As Operation Epic Fury continues, the nooks and crannies of 47 years of failed relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran are being explored by many observers. Much is focused on Iran’s progress toward obtaining a nuclear weapon. That ignores the forest for the trees, as the mere possession of nuclear weapons is not the concern. The real issue is what would the IRI do with any nuclear weapons it possessed.
What would Iran do with a nuke? Would it conform to the modus operandi of other nation-states possessing nuclear weapons, i.e., subscribe to standard deterrence and regime preservation logic? Or would Iran’s possession open the door to something for which the world is decidedly unprepared?
Perhaps the best way to examine the problem is through a comparison of what Shi’ite Iran would likely do, as driven by their theocracy/ideology, versus what the Sunni Muslim state of Pakistan has done since it first exploded two nuclear devices in 1998.
THE THEOLOGICAL DIVIDE
The theological differences between Iran and Pakistan are really the only drivers that matter. And those differences are gigantic!
Iran’s Twelver Shi’a Eschatology — Activist Apocalypticism
The Islamic Republic’s state ideology is rooted in a specific and politically weaponized interpretation of Twelver Shi’a theology. The Hidden Twelfth Imam — the Mahdi — is believed to have gone into occultation in 874 AD and will return to establish a global Islamic order at the end of times. What makes Iran’s version uniquely dangerous is the doctrine of Wilayat al-Faqih — rule of the Islamic jurist — established by Khomeini, which holds that the Supreme Leader governs as the Mahdi’s earthly deputy until his return.
The critical and dangerous extension of this doctrine, embraced by Khamenei and particularly by former President Ahmadinejad, is that human action — specifically conflict, chaos, and confrontation with the enemies of Islam — can actively hasten the Mahdi’s return. This transforms apocalyptic belief from passive waiting into activist strategic doctrine. Martyrdom is not merely acceptable — it is theologically meritorious. National annihilation in service of the divine mission is not deterred by MAD logic — it may be welcomed as fulfillment of prophetic destiny.
“Death to America” is therefore not rhetorical venting. It is a theologically grounded state objective encoded in the IRI’s foundational documents and regularly reaffirmed as religious obligation by the Supreme Leader himself.
Pakistan’s Sunni Islam — Transactional, Not Eschatological
Pakistan is a Sunni-majority state whose nuclear program was driven entirely by secular strategic logic — specifically existential deterrence against India following the 1971 war that dismembered East Pakistan into Bangladesh. Pakistani founder Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s famous declaration that Pakistanis would eat grass to build a bomb was nationalist, not apocalyptic. Pakistan has no Twelfth Imam doctrine. It has no state theology that assigns divine merit to national self-destruction in service of cosmic confrontation with a designated enemy. Pakistani Islamism, even in its most radical domestic expressions, is oriented toward internal political control and regional influence — not global eschatological warfare against Western civilization.
Critically, Pakistan’s nuclear establishment — the Strategic Plans Division — is dominated by professional military officers whose institutional culture is closer to a conventional Western general staff than to a revolutionary theocratic vanguard. Their nuclear doctrine is explicitly deterrence-based, oriented entirely toward India.
WHY PAKISTAN IS A RELIABLE NUCLEAR HOLDER
1. Rational State Actor Logic. Pakistan’s military and civilian leadership — however dysfunctional domestically — operates within a recognizable framework of national interest calculation. Nuclear weapons are an insurance policy against Indian conventional superiority, not instruments of divine warfare against the Great Satan.
2. No Designated Global Enemy. Pakistan has no ideological or theological obligation to destroy the United States or Western civilization. Anti-American sentiment exists and is exploitable by domestic political actors, but it is not institutionalized state theology demanding action.
3. Deep U.S. Military and Intelligence Integration. Despite tensions, Pakistan’s ISI and military have been deeply enmeshed with U.S. defense and intelligence relationships for decades — first through the Soviet-Afghan war, then through post-9/11 counterterrorism cooperation. The U.S. has significant insight into Pakistani nuclear command and control and has invested heavily in its security infrastructure through the Nunn-Lugar framework and related programs.
