Operation Epic Fury, the joint U.S.-Israeli military strike launched on February 28, 2026, against Iran’s nuclear infrastructure may have temporarily set back Tehran’s weapons program, but it has simultaneously triggered what nonproliferation experts are calling the most dangerous nuclear domino effect since the Cold War. By destroying targets across at least nine Iranian cities and killing Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, the operation has not eliminated the threat of nuclear proliferation — it has arguably multiplied it. Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, South Korea, and the UAE are all now closer to pursuing their own nuclear capabilities, driven by the very instability the strikes were meant to prevent.
The consequences extend far beyond the Middle East. The International Atomic Energy Agency has lost what it calls “continuity of knowledge” over Iran’s nuclear material at strike-affected sites, meaning the global watchdog literally cannot verify where Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile currently is or what has happened to it. Intelligence agencies suggest Iran may have actually increased enrichment to 90% weapons-grade as an ultimate deterrent against regime change — the precise outcome the operation was designed to prevent. This article examines the full scope of the nuclear domino effect, from the immediate military aftermath to the proliferation cascade now unfolding across the Middle East and Asia, the collapse of international monitoring, and what all of this means for global security going forward.
Table of Contents
- What Is the Nuclear Domino Effect Triggered by Destroying Iran’s Program?
- How Operation Epic Fury Unfolded and Why It Didn’t End the Threat
- The IAEA Monitoring Crisis and the Black Hole in Verification
- Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the Middle Eastern Proliferation Cascade
- The Asian Dimension — South Korea and the Global Spread
- The International Diplomatic Fallout
- What Comes Next for Global Nuclear Security
- Conclusion
- Frequently Asked Questions
What Is the Nuclear Domino Effect Triggered by Destroying Iran’s Program?
The nuclear domino effect refers to the chain reaction of countries pursuing their own nuclear weapons programs in response to the perceived failure — or success — of military action against Iran. Before the strikes, Iran held 440.9 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60% purity, a short technical step from weapons-grade 90%. A May 2025 Defense Intelligence Agency assessment found Iran could produce enough highly enriched uranium for five fission weapons in roughly one week and eight weapons in under two weeks. The IAEA confirmed Iran had sufficient nuclear material for nine nuclear weapons if enriched to the highest level. In June 2025, the IAEA Board formally found Iran non-compliant with safeguards obligations for the first time since 2005. This was the backdrop against which the U.S. and Israel decided to act. But the strikes have created a paradox that analysts at the Stimson Center warned about immediately: military action strengthens the argument inside Iran that only possessing nuclear weapons can protect the state from external attack.
Rather than closing the door on Iranian nuclear ambitions, Operation Epic Fury may have made the case for a bomb more politically compelling in Tehran than at any point in the program’s history. Compare this to Libya, where Muammar Gaddafi gave up his nuclear program in 2003 and was overthrown and killed eight years later — a lesson not lost on Iran’s remaining leadership or on any other nation weighing the value of a nuclear deterrent. The domino effect does not stop at Iran’s borders. Experts at Just Security warn that the most likely proliferation cascade would include saudi Arabia, turkey, and Egypt, each driven by different but overlapping motivations. Saudi Arabia has been blunt: it would launch its own nuclear weapons program immediately if Iran successfully developed nuclear weapons. Turkey views nuclear capability as a matter of regional prestige and strategic autonomy. Egypt sees proliferation as both a security imperative and a matter of national standing. The question is no longer whether these dominoes will fall, but how fast.
How Operation Epic Fury Unfolded and Why It Didn’t End the Threat
On February 28, 2026, the U.S. military struck over 1,000 targets on the first day using B-2 bombers and other assets as part of Operation Epic Fury, with Israel simultaneously executing its own strikes under the codename “Roaring Lion.” President trump outlined four military objectives: prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, destroy its missile arsenal, degrade proxy networks, and annihilate its navy, alongside a political goal of regime change. The strikes killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, an outcome with enormous symbolic and political weight. Three U.S. service members were killed and five seriously wounded during the operation. However, the military success of destroying physical infrastructure does not equate to eliminating nuclear knowledge or political will. Iran retaliated by firing missiles at Israel and targeting 27 U.S. military bases across the region, including Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait, Al Dhafra Air Base in the UAE, and U.S.
Navy Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain. Most targeted countries reported successfully intercepting the attacks with minimal casualties, though the UAE reported one civilian killed by interceptor debris. The retaliation demonstrated that Iran’s military capacity, while degraded, was not eliminated. The critical limitation of the strikes is this: you can bomb centrifuges, but you cannot bomb knowledge. Iran’s nuclear scientists, technical documents, and institutional expertise survive even when facilities do not. Iraq’s Osirak reactor was destroyed by Israel in 1981, and Saddam Hussein responded by accelerating his covert nuclear program. The Arms Control Association has characterized Trump’s Iran nuclear policy as “chaotic and reckless,” and analysis from Military Times warns that U.S. military action risks igniting a regional and global nuclear cascade. If the goal was permanent denuclearization, the historical record suggests military strikes alone have never achieved it.
