By Peter Kuznick and Ivana Nikolić Hughes, World BEYOND War, November 5, 2026

The 1984 British movie Threads opens with ordinary scenes in Sheffield, England, where a young couple learns they are expecting a baby. The story of their personal life is intertwined with the news of a growing conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union, centered on Iran. We next learn that a nuclear weapon is used in an attack, followed by another. Before long, Sheffield itself is the site of hydrogen bomb detonations, with our protagonists either perishing in the explosions or subsisting under devastating conditions of starvation, civil unrest, radiation-induced and infectious diseases, and freezing temperatures over the coming days, weeks, months, and years. The film ends with the 13-year-old daughter of the young couple from the start of the film giving birth to a deformed clump of flesh months after being raped in a lawless and collapsed society.

Forty-two years after this brilliant movie first gave people in the UK and beyond just a glimpse of the unfathomable consequences of nuclear war, watching the opening scenes is even more grim than it has been in the intervening decades, given just how eerily similar they seem to be to our current moment. With the US and Israel continuing to wage war on Iran, and their respective leaders having been repudiated in public polls and elections, the prospect of nuclear weapon use and a wider nuclear war is seemingly more real than ever before. But unlike in the 1980s, when the general public was well aware of what was at stake, having been frightened by Ronald Reagan’s saber-rattling and educated about the dangers of nuclear weapons throughout the Cold War, including through cultural interventions like popular films, today, when President Trump repeatedly threatens to annihilate Iran, the media and the general public seem to shrug and move on to other news of the day, checking perhaps on what Kim Kardashian had for breakfast.

The seriousness of Trump’s threats cannot be overstated. The two of us have been warning in Al Jazeera and other outlets that, sick and desperate as such threats might be, it behooves the world to take them seriously and make sure a nuclear attack on Iran, or anywhere else for that matter, never happens. Recently, we have been joined by popular media figure Tucker Carlson and other commentators. The internet is abuzz with such warnings.

The logic is simple. Trump and Netanyahu are both desperate to salvage what little credibility they may have with their publics by demonstrating that this war with Iran was not a total failure. If the purpose of the war had been to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon or weapons, then having Iran acquire a nuclear weapon or weapons would be the ultimate repudiation of their efforts and proof of their folly.

Both US and Israeli intelligence agencies report that Iran has shifted the locus of its nuclear enrichment from Fordow and Natanz to the Kuh-e Kolang underground complex widely known as Pickaxe Mountain. The complex is buried under 300 feet of granite, which makes it impenetrable for U.S. or Israeli conventional weapons, including the Mother of All Bombs (MOAB), which Trump has threatened to use. Tucker Carlson shared that he had an “informed source” who told him, “Bibi calls Trump about it [a nuclear strike] every day.” Fortunately, Trump has not yet given the go-ahead.

The background to all this is that Iran has made clear that it will neither export its enriched uranium or cease its enrichment activities, both of which it had done before Trump stupidly blew up Obama’s Iran nuclear deal or JCPOA. With the deal in place, Iran had also mothballed most of its centrifuges and, according to the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors, was only enriching to 3.67 percent—well below weapons grade. Ayatollah Khamenei had issued a fatwa against building an Iranian nuclear weapon, which remained in effect until he and other Iranian leaders were killed in a joint U.S./Israeli strike back in February. Now numerous Iranian leaders have publicly insisted that Iran needs a nuclear weapon as a deterrent against another U.S. and/or Israeli attack. There is evidence that some leaders of the IRGC have also adopted this view despite the fact that official Iranian government policy continues to reject such actions.

And then, there is Israel. Despite an official policy of “nuclear ambiguity” and refusal to acknowledge possessing a nuclear arsenal of between 90 and 250 nuclear weapons, Israel has long made known that there will be no constraints upon its actions if it faces what it considers an existential threat. Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders have stated unambiguously that Iran’s possession of a nuclear weapon would constitute such a threat. In an April exchange on Israeli television, Israeli journalist Shimon Rivkin declared, “Why aren’t we using what’s called a neutron bomb?” The host then turned to National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir who smiled and said, “Let him speak.” While Netanyahu has denied contemplating such an action, in late October he posted an AI-generated image of a nuclear weapon exploding over Tel Aviv, which he called a “second Holocaust.” He quoted right-wing commentator Yuval Blumberg, who wrote: “The state of Israel is in real and tangible existential danger. If the Iranians acquire nuclear weapons, nothing will ever be the same again.” Other Israelis have also bandied this idea about.

Trump has made clear that he is contemplating striking Iran after today’s midterms. Before having a stroke, Democratic Senator Chris Murphy from Connecticut said he had been briefed on Pentagon attack plans and they are “insane.” Carlson also indicated that JD Vance was urging restraint because a negotiated deal is still possible, but it was Vance himself who earlier claimed that the U.S. possesses “tools in our toolkit that we so far haven’t decided to use.” We’ve also heard from others with strong White House connections that such steps are being contemplated. In recent months, Elbridge Colby, Pentagon policy chief, has been calling for the U.S. to amend its nuclear policies to facilitate the use of tactical nuclear weapons should fighting break out in the Pacific.

No one can be certain how the use of a nuclear weapon or weapons against Iran would play out. A single strike on Pickaxe Mountain could in itself bring a huge humanitarian catastrophe to the city of Natanz and the broader region. Even if Teheran, some 220 km away, would not find itself in the path of the fallout, a large portion of Iran and the broader region could end up covered in radioactive particles that would remain in the environment for days, weeks, months, years, and even thousands of years. The details would depend on how powerful the weapon that is used is and wind and weather patterns immediately following the explosion.

But beyond the specifics of what one nuclear weapon could do to Iran and the region, it is important to remember that this is not 1945; the explosion of a single nuclear weapon is widely expected to lead to a wider nuclear war. It may not be a matter of if, but when. Regardless of whether there is initial restraint, as world leaders are sobered up by the breaking of the nuclear taboo, or not, we can expect bombs to start flying everywhere soon enough. There are 12,200 of them, after all, in possession of nine nuclear-armed states. Ask yourself what Russia and China will think if the US and Israel use a nuclear weapon in Iran. Will they think that they are next?

And just like in Threads, human civilization will collapse, not just in the Sheffields of the world, but everywhere. As the American scientist Carl Sagan once said, “Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.”

We need an outright rejection of nuclear weapons by all parties, including the US and Iranian regimes; a meeting of Trump, Putin, and Xi, to build an off-ramp from the path of war and nuclear war; and engagement of figures like Pope Leo XIV in matters of peace and existential risks to humanity, as we called for in our recent appeal to the good pope. We can save ourselves from ourselves.

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