How Iran Is Preparing to Deal with Nuclear Fallout from a US Strike - Newsweek

With speculation of an alleged U.S. plan to strike Iran with nuclear weapons circulating online, Iran has already begun preparing for worst-case scenarios.

The latest buzz around such a U.S. escalation stems from a recent comment from conservative commentator Tucker Carlson. He claimed in an X post Sunday that President Donald Trump had been pressured by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu into considering nuclear means to penetrate Iran's heavily fortified Pickaxe Mountain, beneath which the Islamic Republic was suspected to have resumed its enrichment program.

Trump has previously dismissed the idea of using nuclear weapons against Iran, and reiterated this position on Tuesday, telling Politico, "I don't need it." Israel, which is widely believed to possess its own nuclear arsenal, has not publicly discussed the use of this option against its main foe.

Yet the U.S. administration's unpredictable approach to the conflict, coupled with the president's penchant for apocalyptic threats against the Islamic Republic, continue to stoke uncertainty surrounding the White House's limits as a clear victory remains elusive.

And Iran, one of the few nations to have been attacked with weapons of mass destruction in recent decades, is nonetheless making contingency plans, as evidenced by recent guidelines broadcast to the general public via state media.

Meanwhile, analysts argue Tehran has options of its own in the event of such an otherwise unthinkable scenario, the fallout of which could ultimately extend to Washington as well.

"If the U.S. were to launch a nuclear attack on Iran," Tehran-based security analyst Alireza Taghavinia told Newsweek, "Iran's response would upset the balance of power."

Days before Carlson's prediction appeared on social media, the official Islamic Republic News Agency published an October 28 report featuring representatives of the Isfahan Red Crescent Society and emergency services offering recommendations on how to shelter and avoid radioactive contamination in the event of a nuclear attack.

Pickaxe Mountain is located among the Karkas Mountains in Isfahan, about a mile south of the Natanz nuclear complex.

The IRNA article, packaged as part of the country's annual Passive Defense Week, was accompanied by a roughly eight-minute clip that specifically referred to the estimated impact of a 15-kiloton tactical nuclear device detonated underground.

In Iran, defense against chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear threats is handled by the National Organization of Passive Defense, a part of the Iranian Armed Forces General Staff led by Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Brigadier General Gholemreza Jalali for more than 20 years.

Taghavinia argued that Iran's efforts to maintain readiness against such forms of warfare date back at least to the bloody conflict fought with neighboring Iraq between 1980 and 1988. Then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's forces made use of chemical weapons against Iranian troops and civilians throughout the war.

"First, all Iranian military institutions have units to counter chemical, microbial and radioactivity attacks," Taghavinia said. "And considering that Iran was repeatedly subject to chemical attacks during the eight-year war with Saddam, it has good experience in this field."

A year after the Iran-Iraq War's end, then-President Ali Khamenei rose to the position of supreme leader upon the death of revolutionary founder Ruhollah Khomeini, instituting a fatwa, or Islamic ruling, in the 1990s against the development of weapons of mass destruction.

At the same time, Khamenei oversaw a massive expansion of Iran's nuclear program, including covert activities exposed in the early 2000s that prompted international suspicions toward the intent of the Islamic Republic's activities. And with Khamenei's death on the first day of the war launched by the U.S. and Israel in late February, debate over Tehran's nuclear stance has resurfaced and intensified.

Previously, much of the discussions surrounding the potential amendment to Iran's nuclear stance had taken place in select circles of experts and officials. Recently, however, the topic has been addressed by public figures such as Supreme National Security Council Secretary Mohsen Rezaei and Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Beghaei in the past week alone.

"After the recent war, the majority of the Iranian population has called for the production of nuclear weapons, and the demand in this regard has increased sharply," Taghavinia said. "And if the U.S. or Israel make a mistake and launch a nuclear attack on Iran, Iran will undoubtedly test its own nuclear bomb."

After all, he asserted, "Trump should know that Iran has the full technical and scientific capability to build a nuclear, but Shiite jurisprudence has not yet allowed such a thing." This could change, he warned, should the Islamic Republic's survival come into question in the event of a scenario such as a nuclear attack.

The final decision rests now with the slain Khamenei's son and successor, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, who Taghavinia said, "given that the United States and Israel did not observe any red lines towards Iran, may have a different opinion than his father about nuclear weapons."

In Washington, the sole authority for carrying out a nuclear strike lies with Trump. The U.S. strategic arsenal includes a variety of weapons, including B61 gravity bomb models ranging from relatively tactical-level yields between .3 kilotons to 50 kilotons to the newer B61-13 designed to reach yields of up to 360 kilotons, or roughly 24 times the 15-kiloton atomic bomb dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima during World War II.

To this day, the U.S. remains the only nation to have ever used nuclear weapons in combat.

"Not since 1945 have nuclear weapons been used in war and the full range of consequences can only be estimated," Erin Dumbacher, Stanton nuclear security senior fellow and director of the Defense and National Security program at the Council on Foreign Relations, told Newsweek.

Variables determining the level of devastation inflicted by a nuclear strike against Pickaxe Mountain include bomb delivery method, kilotonnage of the warhead yield, weather and wind as well as precisely whether the bomb detonates on the ground or in the air.

"If it is a surface burst, the radioactive fallout is higher than an air-burst," Dumbacher said. "If it is a few yards underground, the effects would be notably different than if detonation is deeper."

As for the human toll, she cited a 2005 National Academies study that found that casualties from a nuclear strike on a target located in a remote, lightly populated area could range "from as few as hundreds at low weapon yields to hundreds of thousands at high yields and with unfavorable winds."

Even prior to the latest tensions, Dumbacher noted that Iranian law enforcement personnel have undergone training to address nuclear incidents, though these have largely been focused on scenarios involving theft, sabotage or potential contamination from conventional strikes targeting nuclear facilities, such as power plants, enrichment sites and fuel storage locations.

A drill, known as the Gulf Martyrs Radiological Defense Exercise, was held near the Bushehr nuclear power plant in May 2019. Jalali, the National Organization of Passive Defense chief, also spoke out in November 2025, following the previous 12-day round of U.S.-Israeli strikes against Iran in June of that year, regarding measures being adopted to mitigate the potential public health impact of attacks on sites containing nuclear materials.

And just this week, on Tuesday, local authorities in Alborz province held a training session in partnership with the Iranian Red Crescent Society and University of Tehran to better identify potential threats posed by chemical, biological, nuclear and radiological (CBRN) hazards, according to Iran's CBRN news monitor.

But the consequences of a direct U.S. nuclear attack would not be limited to Iran and the region, including U.S. partners located just beyond Iran's borders. A U.S. nuclear strike on Iran, however unlikely, has the potential to incur serious blowback for Washington in the midst of a conflict that has already garnered substantive opposition at home and abroad.

"The risks to the United States and internationally of using a nuclear weapon in Iran are extraordinary," Dumbacher said. "It would violate the global rules the United States helped put in place that kept the world safer for decades."

"There would be physical fallout in Iran and political fallout for the United States if we broke the global taboo against using a nuclear weapon."

Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Tom O'Connor and Paul Donnelley.