The IAEA Monitoring Crisis and the Black Hole in Verification
One of the most alarming and underreported consequences of Operation Epic Fury is the collapse of international nuclear monitoring inside iran. The IAEA has lost continuity of knowledge over Iran’s nuclear material at strike-affected sites and cannot verify the current size, composition, or location of Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile. In practical terms, this means the world’s nuclear watchdog is now operating blind in one of the most volatile nuclear environments on the planet. Iran has not allowed IAEA inspectors access to sites struck during the conflict, creating a verification black hole at precisely the moment when oversight matters most. This is not a bureaucratic inconvenience — it is a strategic catastrophe. Intelligence agencies suggest Iran may have increased enrichment to 90% weapons-grade as an ultimate deterrent against regime change.
Without IAEA access, there is no way to confirm or deny this. Before the strikes, the international community at least had partial visibility into Iran’s nuclear activities, even as Iran was found non-compliant. Now there is effectively none. The precedent this sets is deeply troubling: any nation facing military strikes against its nuclear infrastructure will have every incentive to hide, disperse, and accelerate its program rather than submit to international oversight. The IAEA’s predicament also undermines the broader nonproliferation architecture. If the agency cannot monitor the aftermath of strikes against a non-compliant state, what credibility does it have in persuading compliant states to maintain their transparency? This erosion of institutional trust is exactly the kind of slow-moving damage that does not make headlines but reshapes the security landscape for decades.
Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the Middle Eastern Proliferation Cascade
Saudi Arabia has been the most explicit about its nuclear intentions. Riyadh has stated it would launch its own nuclear weapons program immediately if Iran successfully developed nuclear weapons. While Operation Epic Fury was ostensibly meant to prevent that scenario, the chaos and uncertainty following the strikes may achieve the same triggering effect. The U.S. appears likely to support Saudi efforts to acquire fissile material production capabilities in 2026, a move that would mark a dramatic shift in American nonproliferation policy. The tradeoff is stark: Washington may buy a closer alliance with Riyadh at the cost of enabling yet another nuclear-capable state in the most volatile region on earth. Turkey presents a different calculus. Ankara already hosts U.S. nuclear weapons under NATO sharing arrangements, but an independent Turkish nuclear capability would represent a fundamentally different kind of proliferation — one driven by national prestige and strategic autonomy rather than immediate security threats. Egypt, meanwhile, has both motivations.
Cairo views itself as the natural leader of the Arab world and would find it politically untenable to watch Saudi Arabia and potentially Turkey go nuclear while remaining non-nuclear itself. The domino metaphor is apt here: once Saudi Arabia moves, the political constraints holding Turkey and Egypt back collapse in sequence. The comparison to Cold War proliferation dynamics is instructive but imperfect. During the Cold War, the U.S. and Soviet Union actively worked to prevent proliferation among their respective allies. Today, the U.S. appears willing to facilitate Saudi nuclear development, which inverts the traditional superpower role. If the U.S. grants Saudi Arabia uranium enrichment rights, the UAE would likely seek to revise its 123 Agreement — the bilateral nuclear cooperation deal that currently restricts Emirati enrichment — to obtain enrichment facilities as well. Each concession creates pressure for the next, and the cascade accelerates.
The Asian Dimension — South Korea and the Global Spread
The proliferation cascade is not confined to the Middle East. South Korea has been identified by the Global Security Review as a country moving closer to developing both the technical means and political motivation for a nuclear weapon. Seoul’s calculation is driven less by Iran specifically than by the broader signal that American security guarantees may not be sufficient — that nations ultimately need their own deterrent. North Korea’s continued nuclear buildup, combined with questions about U.S. commitment to extended deterrence under the current administration, has shifted South Korean public opinion significantly toward domestic nuclear capability. The danger here is a feedback loop. If South Korea moves toward a bomb, Japan faces an immediate security dilemma.
If Japan responds, the entire East Asian security architecture — already under strain from Chinese military expansion — could fracture. This is the global dimension of the nuclear domino effect that the architects of Operation Epic Fury either failed to anticipate or chose to disregard. A strike against Iranian facilities in the Middle East could, through a chain of strategic calculations, lead to nuclear proliferation in Northeast Asia. The Arms Control Association and other nonproliferation organizations have warned for years about exactly this kind of cascading scenario. The limitation of military action as a nonproliferation tool becomes clearest at this global scale. Destroying one country’s nuclear infrastructure does not address the underlying incentives that drive proliferation. It may, in fact, sharpen those incentives by demonstrating that non-nuclear states are vulnerable to attack in ways that nuclear-armed states are not. Every country watching the aftermath of Operation Epic Fury is drawing its own conclusions, and for many, the lesson is not that nuclear programs are futile — it is that they need to be completed before anyone can stop them.
