Tucker Carlson’s Iranian Nuclear Fairy Tale

Here is what Tucker Carlson recently said about Iran’s nuclear program:

• “What are the chances Iran would actually launch a nuclear attack? History suggests they’re zero.”

• “Could the Iranians obtaining the bomb wind up being a good thing?”

• “North Korea’s nuclearization has undeniably stabilized the Korean Peninsula.”

• “Would it incentivize Israel to drop its stated goal of controlling Gaza and the West Bank?”

These are not stray remarks or provocations. They form the scaffolding of an argument Carlson is now advancing openly: that a nuclear-armed Iran might be beneficial — stabilizing, sobering, even morally clarifying.

This is not merely wrong; it is the intellectual architecture of appeasement, rebuilt for a new generation and a new dictatorship.

In the 1930s, Western commentators insisted they were not defending Adolf Hitler — only understanding him. Germany, they argued, had been humiliated. It had legitimate grievances. Accommodating these “reasonable concerns” was framed as sophistication, not surrender. War, after all, was the greater evil.

History remembers how that ended.

Carlson’s Iran argument follows these echoes of appeasement. It reframes aggression as insecurity, ideology as negotiable, and the regime’s victims as inconveniences. Carlson’s past flirtation with rehabilitating Hitler while recasting Winston Churchill as the reckless villain of World War II is not incidental. It is explanatory.

Carlson’s case rests on a crude premise: no rational state would ever use a nuclear weapon because doing so would be suicidal. History, he says, proves this. No member of the “Axis of Evil” has fired a nuke. Only the United States has.

This confuses outcomes with intentions, and treats deterrence as a law of nature rather than a fragile political achievement.

Deterrence worked during the Cold War because adversaries shared assumptions: regime survival as the highest value; stable command-and-control; and a strategic culture that treated nuclear weapons as last resorts — not instruments of ideology.

The Islamic Republic of Iran is not a status-quo power seeking security. It is a revolutionary theocracy animated by theology, grievance, and openly messianic ambition. Its leaders glorify martyrdom. Its proxies — Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Houthis — treat death as strategy. Israel’s destruction is framed not as rhetoric, but as destiny.

Deterrence is determined not only by whether a regime can be deterred, but also whether it wants to be.

Carlson points to North Korea as proof that nuclearization produces stability.

This is a category error.

North Korea has not stabilized the region; it has frozen it in permanent coercion. The peninsula remains one miscalculation from catastrophe. Pyongyang engages in nuclear blackmail, missile launches over Japan, cyber warfare, and weapons proliferation abroad. Its population remains imprisoned and expendable.

More importantly, North Korea does not pursue regional hegemony through transnational militias and proxy wars. Iran already does — all without nuclear weapons. A nuclear umbrella would not restrain Iran’s behavior. It would shield it.

Carlson suggests nuclearization might make Iran less oppressive by relieving fear of Western “decapitation.”

This reverses cause and effect.

Iran’s repression is not defensive. It is foundational. Women are beaten and murdered for removing headscarves. Protesters are executed after summary trials. Gay people and minorities are systematically crushed. All because of the regime’s identity and ideology, not fear.

None of this is caused by US sanctions or Israeli action.

Nuclear weapons would not protect Iranians from their rulers. And nuclear weapons would further protect the rulers from their people.

History is unambiguous: authoritarian regimes do not liberalize when their security is guaranteed. They consolidate.

Carlson also suggests a nuclear Iran might “incentivize Israel” to abandon its security posture. This requires an inversion of both morality and causality.

Israel’s security policies are shaped by experience. Every withdrawal — from southern Lebanon to Gaza — was followed by rockets, terror, and massacre. Before 2023, Gaza was not occupied; it was ruled by Hamas, an Iranian proxy whose charter openly calls for genocide.

To frame Israel as the destabilizer in a region saturated with Iranian-backed militias is not realism. It is willful blindness.

A nuclear Iran would not compel restraint. It would compress decision timelines and make miscalculation existential.

Carlson’s argument treats ideology as irrelevant, extremist theology as cosmetic, and history as a grab bag of comforting analogies. It asks Israel and the entire international community to absorb existential risk so others can indulge fatigue and moral vanity.

This is not realism. It is surrender dressed up as sophistication.

And this is how many catastrophes throughout history began: not with madmen shouting, but with influential people calmly explaining why the madmen should be accommodated — why their threats aren’t real, their ideology isn’t serious, and their victims are an acceptable price for someone else’s peace.

History does not whisper when this happens. It screams — and then it counts the dead.

Micha Danzig is an attorney, former IDF soldier, and former NYPD officer. He writes widely on Israel, Zionism, antisemitism, and Jewish history. He serves on the board of Herut North America.