How Israel and the U.S. manufactured a fake crisis with Iran that could lead to all-out war
After years of talks, sanctions, and threats, it is possible we have seen the beginning of the long-dreaded war in the Persian Gulf between a U.S.-backed Israel and Iran.
The threat has certainly never been greater. Israel bombed Iranian sites after midnight on Friday morning. At this writing, an Iranian response is expected but hasn’t occurred yet. Speaking about the attack, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the attack was not over yet, clearly casting this as an attempt to make it impossible for the United States to continue diplomacy with Iran.
On Thursday, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Board of Governors passed a resolution censuring Iran for non-compliance with its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and other agreements, and stated that the violations were such that the United Nations Security Council could respond.
That means that the international sanctions (as opposed to those imposed by the United States alone, which are themselves quite impactful) could return soon, further damaging an already devastated Iranian economy and potentially destabilizing the Iranian government.
Rather than wait for any potential international action, Israel launched its attack less than 24 hours after the IAEA vote, using the censure as a pretext.
It has been clear for some time that this resolution was coming, especially since a May 31 IAEA report that laid out numerous Iranian violations of its obligations as well as alarm over a major increase in Iran’s stockpile of uranium enriched to over 60%, a small step away from weapons-grade. In preparation for the IAEA vote, the United States evacuated non-essential personnel and families of staff from its embassies in nearby countries, particularly Iraq, Kuwait and Bahrain. The U.S. was clearly aware that an Israeli attack was imminent. It is virtually certain that Israel would not do this without a green light from Washington, regardless of what Trump administration officials might say.
Israel, with its usual hypocrisy, blasted Tehran earlier in the day for undermining the NPT. Israel is not a signatory to the NPT, but has its own undeclared, uninspected, nuclear program, the only one in the Middle East.
More substantively, Israel had prepared an attack plan against Iran, initially based on the assumption that it will act without U.S. support. At this writing, it appears that’s what happened. But Israel is likely to try to draw the U.S. into the fighting if it continues much longer.
On Monday, reports emerged that U.S. President Donald Trump had told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to attack Iran as long as talks aimed at a diplomatic resolution were ongoing. For the moment, those talks are scheduled to continue Sunday in Muskat. Whether they still take place in the wake of Israel’s action remains to be seen.
But Trump has signaled that he is no longer optimistic about the potential for a deal with Iran. For Washington, this essentially amounts to pointing a loaded gun at Iran and telling them they’d better accept a deal or the gun, Israel (as Israel journalist Amir Tibon framed it), might just go off. Now that it has, we need to see whether this was a warning shot or the beginning of war. Netanyahu is clearly working for the latter, but there is still the potential to stop him.
Iran’s stance on the IAEA
In the past, Iran has responded to mere criticism from the IAEA by increasing their nuclear activity. This censure resolution, the first in two decades, has already provoked a sharp reaction.
Iran has called the decision a political one, but they said little to address the specific charges. That’s not accidental.
The specifics of the accusations the IAEA made against Iran are accurate, but need to be understood in context.
The IAEA is chiefly concerned about Iran’s lack of cooperation in general, but Iran has used the IAEA conditions as its only way to respond to U.S. pressures since the abrogation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA, colloquially referred to as the “Iran nuclear deal”) that Barack Obama concluded in 2015. Because Donald Trump unilaterally and inexcusably abrogated the deal in 2018, reactivating many of the sanctions that had been relieved, Iran saw no other way to press the U.S. to get back to the deal.
That was a decision that, although certainly defensible, was fraught with consequences. For the European countries that, along with the United States, brought the censure resolution to the IAEA, it meant that an international agreement which many feel is the most important one we have, the NPT, was being used as a bargaining chip.
The United Kingdom, France, and Germany (collectively referred to as the E3) are not eager to see a war in the Gulf, but they have been pressing for a more confrontational stance on Iran’s nuclear violations for years. They are not sanguine either about Iran’s intentions, or about nuclear obligations being used as a negotiating tool. They are also quite unhappy with Tehran’s close relationship with Russia, a festering sore for the E3 since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine three years ago.
So, the decision is a political one, but that doesn’t mean the IAEA’s accusations are false. The IAEA complaints about being unable to verify Iranian compliance with its obligations are real. The E3, though, likely did not want to see Israel take matters into its own hands. Indeed, they likely hoped that the censure vote would forestall an Israeli attack at least long enough for the United States to engage Iran more positively in Muskat. Such hopes were dashed with Israel’s attack.
The key point that the IAEA is interested in is the discovery of trace amounts of uranium at sites Iran had not disclosed as nuclear sites. Iran has not adequately explained this discovery, and many believe it is evidence of a secret Iranian nuclear weapons program from 2002. While there is a widespread belief that Iran was indeed pursuing nuclear weapons at that time, the United States has assessed, and continues to assess, that Iran abandoned those efforts in 2003 and has never resumed them.
Still, Iran has never admitted to ever pursuing a nuclear weapon and would find it problematic to do so given the insistence by both of its historical Supreme Leaders –currently Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and previously Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini—that Islam forbids such weapons.