4. Command and Control Infrastructure. Pakistan’s Strategic Plans Division operates a sophisticated permissive action link system with multiple layers of human and technical controls specifically designed — with American assistance — to prevent unauthorized use, theft, or unilateral launch.
5. No Proxy Transfer Doctrine. While A.Q. Khan’s proliferation network demonstrated Pakistan’s vulnerability to rogue individual actors, the Pakistani state itself has no doctrine of transferring nuclear capability to proxy forces. Iran, by contrast, has already demonstrated willingness to transfer advanced conventional weapons, missile technology, and drone capability to Hezbollah, Houthis, and Iraqi militias. There is no rational basis to assume that doctrine would stop at nuclear material.
WHY IRAN WOULD BE UNIQUELY DANGEROUS
The risks to the US and the world of a nuclear-armed Iran are extreme.
1. The Proxy Transfer Risk. Iran’s entire regional strategy is built on non-state proxy forces operating with deniable Iranian material support. A nuclear-armed Iran would face constant pressure — and theological incentive — to extend that doctrine to radiological or nuclear material transfers to Hezbollah or other proxies, creating attribution problems that would paralyze Western response options.
2. No Effective Command and Control Culture. Unlike Pakistan’s military-professional nuclear establishment, Iran’s nuclear program is controlled by the IRGC — a revolutionary ideological force, not a conventional military institution. The IRGC’s foundational loyalty is to the Supreme Leader’s theological vision, not to conventional deterrence stability. The institutional culture that makes Pakistani generals reliable custodians simply does not exist in the IRGC command structure.
3. The Martyrdom Premium. Pakistan’s leaders want to survive. Iran’s theological framework explicitly elevates martyrdom — including collective national martyrdom — as spiritually meritorious. This is not a foundation on which reliable nuclear deterrence can be constructed. A leadership that genuinely believes dying in confrontation with America accelerates divine salvation cannot be deterred by the threat of dying in confrontation with America.
4. Active Designated Enemy Doctrine. Pakistan has no constitutionally embedded obligation to destroy a specific named foreign power. Iran’s constitution, Khamenei’s formal religious rulings, and forty-six years of unbroken state policy designate the United States and Israel as enemies whose destruction is a religious obligation. Giving nuclear weapons to a state with a constitutionally mandated enemy and an eschatological framework that welcomes martyrdom in that conflict is categorically different from nuclear deterrence between India and Pakistan.
5. The Sunset Problem. Even under the most optimistic reading of JCPOA-style diplomacy, Iran retains the industrial infrastructure, the enriched stockpile, the technical expertise, and the theological motivation to weaponize on short notice. Pakistan’s nuclear weapons exist to deter India. Iran’s would exist — by the regime’s own theological doctrine — to confront America and eliminate Israel, with the added incentive that the resulting apocalyptic conflict hastens the return of the Hidden Imam.
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
Pakistan is a nuclear-armed state with serious internal vulnerabilities and pressures but a recognizable and workable deterrence logic. Its weapons exist to prevent war with India, not to wage theological warfare against Western civilization. Iran under the Islamic Republic is something qualitatively different: a revolutionary theocratic state with a constitutionally mandated global enemy, an eschatological framework that assigns divine merit to martyrdom, a proxy transfer infrastructure already in place, and a nuclear establishment controlled by an ideological revolutionary guard rather than a professional military.
The difference is not one of degree – it is fundamental. Standard deterrence theory was built for Pakistan. It has no reliable application to Iran.
And this is the main reason for Operation Epic Fury: the IRI has never given up its pursuit of nuclear weapons despite many failed efforts to negotiate the problem away. Epic Fury is the long overdue forcing function.
The end.
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This article originally appeared in Stu Cvrk’s Substack. Reprinted here with permission
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