of this can be seen on multiple levels at once: Iran is pursuing active diplomacy with actors such as Russia and Pakistan without regard to Washington; traditional U.S. allies no longer consult it on strategic decisions; and even at the discursive level, Western leaders speak of the “humiliation of America” on the global stage.

According to Pape, the United States is no longer acting as the “anchor of regional order,” and this vacuum has led regional actors to pursue independent paths. This situation reflects not only a loss of operational and political initiative by Washington, but also a structural breakdown of the U.S.-led order in this specific case, with little prospect of restoration.

One of the direct consequences of this loss of U.S. centrality, according to Pape, is the gradual fragmentation of cohesion within the Gulf Cooperation Council. Previously, the U.S. presence enforced coordination and kept regional initiatives—such as containing Iran—within a unified framework. Now, however, with that role weakened, each state is seeking to minimize its own risks.

From this perspective, developments such as Iraq’s distancing from U.S. positions or the UAE’s withdrawal from coordinated oil mechanisms are not signs of alignment with Iran, but rather indicators of structural divergence. Countries are breaking away from a unified bloc and moving toward independent behavior, which in turn leads to the gradual disintegration of any unified front against Iran.

Pape describes Iran’s strategy in the Strait of Hormuz as the creation of an intelligent control regime, in which maritime passage is conditioned on coordination with Iranian forces and the payment of fees—effectively turning the strait into a managed chokepoint.

This allows Iran to simultaneously achieve several objectives: generating significant revenue from transit fees, influencing global energy supply and oil prices, and maintaining continuous leverage over the global economy without incurring the political and military costs of a full blockade.

According to Pape, this approach enables Iran to hold the “control valve” of the global economy, optimizing its income while dramatically increasing its geopolitical bargaining power.

Regarding diplomacy, Pape notes a fundamental shift in the negotiation agenda. He argues that Iran has effectively moved priority away from the nuclear file toward consolidating geopolitical gains and is conditioning any negotiations on the lifting of maritime restrictions.

He views intensified interactions with Russia and Pakistan as part of a broader strategic alignment aimed at strengthening Iran’s position against the West in both energy and nuclear domains.

His overall assessment is that Iran is leveraging these emerging alliances to deepen its strategic depth, while the United States lacks effective leverage to return negotiations to their previous framework. As a result, Washington is losing initiative to an emerging anti-Western axis that is currently taking shape.