The recent altercation between Israel and Iran culminating in the U.S bunker-bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities prompts a number of questions. Is Iran’s nuclear program delayed months? years? permanently? Were the sites “completely and fully obliterated” as President Trump claimed? Will Iran be dissuaded from producing nuclear weapons or simply develop them surreptitiously? Will it fold, or will it fortify?

Time will answer these questions but whatever the answers may be, the age of deterring nuclear armament by treaty may be over.

The nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) entered into force in 1970. With more countries party to it than any other arms limitation and disarmament agreement, it was the world’s great hope for limiting and eventually ending nuclear armament. Although four nuclear states—India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea—have never signed, the treaty has achieved some success in limiting the number joining the nuclear club.

However, in addition to preventing non-nuclear states from arming themselves with nukes, it also called upon nuclear states to disarm. Article Vl reads “Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.” The nuclear-armed parties have neither disarmed themselves of the weapons or negotiated a treaty to do so. On the contrary, they have been busy updating their arsenals.

The focus therefore on one non-nuclear party—Iran—seems a tad disproportionate. While it has been enriching uranium, it has also broadly cooperated with International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections and enrichment restrictions, and accepted intrusive monitoring. For all this co-operation it gets bunker-bombed, as well as having its nuclear scientists assassinated.

Furthermore, in 2015 the country signed an agreement with China, France, Russia, the U.K., the U.S., Germany and the European Union to limit its nuclear program in return for sanctions relief and other provisions. The U.S. unilaterally withdrew from the pact in 2018, imposed more sanctions and cut Iran off from the international financial system, thus killing the deal.

So Iran, not surprisingly, now threatens to withdraw from the NPT. The attacks by Israel and the U.S. may turn out to signify a symbolic dismantling of the treaty as a credible instrument of nuclear disarmament.

Other countries will take note that compliance with the treaty doesn’t ensure security. Having nuclear capability does, as North Korea has demonstrated. Muammar al-Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein both intended to arm their countries with nukes but were talked out of it and we know what happened to them. To be non-nuclear is to be vulnerable. The bomb, once considered a threat, has become the only viable shield.

The United States under President Trump has made it clear that in its view, treaties are just paper. They can be torn up arbitrarily. Might is now right. The regime is leading the world back to a world governed by power rather than law. And nothing speaks power more than nuclear weapons.