When an Israeli bomb killed Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, last week, it did not just decapitate a fearsome militia that has driven some 60,000 Israelis from their homes with frequent rocket attacks. It also dealt a blow to Iran’s “axis of resistance”, a constellation of proxy forces that Iran has for decades used to attack Israel and Western interests in the Middle East. In addition to its current assault on Hezbollah, Israel’s year-long dismemberment of Hamas in Gaza has vastly diminished Iran’s capacity to cause trouble if threatened. Those defeats, in turn, may be prompting Iran to fall back on its other main form of deterrence: its nuclear-weapons programme.

In recent days, amid Israeli strikes on Hamas, Hezbollah and militants backed by Iran in Yemen, Iranian officials have been insinuating that Israel’s belligerence may induce Iran to develop nuclear weapons. Others have suggested that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, might rescind an earlier fatwa, or religious edict, ruling out the pursuit of nuclear weapons. The regime has been expanding the number and sophistication of centrifuges it uses to purify uranium. It now has a big stockpile of near-weapons-grade material. It is plausible, though not yet likely, that Khamenei might decide that the only way to protect his regime, which is despised by its own citizens and vulnerable to Israeli attack, would be to seek nuclear weapons.