The 2026 U.S.-Iran War and the Global Energy Crisis

I will first review the attached materials and supplement them with internet research for the latest information. Sufficient materials have been secured. I will now write Chapter 31.

31.1 Nuclear Fission Technology: Weapon and Power

On February 6, 2026, a report released quietly from the headquarters of the International Energy Agency (IEA) in Paris signaled a shift in the global energy landscape. The title was "Electricity 2026." The numbers it contained were sobering. Global electricity demand grew 3.3 percent in 2025 and 3.7 percent in 2026. This was more than double the average of the past ten years. Three forces were driving demand upward: artificial intelligence data centers, electric vehicles, and air conditioning. Yet among the energy sources meeting this demand, the most dramatic comeback came from neither solar nor wind.

At the press conference for the report, IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol officially confirmed: "The strong comeback of nuclear power that we forecasted years ago is already underway, and nuclear electricity generation in 2025 will set a record high." New nuclear capacity under construction globally exceeded 70 gigawatts, the highest level in the past thirty years.

Exactly twenty-two days later, on February 28, 2026, seven B-2 Spirit stealth bombers took off from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri. Eighteen hours of unrefueled flight, three air refuelings. The destinations were Natanz and Fordow in Iran. The payload was fourteen GBU-57A/B munitions, the world's heaviest conventional weapon: 30,000-pound Massive Ordnance Penetrators (MOPs).

On the same day, nuclear fission technology revealed two distinctly different faces to the world.

One was the face that made electricity. Microsoft extended a twenty-year power purchase agreement for the restart of Three Mile Island nuclear power plant, and Google and Amazon signed agreements with small modular reactor (SMR) developers, competing to power their AI infrastructure with nuclear energy. U.S. data centers' electricity consumption had already reached 41 gigawatts, 2.5 times the level five years earlier, and was projected to account for nine to seventeen percent of total U.S. electricity consumption by 2030. The equation was simple: without electricity, AI stops; without AI, the economy falters. This logic was driving global tech companies toward nuclear power.

The other was the face that made bombs.

These two faces are not the two sides of a coin. Physically, they are one.

When a single uranium-235 nucleus absorbs a neutron and splits into two fragments, the energy released is millions of times greater than the energy from burning coal of equal mass. If this process is carried out slowly and in a controlled manner, it becomes a nuclear reactor. If this process occurs instantaneously and is compressed to exceed critical mass, it becomes a nuclear bomb. The mechanism is identical. Only the speed and density differ.

The problem lies in the fuel. To operate a reactor, uranium-235 concentration must be raised from its natural state of 0.7 percent to three to five percent. Continue running the centrifuges that perform this enrichment and keep raising the concentration beyond ninety percent, and it becomes weapons-grade highly enriched uranium (HEU), the material for the Hiroshima bomb. The centrifuge machine does not need to be replaced. You only need to run it longer.

This is the essence of the nuclear dilemma called "dual-use." A civilian nuclear power program is the first step toward a potential nuclear weapons factory.

In 1953, U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower announced "Atoms for Peace" at the United Nations General Assembly. It was a declaration not to monopolize nuclear technology but to spread it for civilian electricity production. As a result, Iran, then a close U.S. ally, was among the countries that began nuclear power programs with American technological transfer and support. This occurred during the reign of the Pahlavi monarchy.

In 1979, the Islamic Revolution inherited that program.

For the next forty years, Iran walked the boundary between these two paths. While claiming peaceful intent for civilian electricity production, it operated tens of thousands of centrifuges deep underground at Natanz. In May 2025, the IAEA stated that Iran was enriching uranium to 60 percent concentration and specified that "among non-nuclear-armed nations, Iran is the only country producing and accumulating sixty percent enriched uranium." Weapons-grade is 90 percent. Iran stood at the threshold.

In 2015, the Obama administration closed this gap through diplomacy. Through the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran, Iran exported ninety-seven percent of its enriched uranium stockpile abroad, limited enrichment concentration to 3.67 percent, and accepted the highest level of IAEA inspections in history. It was a negotiation that redirected nuclear technology from the path of weapons to the path of power.

In 2018, Trump unilaterally withdrew from that agreement.

