2 days ago
Why did Israel attack Iran in the middle of US-Iran nuclear talks?
Once again, the world has woken up to watch the minute hand inch closer to midnight. Early on Friday, more than 200 Israeli fighter jets hurtled across the skies over Iran, hitting targets linked to the nation's burgeoning nuclear programme and killing at least three senior members of the Islamic Republic's military leadership – as well as several nuclear scientists.
The attacks, which Israel has said will not stop, reportedly also hit a number of residential apartment blocks in the capital Tehran, killing an unknown number of women and children, state media said. Emergency services have said that 95 people wounded in the strikes have so far been brought to medical centres across the country.
The strikes came the morning after news broke that the sixth round of the US-Iran nuclear talks would take place in Oman Sunday, with US President Donald Trump's special envoy Steve Witkoff set to hold another round of indirect negotiations with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.
For now, the two sides seem far apart – a US proposal shared with Tehran in May reportedly called for a complete end to the enrichment of nuclear fuel on Iranian soil, even for a civilian energy programme.
Tehran has reportedly been drafting its own counter-proposal, which would preserve the Islamic Republic's right to domestically enrich uranium for civilian purposes while also securing a way out from under the crippling economic sanctions levelled by Washington.
As rumours spread Thursday of an impending Israeli attack on Iran, Trump told reporters he was counselling restraint.
"We are fairly close to a pretty good agreement," he said. "I don't want [Israel] going in, because I think it would blow it." Hours later, Israel's fighter jets were in the air.
'Sabotage'
Diba Mirzaei, a doctoral researcher at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA), said that it was no coincidence the attacks had been launched on the eve of the talks.
'I don't think that Israel only wanted to derail the negotiations,' she said. 'I actually think they wanted to sabotage them, to force Iran to maybe abandon them altogether."
Seyed Ali Alavi, a lecturer in Middle Eastern studies at SOAS University of London, said that the strikes would doubtless cast a shadow over Sunday's talks – if they still went ahead.
"The recent direct attacks on Iran are unprecedented since the Iran-Iraq War. It is very likely to impact the ongoing negotiations between Washington and Tehran, particularly the Sunday meeting," he said.
"However, we have not yet received news or announcements from Tehran regarding the Sunday meeting. This does not imply that the negotiations have been fully terminated – it is likely that they could continue, but under a more intense atmosphere."
Mirzaei pointed to reports in Iran's own state media that the initial attacks had badly wounded Ali Shamkhani, one of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's senior advisors and a crucial figure in the ongoing talks.
'During the attacks, one of the main negotiators on the Iranian side, Ali Shamkhani, has been reported either killed or severely injured – so an important person on the Iranian side is now missing or not capable of being part of those negotiations.'
As the US woke up to the news of the attacks, Trump struck a decidedly different tone. As US officials denied any involvement in the attack, only saying that Israel had informed the US of its strikes ahead of time, the president took to his personal social media platform Truth Social, where he appeared to portray the attacks as a triumph of hardline negotiating tactics.
'I gave Iran chance after chance to make a deal,' he wrote. 'I told them, in the strongest of words, to 'just do it,' but no matter how hard they tried, no matter how close they got, they just couldn't get it done.'
'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. Iran must make a deal, before there is nothing left.'
A few hours later, the president posted again, reminding the world of a 60-day deadline he had reportedly given the Islamic Republic at the beginning of the talks.
'Two months ago, I gave Iran a 60-day ultimatum to 'make a deal',' he wrote. 'They should have done it! Today is day 61. "Now they have, perhaps, a second chance!"
Months in the making
Mirzaei said that the US's hardline position during the talks cast some doubt on how committed Trump – who pulled the US out of the six-nation nuclear treaty with Iran during his first term in office – was to sealing a deal on Tehran's nuclear programme.
'I'm not really sure how sincere the Trump administration is in those nuclear talks,' she said. 'The US basically wants Iran to not even have the civil use of nuclear energy, which would be very far-reaching. No country has to do that – when you look at the non-proliferation treaty, every country has the right to use nuclear energy for civil purposes. So of course Iran would not agree to such a deal.'
Iran's own willingness to restrict its nuclear programme to civilian use was called into question earlier this week when the board of governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) – the UN's nuclear watchdog – determined that Tehran was not complying with its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
It was the first such censure issued against Iran in almost 20 years, prompting a furious Tehran to announce that it would be setting up a new enrichment site in a 'secure' location.
'The censure by the IAEA is very severe,' Mirzaei said, adding that the litany of non-proliferation breaches listed in the report suggested that Tehran "isn't interested in de-escalating either".
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Israel, the only nation in the Middle East to possess nuclear weapons, has consistently painted a nuclear Tehran as an existential threat – a refrain once again picked up in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's first speech following the attacks.
Mirzaei, who stressed that Israel had fought hard against the first multilateral agreement on Iran's nuclear programme more than 10 years ago, said that the magnitude of Friday's attack spoke to a plan potentially months in the making.
'[As a trigger,] the nuclear talks between Iran and the US were more important for Israel than the IAEA censure,' she said. 'Because if you look at an attack of that scale, this is not something that has been planned for a couple of days, but has probably been planned for weeks, for months even … I think the plans were there, and now, because of the meeting that was supposed to take place on Sunday between Iran and the US, they basically saw that the timing was fit to do that.'
Now, with Tehran reeling from the unprecedented assault, the question of just how Iran will respond to the strikes in the days to come has taken on an urgent edge.
'I don't think that Iran is interested in a full-scale war, but I don't think that it can actually prevent a full breaking out if those attacks continue,' Mirzaei said. 'But instead of just looking at the military options that Iran has, you can also look at the political options. And I do believe that Iran could in the near future actually withdraw from the Non-Proliferation Treaty, for example – it could abandon its cooperation with the IAEA, it could actually just cancel all of the negotiations with the US. And all those options on the political front are also very worrisome.'
