Analysts are casting doubt on Russia’s former president’s claim that “a number of countries” were considering supplying nuclear warheads to Iran after the Pentagon’s salvo of bunker-buster strikes there.
Dmitry Medvedev, who was president from 2008 to 2012 and is a top aide to Russian leader Vladimir Putin, didn’t specify which countries he was referring to in his Telegram post on Sunday. In his post, he downplayed the damage dealt to Iran’s vital nuclear sites.
As news of the strikes broke on Saturday, the Pentagon was careful to say that it was still assessing the destruction caused by the 14 GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator bombs and multiple Tomahawk missiles it fired at Iran’s nuclear sites.
Medvedev wrote that the strikes had “entangled” the US in a new conflict. “A number of countries are ready to directly supply Iran with their own nuclear warheads,” he added.
Nuclear weapons analysts speaking to Business Insider said they doubted that Medvedev’s statement on such transfers is credible.
“It’s impossible in practice because nuclear weapons are not like a bomb or just something you can carry in a suitcase,” said Pavel Podvig, a senior researcher in the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research’s weapons of mass destruction program.
Nuclear warheads come as an entire system, with people who need to be trained to keep and service them safely, as well as maintenance facilities and equipment. Even tactical nukes, which are more portable and produce a smaller blast, need high-level storage, Podvig added.
“Unless you create a nuclear program or almost a nuclear program in the country, there is no way to just give your nuclear weapons to them,” he said.
Simply giving such a warhead to another country would break the first article of the UN’s Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which Russia and China have signed. Podvig said that in Europe, where the US stations nuclear weapons, the warheads are in American custody. The same can be said of Russia’s nuclear weapons in Belarus.
“I don’t see this being done technically,” Podvig said.
Politically, Medvedev could likely only be referring to three countries, said Adam Lowther, a cofounder and the vice president of research at the Ohio-registered think tank National Institute for Deterrence Studies.
North Korea, China, and Russia are the only nuclear-armed states considered adversaries or rivals to the US. And Lowther said all three know that supplying Iran with nuclear weapons, even just as a deterrent, would risk intense escalation from the US and Israel.
“When you give somebody a nuclear weapon, and they can use it, you can’t guarantee how they’re going to use it,” Lowther said. He added that with Tel Aviv and Washington so focused on preventing Iran from fielding nuclear weapons, Tehran would likely only have two choices if it does receive a warhead: Use the bomb or lose it.
And if Iran detonates a gifted nuke, Lowther added, American forensics would easily be able to trace the fissile material and bomb design to identify where the weapon originated.
“Then that country would be on the US’ hit list,” Lowther said.
Medvedev is known to make bold, hawkish statements toward Ukraine and the US since the outset of the full-scale Russian invasion. He serves as the deputy chairman — second in rank to Putin — of the Kremlin’s security council.
His rhetoric has often run parallel to the Kremlin’s nuclear threats, repeatedly issued as warnings to the West over military aid to Ukraine. Moscow, however, has consistently not followed through with those threats, even when the US escalated its level of assistance to Kyiv.
Lowther said he believes Medvedev’s statement was a play against Ukraine, a bid to reduce the West’s willingness to help Kyiv.
“The Russians say: ‘You know what? You give the Ukrainians these weapons? Well, we can give the Iranians weapons as well,'” he said.
The Israel Defense Forces declined to comment on Medvedev’s remarks.
The White House and US State Department did not respond to requests for comment sent outside regular business hours by BI.