Afterward, Iran progressively raised its enrichment limits. Twenty percent, sixty percent. It turned off inspection cameras. The phrase "nuclear threshold state" became official in the international nonproliferation community. Iran's nuclear breakout time, the time it could produce nuclear weapons, approached essentially zero.

And on February 28, 2026, B-2 bombers flew toward Natanz.

The seventy years since 1945 in which humanity has sought to control nuclear fission technology are most clearly compressed in the history of Iran. When the promise of atoms for peace collapses with the abandonment of the agreement, the technology slides from one face to the other. The technology that made electricity invites the bomb, and bombing to prevent the bomb reignites the spark of nuclear proliferation.

The IEA report warned: "More than ninety-nine percent of global uranium enrichment capacity is concentrated in four supplier countries, with Russia as the single largest supplier at forty percent market share." The world was racing on the same fuel: the speed at which it rushed toward nuclear power to run AI, and the speed at which the danger of nuclear proliferation spread.

31.2 The Repercussions of Nuclear Plant Attacks in Wartime

In the early morning hours of March 21, 2026, Israeli and U.S. airstrikes struck Iran's Natanz nuclear facility again. This was the second strike since "Operation Midnight Hammer" in June 2025.

That evening, Iranian ballistic missiles pierced the sky over southern Israel.

The missiles struck a residential area in the city of Dimona. Three-story buildings collapsed and fires spread. The Israeli Ministry of Health reported that at least 180 people were wounded in Dimona and nearby Arad.

Dimona is the city where Israel's "Simon Peres Negev Nuclear Research Center" is located. It is recognized in the international community as the heart of Israel's nuclear weapons program, which Israel does not officially acknowledge. Iranian state television explicitly called this attack "retaliation for strikes on Iran's Natanz nuclear facility." It was the first time an Iranian missile had breached the defensive perimeter around an Israeli nuclear facility.

The IAEA reported that the nuclear research center itself sustained no damage and no abnormal radiation levels were detected. However, the missiles fell fourteen kilometers from the research center. Israel's early warning system and missile defense network had revealed a gap in this area. Prime Minister Netanyahu had declared just one day earlier that Iran's missile capabilities had been "destroyed."

To stop here would be accurate reporting, but the logic of war did not stop there.

Natanz is bombed. Dimona is struck with missiles. The direction this exchange points is clear: nuclear facilities have become targets of war.

International law explicitly prohibits this situation. Melissa Park of ICAN, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, stated: "Attacks on nuclear facilities are explicitly prohibited under international law and carry the risk of causing harm to human health and the environment through radioactive contamination." But when law does not operate on the battlefield, deterrence works through other means. Psychological terror.

A nuclear power plant is a machine that makes electricity, but it is also a structure containing vast quantities of radioactive material. A single reactor core operating normally contains radioactive material equivalent to thousands of Hiroshima bombs. If external power is cut, the cooling system stops. If the cooling system stops, Chernobyl and Fukushima repeat. Even without direct hits, destroying a single transmission line or a single cooling water source can trigger core meltdown.

In 2022, Russia was the first to implement this principle strategically. It seized the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station, Europe's largest nuclear plant, deployed military equipment around it, and made it a backdrop for artillery combat. It did not need to threaten direct destruction of the plant. The mere fact that war was happening around a nuclear facility paralyzed all of Europe with radiation fear. Ukraine's counterattacks hesitated before that fear.

Iran learned that lesson. And it spoke the same language to Israel.

Days before the strikes occurred, Iranian military authorities had already warned: "If Israel and the United States attempt regime change in Iran, we will target the Dimona nuclear facility." This was both a military declaration and a psychological message. "If you destroy our nuclear facilities, your nuclear facilities are not safe either."

Robert Pape, a political science professor at the University of Chicago, called this dynamic the "Escalation Trap." In an interview with TIME, Pape explained: "The escalation trap occurs when extreme confidence in tactical success fails to take seriously the fact that the enemy will respond more nationalistically and more aggressively. Precision smart bombs are nearly one hundred percent successful tactically. But the objective is not to knock down buildings. It is to change the enemy government's policy. And even when the attacker achieves one hundred percent tactical success, politics almost always moves in a direction opposite to what the attacker wants."

