The Nuclear Domino Washington Cannot Afford to Ignore

Iran may be closer to political rupture, but Pakistan’s deeper institutional fragility could prove even more dangerous. In both countries, the gravest risk begins when state weakness reaches the institutions guarding nuclear assets.

Predictions of regime collapse are notoriously unreliable. Authoritarian governments can survive economic ruin, popular revolt and military defeat for years much like Syria’s Assad did—then disintegrate with astonishing speed once their elites and security forces fracture.

That warning applies today to both Iran and Pakistan. Their political systems are very different, and neither is necessarily on the verge of collapse. Yet both face intensifying combinations of economic distress, declining legitimacy, political repression and internal violence. If these pressures converge, the consequences will not remain within their borders. They could produce a regional cascade reaching from Iran through Pakistan to Afghanistan, which is already is failed unstable state and eventually to India—with nuclear security at its center.

Iran presents the more immediate possibility of sudden political rupture.

The Islamic Republic has survived repeated challenges: the 2009 Green Movement, protests in 2017–18 and 2019, the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising of 2022–23 and the nationwide unrest that began in late 2025. Each wave was suppressed, but none resolved the underlying causes. Inflation, currency depreciation, corruption, electricity and water shortages, social restrictions and resentment of Iran’s costly regional policies continue to erode the regime’s legitimacy.

Iran’s weakened regional position has compounded these pressures. Damage to its military infrastructure and the decline of important regional partners have undermined the leadership’s claim that decades of external expenditure made Iran safer. A looming leadership succession creates another source of uncertainty, potentially exposing divisions among clerics, the Revolutionary Guards and political-economic networks.

Nevertheless, public anger alone will not bring down the Islamic Republic. The regime still commands a formidable apparatus of repression, surveillance and patronage. Its opponents remain divided and lack an uncontested leadership or transition plan inside Iran.

The Islamic Republic could therefore survive for years if the Revolutionary Guards and other coercive institutions remain united. Alternatively, it could enter a terminal crisis within months if mass strikes, a disputed succession, battlefield reverses or an economic shock coincide with elite defections and security forces refusing orders. While the Mossad has been recently very effective in targetted assasinations, regime change requires coerced defection of key social, religious, military and secret service influence points, which it or other intelligence agencies, have obviously not been able to achieve. Regime change, by brute force, is often counter-productive, especially where there is no succession plan.

The decisive variable is not the size of the crowds. It is whether the men carrying the guns continue to obey and who replaces the “Ayatollah-IRGC” nexus.

Pakistan’s weakness is different—and frequently underestimated in Washington, starting with the strength of Trumps favorite Field Marshall, Asim Munir.

Pakistan is not simply governed by its elected cabinet, a cohort of the extended Sharif family. It is a hybrid political order in which the army remains the central arbiter of national security and often of civilian politics. The present civilian government suffers from a serious legitimacy deficit following the restrictions surrounding the 2024 election, the imprisonment and exclusion of Imran Khan and his supporters, pressure on journalists and the weakening of judicial independence and violence against minorities.

This has produced a dangerous perception among millions of Pakistanis: that elections cannot peacefully alter the distribution of power. When constitutional politics loses credibility, anger migrates from individual governments toward the state itself.

At the same time, Pakistan’s security environment is deteriorating. The Pakistani Taliban has intensified its campaign, especially in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Baloch separatists continue to challenge the state in the southwest. Islamic State–Khorasan and sectarian organizations remain active. Afghanistan offers sanctuary and strategic depth to some of these networks, while Pakistan’s historically selective policy toward militant groups has blurred the distinction between organizations deemed hostile and those once considered useful.

Pakistan’s economic stabilisation should not be mistaken for structural health. International assistance has reduced the immediate threat of a balance-of-payments crisis, but the country remains burdened by debt, a narrow tax base, energy-sector liabilities, weak public services and recurring dependence on external financing. Poverty, rapid population growth and severe exposure to floods, heat and water stress reduce the state’s ability to absorb another major shock.

Pakistan is not a failed state. Its army remains cohesive, its bureaucracy functions and the state controls its principal cities and strategic institutions. But the system is brittle. Military predominance supplies short-term continuity while weakening civilian institutions and concentrating political risk in a single organization. If India, Israel or other actors manage to cultivate the next generation power influencers, the Sharif-Munir axis may collapse easily.