The International Diplomatic Fallout
The diplomatic response to Operation Epic Fury has been sharp. UN Secretary-General Guterres said the strikes “squandered a chance for diplomacy,” and the UN Security Council heard warnings that the operation could trigger wider conflict in the Middle East. These are not idle concerns. The strikes occurred without a new UN Security Council resolution authorizing force, and the legal and diplomatic framework for military action against a sovereign nation’s nuclear program remains deeply contested.
The precedent that a country can be attacked based on its potential to develop weapons — rather than a demonstrated weapon or imminent threat — is one that many nations find alarming for obvious reasons. The erosion of diplomatic channels matters because, ultimately, nonproliferation has historically been achieved through negotiation rather than force. The 2015 Iran nuclear deal, whatever its flaws, represented a framework for constraining Iran’s program through verification and economic incentives. That framework was abandoned by the first Trump administration in 2018, and nothing comparable has replaced it. The current approach — military destruction followed by demands for regime change — offers no off-ramp for Iran and no incentive for other nations to negotiate away their own nuclear ambitions.
What Comes Next for Global Nuclear Security
The next twelve to twenty-four months will be decisive. If Iran reconstitutes its nuclear program — which historical precedent strongly suggests it will attempt — the pressure for a second round of strikes will be immense. If Saudi Arabia moves forward with enrichment capabilities with U.S. support, the nonproliferation regime built over decades will face its most serious challenge since the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was signed in 1968. If the IAEA cannot regain access to Iranian sites, the world will be making critical security decisions based on intelligence estimates rather than verified data, a situation eerily reminiscent of the lead-up to the Iraq War in 2003.
The fundamental question is whether the destruction of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure has made the world safer or more dangerous. The immediate military threat from Iran has been reduced. But the broader threat from nuclear proliferation — more countries, more weapons, more opportunities for miscalculation — appears to have increased significantly. As analysts at the Stimson Center noted, the strikes have validated the argument that nuclear weapons are the only reliable protection against regime change. That argument will echo in capitals from Riyadh to Seoul for years to come, and its consequences will shape global security long after the dust from Operation Epic Fury has settled.
Conclusion
Operation Epic Fury succeeded in its immediate tactical objectives: Iranian nuclear facilities were struck, Supreme Leader Khamenei was killed, and Tehran’s military infrastructure was severely degraded. But the operation has unleashed a set of second-order consequences that may prove far more consequential than the strikes themselves. The IAEA has lost the ability to verify Iran’s nuclear status. Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, South Korea, and the UAE are all moving closer to nuclear capability.
The nonproliferation regime is under the greatest strain it has faced in a generation. The nuclear domino effect is not a theoretical concern — it is actively unfolding. For American citizens and policymakers, the critical next step is demanding transparency and accountability. What is the administration’s plan for preventing the proliferation cascade that experts have been warning about? What safeguards will be attached to any nuclear cooperation with Saudi Arabia? How will the IAEA regain access to Iranian sites? These are not abstract policy questions — they are the concrete challenges that will determine whether Operation Epic Fury is remembered as a decisive blow against proliferation or as the moment the nuclear genie escaped the bottle for good. The stakes could not be higher, and the window for course correction is closing.
Frequently Asked Questions
Did Operation Epic Fury completely destroy Iran’s nuclear program?
The strikes hit over 1,000 targets across at least nine Iranian cities, severely damaging nuclear infrastructure. However, the IAEA has lost the ability to verify what remains of Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile, and intelligence agencies suggest Iran may have increased enrichment to 90% weapons-grade as a deterrent. Nuclear knowledge and expertise cannot be destroyed by bombing facilities, so the program’s complete elimination is unlikely.
Which countries are most likely to pursue nuclear weapons as a result of the strikes?
Experts at Just Security identify Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Egypt as the most likely proliferation candidates in the Middle East, each driven by different motivations. South Korea is also identified as moving closer to nuclear capability. If Saudi Arabia obtains enrichment rights from the U.S., the UAE would likely seek to revise its own nuclear cooperation agreement to match.
How many U.S. service members were killed or wounded in Operation Epic Fury?
Three U.S. service members were killed and five were seriously wounded during the operation, according to USNI News.
What was Iran’s nuclear capability before the strikes?
Iran held 440.9 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60% purity. A May 2025 DIA assessment found Iran could produce weapons-grade material in probably less than one week, enough for five fission weapons. The IAEA reported Iran had enough nuclear material for nine weapons if enriched to 90%.
How did Iran retaliate against the strikes?
Iran fired missiles at Israel and targeted 27 U.S. military bases across the region, including facilities in Qatar, Kuwait, the UAE, and Bahrain. Most targeted countries reported successfully intercepting the attacks, though the UAE reported one civilian killed by interceptor debris.
Can the IAEA still monitor Iran’s nuclear activities?
No. The IAEA has lost continuity of knowledge over Iran’s nuclear material at strike-affected sites and cannot verify the current size, composition, or location of Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile. Iran has not allowed inspectors access to the struck sites.