Bombing Natanz sets back Iran's nuclear program. But that bombing simultaneously strengthens nationalism within Iran and gives hardliners the logic that "nuclear deterrence alone is a means of survival." Tactical success produces strategic failure.

And an even more serious problem compounds this.

In an essay for Substack on "Escalation Trap," Pape wrote: "Bombing destroys facilities. But it does not guarantee the destruction of material that has already been moved. You cannot erase expertise. Precision can destroy a facility. Uncertainty it cannot. And uncertainty surrounding fissile material does not sit idle."

Shortly after Operation Midnight Hammer in June 2025, U.S. officials themselves admitted they did not know where Iran's enriched uranium stockpiles were located. They acknowledged that Iran had likely already moved nuclear material elsewhere before the strike on Fordow.

Nuclear material whose location was known before the war started becomes unknown after war begins. The bombing destroyed nuclear facilities. But it simultaneously blocked IAEA inspectors from accessing those facilities for surveillance.

IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi stated that the pilot fuel enrichment plant at the Natanz above-ground facility was destroyed and that electrical infrastructure damage likely compromised the underground centrifuges through power loss. Inside the facility, alpha particles from uranium hexafluoride and fluoride compounds were locally dispersed. The IAEA explained that radiation consists mainly of alpha particles, which pose serious risks if inhaled or ingested.

Radiation did not leak outside the facility. But that is this time's story. International nuclear security community analysts focused their questions on the next time.

When war resumed in March 2026, Iran officially suspended cooperation with the IAEA through parliament. David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) reported that after five months of on-site analysis, major nuclear facilities in Natanz, Fordow, and Isfahan were largely destroyed, but the status and location of approximately 440 kilograms of 60 percent enriched uranium stockpile remained unconfirmed. Iran refused IAEA verification of this material.

440 kilograms of 60 percent enriched uranium would take only a few weeks to enrich further to 90 percent weapons-grade. Grossi said this directly in September 2025. If Iran decided to enrich its existing uranium stockpile to 90 percent, it would take only several weeks to complete.

War destroyed Iran's nuclear facilities. But it did not eliminate nuclear capability itself. Instead, it created a state where no one knew where that capability was hidden.

Iran's missile that fell near Dimona on March 21 was another expression of that uncertainty. A threat that could not be calculated in numbers. A message: we can fly toward your core. When that combines with the invisible fear of radiation, the psychological cost of war overwhelms military damage.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova stated that Iran's strike near Dimona raised "a substantial risk of catastrophic disaster across the entire Middle East." Though the statement came in a context of Russia supporting Iran, the concern itself transcends geography. Missiles launched near nuclear facilities carry inherent risks that nullify all distinctions between defender and attacker, supporter and opponent, inside and outside the front lines.

The second face of nuclear power looked like this. Not a bomb falling onto a massive concrete containment building. It is the outline of the catastrophe the world barely avoided, the moment a ballistic missile that pierced the defense line fell 14 kilometers in front of the nuclear facility.

31.3 Nuclear Proliferation and Uranium Acquisition

In March 2026, an unprecedented operational plan was being reviewed within the U.S. Department of Defense. It was not about sending bombers again. It was a plan to deploy ground forces to Iran.

The objective was the physical seizure of Iran's enriched uranium.

Air strikes alone could not vaporize this nuclear material. Before striking Fordow, Iran may have already moved some of the nuclear material, and the location and status of the 60 percent enriched uranium produced at Natanz remained uncertain after the attack. Among the 15 items for a ceasefire agreement with Iran that the Trump administration demanded, the core was immediate transfer of this material. Iran refused.

That refusal was expected.

Professor Farhi explained this structure clearly. Bombing injects nationalism into Iranian society and the regime. That nationalism narrows political space. Hawks gain authority. Emergency powers expand. Moderates face accusations of treason. Bombing does not strip the regime of capacity; instead, it reorders the balance of domestic politics toward the state.

The paradox that the bombing initiated by America not only failed to break Iran's nuclear ambitions but hardened its resolve. Faced with that paradox, Washington found itself holding other options besides diplomacy.

The ground force deployment plan became public through reporting by the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal. The scale was 2,000 to 3,000 personnel. Paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division, Navy SEALs, Delta Force. The mission was to directly excavate underground tunnels where nuclear material was stored and retrieve uranium containers.

