A senior adviser to US President Donald Trump has warned that escalating conflict between Israel and Iran could lead to the “truly catastrophic” scenario of nuclear weapons use, drawing renewed attention to how nuclear threats have increasingly surfaced in geopolitical crises since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

David Sacks, Trump’s adviser on artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency policy, raised the possibility during an appearance on the All-In podcast, where he cautioned that further escalation in the Middle East could spiral beyond conventional warfare.

“This is a good time to declare victory and get out, and that is clearly what the markets would like to see,” Sacks said, warning that continued escalation could bring unpredictable consequences.

“There is a faction of people,” he added, largely within the Republican Party, “who want the war to escalate. I just want to lay out, I think, some of the risks of what an escalatory approach could entail.”

Among those risks, Sacks said, was the possibility of Israel considering its most extreme military option if it faced severe damage during a prolonged conflict.

“Israel could get seriously destroyed,” he said. “And then you have to worry about Israel escalating the war by contemplating using a nuclear weapon.”

He warned that such a step would be “truly catastrophic”, adding that there are “a lot of really frightening scenarios about where escalation could lead”. 

Nuclear pressure campaign

The comments highlight how nuclear weapons have increasingly featured in the rhetoric surrounding major conflicts in recent years, most prominently during Russia’s war against Ukraine.

When Russian President Vladimir Putin launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, his televised address contained thinly veiled nuclear threats aimed at Western governments that might intervene.

“Russia will respond immediately,” Putin said at the time, warning that “the consequences will be such as you have never seen in your entire history.” Days later he ordered Russia’s nuclear forces into a “special mode of combat duty”. 

A November 2025 commentary published by the Atlantic Council, titled ‘Vladimir Putin’s endless nuclear threats are a sign of Russian weakness’ argues the Kremlin uses nuclear signalling as a strategic tool. “Russian nuclear sabre-rattling has remained a prominent feature of the war,” said the report, authored by Stephen Blank, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Blank noted that the threats have “made plenty of headlines but have only partially succeeded in deterring Western countries” from helping Ukraine. 

A report published by the UK parliament in December 2024 concluded that Moscow used nuclear threats as part of a broader pressure campaign against Western support for Kyiv.

“President Putin has increasingly used the threat of the Russian nuclear arsenal to pressurise the West over its military and diplomatic support for Ukraine,” the report said.

As part of that campaign, Russia has placed nuclear forces on heightened alert, tested new capabilities and suspended participation in arms-control agreements with the United States.

In March 2023, Moscow announced it would deploy tactical nuclear weapons to neighbouring Belarus — the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union that Russian nuclear weapons had been stationed outside its territory. The decision did not directly violate the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty but some experts argued that, like Nato’s nuclear-sharing arrangements, it contravened the spirit of the accord.

Putin also approved an update to Russia’s nuclear doctrine in November 2024 that lowered the threshold for nuclear weapons use. Under the revised doctrine, nuclear weapons could be deployed in response to conventional attacks that create a “critical threat” to the sovereignty or territorial integrity of Russia or its ally Belarus.

Signalling strength … or weakness

Western governments have condemned the Kremlin’s rhetoric. The US and Nato have repeatedly called Russia’s nuclear messaging “irresponsible”, while China has called for restraint and warned that the use or threat of nuclear weapons should be opposed.

However, Blank argued that Moscow’s “increasingly frequent use of nuclear blackmail may actually be a sign of weakness rather than strength.”

“Like a geopolitical gangster, Putin has come to rely on Mafia-style intimidation tactics as he seeks to reassert Russia’s great power status,” the report said.

The timing of Russia’s nuclear signalling often coincided with setbacks or pressure elsewhere, including sanctions targeting the country’s energy sector.

A September 2022 Chatham House commentary looks at comments made by Putin in the months after the full scale invasion of Ukraine, apparently aimed at deterring the West from interference. 

However, the commentary says, “Mixed messaging with the potential for misinterpretation could lead to decisions being made under false assumptions”. It notes a “well-documented history of close calls with nuclear weapons”. 

The debate reflects the enduring logic of nuclear deterrence developed during the Cold War, based on the principle of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). 

“The idea behind MAD is that the horror and destruction from nuclear weapons is enough to deter aggressive action and war,” the commentary says. “But the application of deterrence theory to post-cold war realities is far more complicated in the era of cyberattacks and AI, which could interfere with the command and control of nuclear weapons.”

Under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, five countries are recognised as nuclear-armed states: China, France, Russia, the UK and the US. Outside the treaty framework, India, Pakistan and North Korea openly possess nuclear weapons. Israel has never formally declared a nuclear arsenal but is widely believed by experts to possess one.

The US and Russia have historically maintained arms-control mechanisms to limit their strategic weapons, including the New START Treaty, which allowed both countries to exchange information on long-range nuclear missiles. The treaty expired in February 2026. At the time, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called the expiration a “grave moment” for international peace and security and urged Russia and the US to negotiate a new nuclear arms control framework.

The erosion of such agreements, combined with increasingly heated rhetoric around global conflicts, has heightened concerns that nuclear threats could again move from political messaging into operational planning.