WESTERN GOVERNMENTS, PARTICULARLY the United States, have long suspected Iran of seeking to develop nuclear weapons that could act as a counter to the widely suspected but undeclared nuclear arsenal of its arch foe, Israel.

After it launched a massive attack on Tehran this morning, Israel said it had targeted nuclear sites with the aim of preventing Iran from developing such weapons.

Iran has a nuclear energy programme, but has not been shown to have nuclear weapons. 

The US has been in negotiations with Iran in recent months over how much uranium can be enriched. 

Iran currently enriches uranium to 60%, though still short of the 90% needed for a nuclear warhead.

Iran insists it is its right to enrich uranium under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Yesterday, the board of governors at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) censured Iran for the first time in 20 years over its refusal to work with its inspectors.

Iran immediately announced it would establish a third enrichment site in the country and swap out some centrifuges for more-advanced ones.

“In recent months, accumulated intelligence information has provided evidence that the Iranian regime is approaching the point of no return,” The Israeli military said in a statement this morning.

“The convergence of the Iranian regime’s efforts to produce thousands of kilogrammes of enriched uranium, alongside decentralised and fortified enrichment compounds in underground facilities, enables the Iranian regime to enrich uranium to military-grade levels, enabling the regime to obtain a nuclear weapon within a short period of time,” it added.

While the US and its allies have for years attempted to reach an agreement with Iran to prevent its developing nuclear weapons, Israel has forcefully opposed any such compromise.

Bitter rivals and broken promises 

Iran and Israel are two major powers in the Middle East and despite having once had friendly relations – when Iran was a monarchy – the two are now each other’s greatest rivals.

Israeli leaders cast Iran as their country’s greatest adversary and an existential threat to their allies in the West. The US has also sabotaged Iranian nuclear facilities in the past. 

For decades, Iran’s leaders have openly called for the destruction of what they call the ‘Little Satan’ (Israel), as opposed to the ‘Great Satan’ (the United States of America), who they see as occupying powers in the Middle East who need to be expelled. 

Israel has assassinated nuclear physicists, generals and Iranian allies over the last four decades or so.

“When we fight Iran, we’re fighting the most radical and murderous enemy of the United States of America,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a speech to the US Congress in July 2024.

“We’re not only protecting ourselves. We’re protecting you… Our enemies are your enemy, our fight is your fight, and our victory will be your victory.”

Israel has been vociferous in encouraging its allies in Europe and North America to sanction Iran, stoking fears among Western political leaders of what the country could do with access to nuclear weapons. 

Those concerns led US President Barack Obama, alongside the heads of a number of other countries, to sign an agreement with the Iranian government in 2015, which put limitations on the production of material that could be used to make atomic weapons in exchange for the lifting of sanctions.

Israel opposed the deal and Obama’s successor Donald Trump reneged on it during his first term in 2018, meaning the sanctions returned.

Iran has held five rounds of talks with the United States in search of an agreement to replace the deal Trump tore up in 2018.

“If the issue is nuclear weapons, yes, we too consider this type of weapon unacceptable,” Foreign Minister Abbas, Iran’s lead negotiator in the talks, said in a televised speech on 31 May of this year. “We agree with them on this issue.”

Trump has not ruled out military action but said he wants space to make a deal first, and has also said that Israel, and not the United States, would take the lead in any such strikes.

Shadow war 

Over the last few decades, Israel and Iran have traded tit-for-tat attacks in what has been described as a shadow war. 

The two sides had resisted resorting to outright hostility between their armed forces until an Israeli airstrike killed senior Iranian military figures in an embassy in the Syrian capital of Damascus in April 2024, which prompted Iran to launch hundreds of drones and missiles at Israel, most of which were shot down with Western support.

In July 2024, Israel then assassinated Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas, while he was visiting Tehran, stirring more fears of a full-scale war between the two regional powers that could involve the US, the UK, France and other Western states. 

Those fears were exacerbated once again when Israel killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah – a close ally of Iran – in September last year.

Iran launched almost 200 rockets at Israel in return and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised Tehran would pay.

Today’s attacks were described by Iran as “a declaration of war”.