For the moment, as Iran remains “pre-nuclear,” an Israel-Iran nuclear exchange is out of the question. Nonetheless, if Israel is able to maintain its asymmetrical nuclear advantage, a one-sided nuclear war would still be possible. Circumstances could sometime arise in which Israel felt compelled to launch parts of its “ambiguous” nuclear arsenal against Iran.

The most plausible rationale of any such launch would be to (1) prevent Iranian “escalation dominance;” and (2) keep Iran from “becoming nuclear.” In offering suitable explanations, recent history will show that during April 2024, Israel and Iran engaged in a brief but direct interstate conflict. Looking ahead, it would be reasonable to expect additional rounds of direct warfare between these two bitter adversaries.

Conflict durations could be much longer and more protracted. It follows that Israel would be under expanding pressures to dominate escalation during periods of hyper-warfare with Iran and that such potentially existential pressures could precipitate an Israeli resort to nuclear weapons use. What should Israel seek in such unprecedented but increasingly likely encounters? In a near worst-case scenario, Israel could calculate that nothing short of massive non-nuclear preemption would halt Tehran’s ongoing nuclearization.

An Israeli nuclear preemption is inconceivable. But even if Israel’s determination to launch a non-nuclear preemption were analytically correct and law-enforcing, its tangib.