Iran is a “threshold state” — a country with the technical capacity to produce nuclear weapons but that has not crossed the final line of production. Libya abandoned its nuclear program in 2003 in exchange for normalized relations with the West. Military strikes – or the credible threat of them – remove inspectors, disrupt monitoring continuity and signal that compliance does not guarantee safety. Iran’s regional rival, Saudi Arabia, has made no secret of its own nuclear ambitions, with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman publicly declaring that the kingdom would pursue nuclear weapons if Iran did. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan questioned in 2019 why Turkey should not possess nuclear weapons when others in the region do.