Iran threatens to leave nuclear weapons treaty as Israeli bombing enters fourth day
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Iran Considers NPT Withdrawal Amid Israeli Strikes
Above: Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian at the Islamic Consultative Assembly in Tehran, on June 16, 2025. Image copyright: Iranian Presidency/Anadolu via Getty Images
The Spin
Anti-Israel narrative
Israel's reckless escalation has catastrophically backfired, pushing Iran toward the very nuclear threshold Netanyahu claimed to prevent. By launching unprovoked strikes amid promising negotiations, Israel has shattered diplomatic progress. It may have irreversibly driven Tehran to abandon the NPT — transforming what could have been a peaceful resolution into humanity's march toward nuclear catastrophe through sheer belligerence.
Anti-Iran narrative
Iran's threatened NPT withdrawal would finally strip away decades of deceptive rhetoric about "peaceful purposes," exposing the regime's true nuclear ambitions. Having repeatedly stonewalled IAEA inspectors, concealed uranium particles at undeclared sites, and amassed 400 kilograms of highly enriched uranium, Tehran's exit would merely formalize what the world already knows: Iran's duplicitous pursuit of weaponization.
Narrative C
Iran's potential withdrawal from the NPT would unleash catastrophic consequences across the Middle East: igniting a dangerous nuclear arms race, emboldening regional powers like Saudi Arabia to pursue their own atomic ambitions, legitimizing preemptive military strikes, and shattering decades of painstakingly constructed international arms control architecture while plunging an already volatile region into unprecedented peril.