Iran's nuclear programme, Netanyahu's age-old obsession
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's nearly 20-year-old threat to strike Iran came true on Friday, as US President Donald Trump warned Tehran of further "brutal" attacks if it refuses to negotiate.
In its largest military action against Iran to date, Israel's strikes hit about 100 targets including nuclear facilities and military command centres, and killed the armed forces' chief, top nuclear scientists and other senior figures.
The strikes came as the United States and Iran were due to meet in Oman Sunday to pick up negotiations towards an agreement on the Islamic republic's nuclear programme.
"We are fairly close to a pretty good agreement," Trump told reporters on Thursday, hours before news broke of the Israeli attacks.
"I don't want them going in, because I think it would blow it", Trump added, speaking of the Israelis.
But on Friday, Trump seemed unbothered by Israel's action, and on his Truth Social platform urged Iran to make a deal.
"There has already been great death and destruction, but there is still time to make this slaughter, with the next already planned attacks being even more brutal, come to an end," he wrote.
- Timing 'makes sense'-
Netanyahu, who has always scorned talks with Iran, paid no heed to Trump's original warning and took advantage of the seismic changes in the Middle East since the start of the war in Gaza in October 2023.
"I don't know what kind of understanding there was between Israel and the US but I doubt Israel would do this if the US told it not to," Menachem Merhavy, an Iran expert at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, told AFP.
Merhavy said that the timing of the attack "makes sense because Israel has been clipping the wings of Iran for the last year and a half", in actions against Tehran-aligned groups and proxies in the region, many of whom Israel has significantly weakened.
But Netanyahu's obsession with Iran goes back much further than the ongoing Gaza war, sparked by an unprecedented attack by Tehran-backed Palestinian group Hamas.
After Iran's former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad caused international uproar in 2005 when he called for Israel to be "wiped off the map", Netanyahu -- then an opposition leader following his first term as premier in 1996-1999 -- called Tehran's nuclear programme "a serious threat for the future".
He said at the time Israel "must do everything" to keep Iran from acquiring a nuclear bomb, even if it meant striking the country's nuclear facilities as Israel had in Iraq in 1981.
Iran has consistently denied seeking atomic weapons, but after his return to power in 2009, Netanyahu repeatedly dismissed Tehran's assurances that its nuclear programme was meant for civilian purpose only, and advocated a "military option".
Netanyahu called the UN Security Council's 2015 approval of an agreement with world powers lifting sanctions in exchange for curbs on Iran's nuclear activities a "historic mistake".
In 2018, he applauded Trump's decision to withdraw the United States from the agreement, effectively scrapping it.
Iran's reaction was to gradually abandon its commitments, enriching uranium to levels close to weapons-grade material and in unprecedented quantities.
This gave Netanyahu a justification to keep up the fight against Iran's nuclear programme.
- 'Reshape the Middle East' -
All the while, Israel's Mossad spy agency worked in secret to undermine Iran's nuclear programme.
Since the start of the Gaza war, Netanyahu has said on several occasions he was seeking to "reshape the Middle East".
In late 2024, Israel dealt a hard blow to Iran's so-called "axis of resistance", by crippling Lebanese armed group Hezbollah.
The fall of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, another Iranian ally, helped cement the regional dominance of Israel -- the Middle East's only, if undeclared, nuclear power.
But it was an Israeli response to 200 Iranian missiles in October 2024 that "changed the balance of power" between the two foes, according to statements at the time by then defence minister Yoav Gallant, after a series of Israeli strikes inside Iran -- a rare direct confrontation.
In February, Netanyahu told US Secretary of State Marco Rubio that with the Trump administration's support "I have no doubt that we can and will finish the job".
Danny Citrinowicz, of the Tel Aviv-based Institute for National Security Studies, told AFP that Trump most likely viewed Israel as "serving his interests".
"Trump really thinks that as long as Iran is weaker, he will be able to achieve a deal on the nuclear file," said Citrinowicz.
Holly Dagres, an Iran expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, warned that "if the Trump administration somehow thinks it's going to be having a sixth round of talks with the Iranians in Oman on Sunday, then it truly doesn't understand the Islamic republic and how it operates."
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