Zeteo News founder Mehdi Hasan delivered a cutting verdict on the strategic consequences of the US-Israeli military campaign against Iran on Piers Morgan Uncensored, arguing that by attacking Iran two years consecutively while simultaneously dismantling the diplomatic framework that had contained its nuclear programme, Israel and the United States had achieved the precise opposite of their stated objective.
The remark captured the essence of Hasan’s sustained argument throughout the debate: that the military campaign, far from reducing the nuclear threat posed by Iran, had created the conditions most likely to drive Tehran towards weapons acquisition. It came in the context of a broader exchange over intent, deterrence, and the strategic logic of preemptive military action.
“You’ve now incentivised Iran to get nukes by attacking them two years running — congratulations,” Hasan stated, directing the comment at reservist IDF spokesman Doron Spielman in what was among the sharpest exchanges of a frequently combative debate.
Hasan argued that the Iranian government’s strategic calculus had been fundamentally and perhaps irreversibly altered by the experience of the past two years. He invited Spielman — and viewers — to adopt the perspective of Iranian decision-makers: a government that had been attacked by Israel twice in succession, that had seen its senior diplomats and negotiators killed during active peace talks, and that had watched the international community offer what Hasan characterised as largely nominal resistance to those attacks. He asked what rational conclusion such a government could reach other than that nuclear deterrence was the only reliable guarantee against further strikes.
He drew an explicit parallel with North Korea, arguing that Pyongyang’s experience demonstrated that nuclear weapons were the one capability that reliably deterred external military intervention — a lesson Iran was now learning in real time. He also noted that Israeli officials, including finance minister Smotrich, had publicly and apparently without embarrassment discussed the possibility of nuclear strikes on Iran, further reinforcing in Tehran the logic of acquiring a deterrent.
Hasan placed direct historical responsibility on the Israeli government and the Trump administration for having destroyed the JCPOA — the diplomatic framework that had, according to international monitors and the US intelligence community, successfully constrained Iran’s enrichment programme. Under that agreement, Iran enriched to 3.67 percent. After its collapse, Iran moved first to 20 percent and then to 60 percent, with Spielman himself citing figures approaching 90 percent.