Chandigarh: The escalating confrontation between Iran and the US-Israel combine has revived a far wider and more dangerous question: how many other countries might now seek nuclear weapons of their own as the ultimate insurance against attack by more powerful adversaries.At first glance, the enduring war against Iran appears narrowly focused on its nuclear and long-range missile ambitions. Tehran is believed to have enriched – and stored – uranium to about 60% purity, a level far beyond civilian energy requirements and uncomfortably close to the 90% threshold needed for weapons-grade material. US and Israeli intelligence assessments suggest Iran could theoretically produce enough weapons-grade uranium for a bomb within a short span, if it chose to cross the line.Yet the strategic significance of Iran’s programme lies less in the technical details of enrichment than in the political signal it sends to the rest of the world: if a country under sustained military pressure can approach the nuclear threshold and thereby complicate the calculations of far stronger adversaries, other states may draw an obvious conclusion – that possessing nuclear weapons, or at least the ability to rapidly produce them, offers the most reliable insurance against attack.Anxieties in East AsiaThe broader danger, therefore, lies in what strategists describe as “nuclear hedging” – the deliberate cultivation of technological, industrial and scientific capabilities that allow a state to rapidly build nuclear weapons should the strategic environment deteriorate. This approach stops short of openly violating the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or NPT, but quietly erodes the spirit of the global non-proliferation regime. Several technologically advanced states already sit at this threshold, possessing the civilian nuclear infrastructure, fissile material stockpiles and long-range missile technology that could be converted to weapons use within a short span.In East Asia, this logic has gained particular traction as regional security anxieties deepen.In South Korea, for instance, public debate over acquiring nuclear weapons has become increasingly mainstream, with opinion polls periodically showing majority support for an indigenous strategic deterrent. Although Seoul remains formally protected under the US’s nuclear umbrella, doubts occasionally surface over whether Washington would risk American cities in response to a nuclear strike on the Korean peninsula from rival Pyongyang. Similar strategic calculations quietly resonate in Japan, even though Tokyo continues to adhere to its long-standing non-nuclear principles, shaped by the trauma of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the US in August 1945. Yet, Japan also possesses one of the most advanced civilian nuclear programmes in the world and holds significant plutonium stockpiles from reprocessing activities. Technically, this gives it the ability to move towards nuclear weapons in relatively short order, should its security calculus ever shift dramatically.Japan is also increasingly weighing the possibility of acquiring nuclear-powered submarines (SSNs) as regional security pressures mount from China, Russia and North Korea. What was once considered politically unthinkable by Tokyo has in recent years entered the realm of serious policy debate, with defence panels and senior officials arguing that such platforms could underpin Japan’s next generation of maritime deterrence.A more vulnerable West AsiaFurther afield, West Asia could prove even more volatile on the nuclear weapons issue. For decades, the region has lived with a peculiar strategic imbalance: one undeclared but widely acknowledged nuclear power – Israel – amid non-nuclear neighbours. Israel has never formally admitted to possessing atomic weapons, yet its long-standing policy of nuclear ambiguity has been accompanied by the quiet development of a formidable strategic deterrent. Embedded within this posture is what analysts often describe as Israel’s alarming “Samson Doctrine” – the implicit understanding that, if faced with an existential threat Tel Aviv would be prepared to unleash overwhelming and potentially catastrophic nuclear retaliation against non-nuclear states to ensure the survival of the Jewish state.This opaque but credible deterrent has shaped the strategic calculations of this entire region for decades. Israel’s nuclear capability, combined with its technological edge and close security partnership with the US, has effectively discouraged adversaries from attempting a direct, full-scale military confrontation. But it has spawned an enduring sense of imbalance, particularly among regional powers like Iran that see themselves permanently excluded from the nuclear club.Meanwhile, other than Iran, Saudi Arabia has repeatedly signalled that it would not remain without a comparable deterrent should Tehran acquire the bomb. Riyadh’s vast financial resources and longstanding security partnerships with the US could accelerate such a pursuit, particularly if it sought external technological assistance or pursued a rapid procurement pathway for nukes. For the Saudi leadership, nuclear capability would represent not only strategic parity with Iran but also insurance against the shifting reliability of external security guarantees like those presently provided by the US.Compounding