Iran responded to the censure vote by declaring that it will open a third nuclear enrichment plant, would accelerate enrichment of uranium, and was prepared to strike at Israel and American bases in the region if it is attacked. We will now see that last put to the test.
A manufactured crisis
There’s a simple way out of this quagmire, and that is for the United States to relent on its wholly unnecessary demand that Iran agree not to enrich uranium on its territory and dismantle its infrastructure for doing so. It’s a condition that Israel, its supporters, and their fellow regime change hawks in Washington have insisted on precisely because they know it is unacceptable to Iran.
Iran is unwilling to allow its civilian nuclear capabilities to be controlled by outside forces whose political interests, even if they are compatible with Iran’s today might not be so tomorrow. Probably of greater importance to Iran is what it perceives as its right to enrich its own uranium.
The NPT does not explicitly grant this right, nor does it place any conditions on low-level enrichment. But it does guarantee all signatories the right to develop research, produce, and use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, which Iran, reasonably, interprets as conveying the right to enrich uranium. It therefore becomes a matter of national pride for Iran, and that is something even opponents of the current regime unite around.
Iran has been clear about its willingness to submit to stringent IAEA inspections to ensure that its enrichment is only for civilian purposes if the sanctions are lifted. Its compliance with the JCPOA from 2015-2018, even for a while after Trump broke the deal, is evidence that they mean it.
Even if one believes that Iran could develop weapons-grade uranium clandestinely (something that is very difficult as such radioactive material is detectable from great distances), it is much easier to do so if there are no IAEA inspections than if there are. It simply makes no sense that the U.S. would jeopardize this deal over this issue unless they don’t really want a deal, which is certainly the case for Iran hawks. Trump is not well-versed enough in these issues to grasp this.
Indeed, the whole issue has been manufactured. The U.S.’ own intelligence has consistently affirmed since 2007 that Iran has not been actively pursuing a nuclear weapon since 2003. The only reason their nuclear activities have moved forward in recent years is because the United States broke the JCPOA and Iran has since used nuclear advancements as a chip to get the U.S. to agree to a new deal.
That’s not a great strategy for Iran. It gives the U.S. a reason to try to find a deal, as Trump has been doing (and as Joe Biden so fatally refused to do), but it also gives Israeli and American hawks a basis to argue for attacking Iran, while enlisting support from their European counterparts.
It is also unclear what Iran was really doing nearly a quarter century ago. Recall that at that time, the United States was gearing up and then embarking on its unprovoked invasion of Iraq, based on trumped up charges. Even before the invasion, many neoconservatives were echoing Netanyahu’s argument that Iran was the next, and more important, target.
With two nuclear powers thumping their chests like gorillas, it is reasonable that Iran might have felt a nuclear deterrent was needed, and there were definitely forces in Iran making that argument. Whether they had sufficient pull to make it happen is unknown, and Iran, even today, would rather leave that question open. Many, myself included, believe that Iran was pursuing nuclear breakout capability (that is, enough weapons grade uranium, missile technology, and expertise to quickly create a nuclear weapon) as a deterrent to an American attack, not an actual weapon.
But this is all an argument over an imaginary threat. Consider the words of Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, who tweeted on Wednesday, “President Trump entered office saying that Iran should not have nuclear weapons. That is actually in line with our own doctrine and could become the main foundation for a deal.”
With Israel’s attack, we are facing a war that could wreak havoc on the Persian Gulf, reverberate throughout the Middle East, bring in the world’s greatest military powers, send the global economy into freefall, and potentially spark World War III. Even in the best-case scenario, any ongoing military confrontation between Iran and Israel will mean major loss of life, a shock to the already reeling global economy at least for a while, and will heighten the considerable regional tensions.
These risks are all being taken over a threat that everyone knows does not exist, despite their bombastic statements.
On Thursday, before Israel’s attack, Muskat confirmed that the talks will be held this Sunday. Those talks could have been an opportunity to walk back from war. Now it seems unlikely they will happen. Again, it is up to the United States if they want to find a way out of a potential regional war.
But the risk of war should not exist at all. There is truly nothing to fight over. A nuclear deal can easily be reached if Iran allows the IAEA the same access it did from 2015-2019 (which it is willing to do in exchange for sanctions relief), and the U.S. drops its ridiculous insistence on zero enrichment. From there, the details of a deal can be worked out in a matter of days, weeks at the most.
By no means does that suggest that all the problems would be solved. Iran and Israel will still be confronting each other over many issues, with the genocide in Gaza continuing to be a flashpoint. There will still be proxies for Iran, Saudi Arabia, Israel, the UAE, Türkiye, and others clashing around the region. There will also be sanctions on Iran that are not connected to the nuclear issue.
So, there will be plenty to fight over. But none of these threaten a regional, much less a world war, despite those genuine issues of competition, contention, and ideological and national disagreement. That was the biggest value of the JCPOA and would be in a new deal as well.
We should all be urging our leaders not to risk a huge conflagration over a fictional issue. Netanyahu is threatening that this attack will include assassinating Iranian scientists and other figures and will continue the attack for days. We are now on the brink, and we need to move away from it immediately.