This study employs a qualitative systematic review to examine the existing literature on the securitization of Iran’s nuclear program within the framework of the Copenhagen School. The Twelve-Day War and the Ramadan War, as the apex of decades of threat construction, have underscored the urgency of such an inquiry. Focusing on the speech acts of the United States, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, the study shows that the securitization of Iran’s nuclear program has been a multi-actor, multilayered process, closely contingent on shifting political and discursive contexts.

The findings indicate that U.S. discourse has exhibited the greatest fluctuation between securitization and desecuritization; Israel, by repeatedly invoking its historical trauma, has forged a stable narrative of existential threat; and Saudi Arabia has played a largely reactive and peripheral role. The literature further identifies three fragile pathways to desecuritization, discursive, institutional, and structural, whose lack of alignment was laid bare by the failure of the JCPOA experience. Finally, by highlighting key research gaps, including the absence of a systematic analysis of the simultaneous interaction among the three actors and the puzzle of how discourse of threat escalated into war, this study offers a research agenda for future work.