such a possibility are the kingdom’s long-rumoured strategic understandings with Pakistan, including a recently concluded security pact involving offensive and defensive cooperation. For decades, analysts have speculated that Saudi financial backing for elements of Pakistan’s nuclear programme may have created the basis for a potential future arrangement, ranging from rapid technological assistance to some form of extended deterrent. And though never formally acknowledged by either side, such speculation continues to feed concerns that, should Iran cross the nuclear threshold, Riyadh might not have to start from scratch in acquiring its own atomic insurance policy.From there, the nuclear cascade could spread to Turkey, a member of NATO with significant industrial and technological capacity that has occasionally questioned the fairness of a global system that allows some countries to possess nuclear weapons, while permanently denying them to others. Turkish leaders have publicly argued that such asymmetry is strategically untenable in the long run. However, if Iran and Saudi Arabia were to acquire nuclear capabilities, pressure within Ankara to reconsider its own position could intensify.Similarly, Egypt – historically the Arab world’s strategic heavyweight – would find it difficult to remain outside the nuclear equation in a region where hypothetically Iran, Israel and potentially Saudi Arabia all possessed atomic arsenals. Cairo has long advocated the creation of a nuclear-weapon-free zone in West Asia, but such diplomatic ambitions would be severely undermined if multiple regional rivals moved towards nuclearisation.Such a development would transform West Asia from a region with one undeclared nuclear power into a crowded nuclear neighbourhood. In strategic terms, that shift would dramatically increase the risks of miscalculation: multiple nuclear-armed states operating within a relatively confined geopolitical space – many of them divided by deep ideological, sectarian and geopolitical rivalries.Europe and the shadow of NATOEven in Europe – long considered firmly anchored within the architecture of nuclear restraint – the strategic conversation is slowly shifting. Russia’s war in Ukraine and increasingly explicit nuclear signalling from Moscow have unsettled the continent’s security order. In Germany, discussions once regarded as politically taboo have begun to surface over whether reliance on the American nuclear umbrella alone will remain sufficient over the long term. Berlin remains committed to NATO’s nuclear-sharing arrangements, but the very emergence of this debate reflects the erosion of earlier assumptions about European security.Taken collectively, these developments point toward a more fragmented and uncertain nuclear landscape. The immediate risk is not that numerous countries will suddenly build nuclear bombs. Rather, it is that a growing number will quietly position themselves just short of doing so – assembling the technological building blocks required for rapid weaponisation while remaining nominally within international legal frameworks.Such a world of multiple “threshold states” would be inherently unstable, as when faced with a crisis, many such governments could convert latent capabilities into operational nuclear arsenals with little warning, drastically compressing the timelines for diplomatic intervention and situational de-escalation. It could also underscore a hardening perception across many capitals that in an increasingly turbulent international system, the possession – or near-possession – of nuclear weapons may represent the ultimate strategic insurance policy against coercion or attack. If that belief takes hold, the world may witness the gradual erosion of restraint that has limited the spread of nuclear weapons for over half a century to just nine states: the P5 under the NPT like the US, Russia, Britain, France and China and four others outside that framework: India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea.An additional factor accelerating this trend is the erosion of the global arms-control architecture. The Cold War system of nuclear restraints – built on treaties, inspections and bilateral agreements – has steadily weakened. The recent collapse of major agreements and the looming expiry of the last remaining US-Russia strategic arms treaty have left the international nuclear order with fewer guardrails than at any time in decades.In conclusion, the logic driving this renewed interest in nuclear weapons is, at one level, starkly simple. They are no longer viewed merely as instruments for preserving peace but increasingly as the ultimate form of political insurance. Countries that possess them are rarely invaded, regimes that hold them are difficult to coerce, and states that eventually acquire them – like Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea – suddenly command a very different level of strategic respect.Hence, the confrontation between Iran and the US-Israel combine is not merely a dispute over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. It could ultimately prove to be the trigger for a far broader nuclear age – one in which more states conclude that survival, prestige and security all point toward the same unsettling conclusion: that the Big Bomb remains the ultimate guarantor of power and national security.