The most plausible danger is not that extremists suddenly march into Islamabad. It is that a financial crisis, a disputed political transition, economic pressurs and protests and simultaneous separatist offensives gradually overwhelm the state’s capacity—possibly producing divisions inside the military itself.

Iran and Pakistan are unlikely to fall like two identical dominoes. Their systems and societies are too different. But instability can spread through more indirect and dangerous channels, specially in two border countries on two extreme sides of Islam, one Sunni and the other Shia.

Disorder and regime collapse in Iran could send refugees, weapons and armed groups toward Pakistani Balochistan. Cross-border Baloch insurgents could exploit weakened control on both sides. Sunni extremist organizations could portray Iranian collapse as a sectarian opportunity, intensifying attacks against Pakistan’s large Shia population. Disrupted fuel and border trade would deepen poverty in western Pakistan, while troops transferred to the Iranian frontier would leave fewer resources for operations against the Pakistani Taliban or India.

The reverse is also possible. Serious disorder in Pakistan could provide trafficking routes, recruits and sanctuary to organizations operating in or against Iran. In either direction, one state’s weakness would amplify the other’s.

This is where Washington’s neglect could become strategically disastrous.

Pakistan cannot be stabilised through unconditional military support, which risks strengthening the very civil–military imbalance feeding its legitimacy crisis. Nor should its support for militant proxies be minimized. But disengagement would reduce intelligence cooperation, economic crisis management, counterterrorism coordination and nuclear-security dialogue precisely when all are becoming more important.

The United States needs a policy combining economic and climate assistance with clear demands for credible elections, civilian institutional development and consistent action against every terrorist organization—not only those attacking the Pakistani state. Above all, it needs to stop supporting Munir, like it once did Zia ul Haq.

Above all, Washington must recognise the nuclear dimension.

Pakistan possesses an operational nuclear arsenal. Its weapons are not believed to be sitting unguarded or available for seizure by militants. The country has developed a specialised command-and-control system, and the army retains custody of its strategic forces.

Consequently, extremists capturing the entire arsenal remains a remote prospect under current conditions. But that is the wrong scenario on which to focus exclusively.

More plausible dangers include insider-assisted theft, sabotage of nuclear infrastructure, attacks on transport movements, the disappearance of material or components and the weakening of authorisation procedures during a military split. An India–Pakistan crisis could compound these risks by encouraging the dispersal or movement of weapons, shortening decision times and exposing assets to attack.

Iran presents a different nuclear-security problem. It is not publicly confirmed to possess nuclear weapons, but it has accumulated substantial quantities of uranium enriched to 60 percent—far above ordinary civilian requirements and a relatively short technical step from weapons grade.

International inspectors have lost continuity of knowledge over portions of this stockpile since the 2025 conflict. Enriched uranium is not an assembled bomb: further enrichment, conversion, weapon engineering and a delivery system would still be necessary. But uncertainty about the material’s location and condition is itself a serious warning.

During a disorderly Iranian transition, Revolutionary Guard units or rival factions could move nuclear material to undisclosed sites. Facility records could disappear. Scientists, equipment or small quantities of material could be sold. A threatened successor government might decide that rapid weaponization offered its best guarantee of survival.

The likeliest extremist danger is not the immediate construction of a sophisticated nuclear weapon. It is theft with insider assistance, trafficking of nuclear or radioactive material, attacks producing contamination, or the construction of a radiological device. These intermediate outcomes would still constitute an international emergency.

The nuclear risk in both countries is nonlinear. Economic and political weakness increase it gradually—until the cohesion of the institutions guarding nuclear assets begins to fail. At that point, the danger rises sharply.

In Pakistan, the critical threshold is the integrity of the army and its nuclear command structure. In Iran, it is physical control and internationally verified accounting of enriched material. Neither threshold appears to have been crossed. But both are under growing pressure.

The lesson for Washington is not to predict a date for collapse. It is to prepare for political ruptures before they occur. Supporting accountable institutions, countering all militant networks, maintaining nuclear-security engagement and restoring credible monitoring of Iran’s nuclear material are not secondary diplomatic objectives.

They are the measures that could prevent two fragile states from becoming one nuclear crisis.