However, if the United States seized Iran's enriched uranium stockpile, it could negatively affect future efforts to pinpoint the material's location, that is, IAEA verification in the long term. The whereabouts of the seized nuclear material would again become opaque. Ground combat would not resolve the uncertainty created by bombing; instead, it would amplify it in another way.

The operational problems military experts raise are more direct. Hundreds of kilograms of uranium are contained in special steel radiation-shielded containers weighing several tons. Excavating collapsed concrete and bedrock requires heavy equipment, and during heavy equipment work, special forces must fend off counterattacks from Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Securing an escape route requires a temporary runway for transport aircraft to make a forced landing. If Iran had pre-installed booby traps or mixed hundreds of fake containers indistinguishable from real ones, operation time would extend catastrophically. This is not a mission that allows for quick entry and exit.

However, there is a more fundamental problem than all these risks.

There is something that cannot be eliminated by physical bombing or ground operations. The nuclear technology and scientific knowledge Iran has accumulated so far.

Farhi wrote: "Air power destroys facilities. It does not guarantee the destruction of material already moved. Scientific expertise cannot be erased either. Iran, without a complex facility the size of Fordow, with 408 kilograms of 60 percent enriched uranium could proceed with weapons-grade enrichment using only much smaller undeclared facilities. If inspectors disappear and the material's whereabouts become opaque, there is no way to reliably ensure that additional enrichment is not occurring."

This problem is not just Iran's story.

Kelsey Davenport, director of nonproliferation policy at the Arms Control Association, assessed the impact of the Iran war on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in his 2026 analysis this way. Non-nuclear-armed states will begin questioning how the NPT protects their right to peaceful nuclear use, and this discontent could lead to broader treaty withdrawal pressure.

The threat of nuclear proliferation spread beyond Iran.

Saudi Arabia, South Korea, and other countries are intensifying discussions on the security value of nuclear deterrence, and technological barriers to nuclear proliferation are also lowering. The United States tried to stop Iran's nuclear program through bombing, but that bombing conveys a paradoxical message to neighboring countries: possession of nuclear weapons is necessary to avoid bombing.

This paradox interlocks with movements on the broader geopolitical chessboard.

IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol officially warned that Russia alone controls 40 percent of global uranium enrichment capacity. Russia's state-owned nuclear company Rosatom avoided sanctions in the nuclear fuel supply chain even while receiving Western oil and gas sanctions after the invasion of Ukraine. This was because Western nuclear power plants, including those in the United States, depend on Russian low-enriched uranium. The most covert form of energy weaponization was already embedded in the nuclear fuel supply chain.

The same shadow war unfolds in Africa's uranium production zones. Nuclear power supplies 70 percent of France's electricity grid, and in Niger, which had substantially supplied nuclear fuel to those plants, a coup occurred in 2023. The coup regime demanded the withdrawal of French forces and grew close to Russian military organizations. It was an attempt to sever the West's traditional uranium supply chain.

The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) concluded in its analysis on how the Iran war affects the nuclear nonproliferation regime: This conflict will strengthen Iran's position on nuclear issues and weaken its willingness to negotiate, and more broadly, it will undermine the credibility of the nonproliferation regime itself.

War began to halt Iran's nuclear program. But the list of consequences created by war reads as follows. 440 kilograms of 60 percent enriched uranium with uncertain whereabouts. Blocked IAEA inspection access. Strengthened resolve for nuclear development within Iran. Skepticism among neighboring countries regarding the NPT regime. And regional powers beginning to rethink the necessity of nuclear deterrence.

What the 2015 agreement achieved through diplomacy, the 2026 war attempted to undo through military force. The settlement of that attempt remains incomplete. But by the numbers so far, bombing destroyed facilities and the nonproliferation regime collapsed even more.

The two faces of nuclear fission technology split this way. One burns quietly in reactors meeting power demands of the AI age. The other sleeps, waiting for centrifuges to spin again in some dark tunnel even after the war ends. Which flame burns more fiercely will be determined by the price of the choice to seek answers through bombing, not diplomacy.

Attorney Kim Kyung-jin, AI Expert

Specializing in AI Law and Policy · Former Member of National Assembly · Author of Multiple Books

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