On 13 June, Israel launched Operation Rising Lion consisting of a series of missile and air attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities and other military and civilian facilities.
Shortly afterwards, Iran responded with missile and drone attacks on Israeli military and civilian facilities, which Tehran codenamed Operation True Promise Three. Operation True Promise One took place in April 2024 against Israeli forces in the Occupied Golan Heights, and Operation True Promise Two, also against Israeli military locations, in October 2024.
Israel saw an unprecedented wave of destruction as a result of Iran’s attacks. Eight days later, on 21 June, the United States started its own air attacks, Operation Midnight Hammer, against Iran’s nuclear facilities in Natanz, Esfahan, and Fordow.
At the time of writing, there is disagreement over whether the Israeli and US attacks have “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear programme, as US President Donald Trump claims, or has only set it back by a few months, as several US intelligence reports say.
In retaliation for the US attacks, the Iranian parliament approved a plan to close the Strait of Hormuz on 22 June, the economic chokepoint through which more than 20 per cent of the world’s oil supplies flow from the Gulf to international markets.
On 23 June, Iran launched missile attacks on the Al-Udeid US military base in Qatar, the largest in the Middle East. The Iranian attacks did not cause major damage, especially since Tehran had informed Washington about the attack beforehand. On 24 June, Tel Aviv and Tehran reached a ceasefire, mediated by Washington.
For years, Israel has been wanting to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities to prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons. The US and the West, despite agreeing with Israel on the necessity of preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, were reluctant to launch an attack on Iran due to fears of Iranian retaliation, but they did not take the option of attacking Iran off the table, nevertheless.
Back in 2002, when US president George W Bush was preparing to invade Iraq, the Iranian opposition militia group Mujahedeen-e-Khalq told the Bush Administration that Iran had a nuclear weapons programme. But Bush was busy preparing for the invasion of Iraq, which he falsely accused at the time of having a weapons of mass destruction programme. Furthermore, Bush did not want to offend Iran at the time, which was, potentially or indirectly, on the same side as the US against then Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.
Only after the US had successfully toppled the Saddam regime in Iraq did Washington announce that Iran had a nuclear weapons programme and that it would take measures to stop it, including economic sanctions, negotiations, and keeping the military option on the table.
Since then, different administrations in Washington under several US presidents, from George W Bush to Barack Obama to Donald J Trump’s first term (2017-2021) to Joe Biden, have refused to carry out a military attack on Iran despite recognising the Iranian nuclear threat. There were several reasons for this US reluctance to attack Iran.
First, there was the fear of Iranian retaliation. This retaliation could have been through closing the Strait of Hormuz through which more than 20 per cent of global oil supplies pass from the Gulf to global markets. Even though the strait is international waters, Tehran could decide to close it, whether by mining the waters of the strait, or by deploying Iranian military patrols to prevent commercial ships from passing through it.
Such a move would have been a double-edged sword for Tehran, since 90 per cent of Iran’s oil exports pass through the Strait of Hormuz, and the Iranian economy is very dependent on oil exports. Closing the strait would have strangled the global oil supply and raised global oil prices, which would have raised the global costs of doing business and have had a negative effect on the global economy. But it would also have strangled the Iranian economy. Iran would only have resorted to closing the Strait of Hormuz as a last option, if it felt there was an existential threat against it.
Iran could also have retaliated by attacking US interests in the Middle East. It could have done so through its proxies in the region such as Hizbullah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, the government of former Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad in Syria, the Houthis in Yemen, or the pro-Iranian government and pro-Iranian militias in Iraq.
There were also doubts about the feasibility of a military operation to destroy the Iranian nuclear facilities. In 1981, Israeli air attacks were able to destroy Iraq’s nuclear reactor at Osirak. The Iranian case, however, was different. The Iranian facilities are buried deep underground and are heavily fortified and guarded by advanced weapons systems.
In July 2015, the Obama administration was able to facilitate an agreement between Iran and the P5+1 group of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany. The agreement, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), was a nuclear deal with Iran under which the West would gradually remove the economic sanctions on Iran in return for Iran opening its nuclear facilities to international inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), not enriching uranium beyond the three per cent level (far less than the 90 per cent required to reach weapons grade), and surrender a large amount of its uranium supplies to the IAEA.
Iran and the West were happy with this breakthrough nuclear agreement: Iran saw the sanctions lifted from its economy, and the West got guarantees that Iran’s nuclear programme would remain peaceful and would not reach weapons grade.
However, Israel and the Arab Gulf states were opposed to this Western-Iranian rapprochement and considered that the nuclear deal would simply mask the Iranian threat without really getting rid of Iranian interference in the region. Obama had to meet the leadership of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) at Camp David in May 2015 during the final stages of the JCPOA negotiations to reassure the Arab Gulf leaders that the Iranian threat was under control and that Washington would guarantee the security of the Gulf states. With the signing of the agreement, the P5+1 group and Tehran complied with the conditions of the agreement.
However, in 2017 Trump withdrew the US from the JCPOA and reinstated the US sanctions on Iran. The Europeans stayed committed to the agreement, but Tehran stated that it was null and void as Washington had withdrawn from it. It therefore started to enrich uranium beyond the three per cent limit.
Since then, no major diplomatic progress has been made between Tehran and the Western camp, and confrontations between Tehran, on one side, and Western interests in the Middle East in Israel and the Arab Gulf states, on the other, have been taking place relentlessly, whether through cyber-attacks, proxy wars, assassinations, or other forms of confrontation.
Israel attacks: Trump took office for his second term in January 2025, and in early March, he sent a letter to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
In the letter, Trump said that the Iranians had two months to reach a new nuclear agreement. It was delivered by Washington’s Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff, who handed it to the president of the UAE, Mohamed bin Zayed, who, in turn, delivered it to the Iranian supreme leader.
The latter was sceptical about Trump’s letter, calling it a “deception” to cover up for the withdrawal from the JCPOA in 2017. Tehran was, nevertheless, generally open to discussions with Washington and has since been negotiating with it over its nuclear programme through mediators such as Oman and others. But no major diplomatic progress has taken place. Washington was insisting that Iran should stop enriching uranium, while Tehran refused to do so.
The Iranians did not expect a military attack against their nuclear facilities while they were negotiating with the United States. But, according to The Wall Street Journal, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu secretly got Trump’s approval on 9 June for Israel to launch Operation Rising Lion against Iran, which took place four days later after the two-month deadline which Trump had stated back in March had ended.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Washington was still preparing to resume negotiations with Tehran even as Israel was bombing Iran. Trump was hoping that Iran would be more willing to give concessions if it was negotiating while under attack. Another factor that encouraged the US to approve an Israeli attack was that Iran’s ability to retaliate seemed to be much weaker with the fall of the Al-Assad government in Syria and the weakening of Hizbullah in Lebanon, especially after the assassination of its leader Hassan Nasrallah.
Israel’s Operation Rising Lion led to Iran’s Operation True Promise Three, then Washington’s Operation Midnight Hammer, Iran’s threats to close the Strait of Hormuz, Iran’s attacks on the US military base in Qatar, and then the ceasefire on 24 June. Iran gave early notice to the US through diplomatic channels about the attack on the Al-Udeid base.
Trump tweeted that “I want to thank Iran for giving us early notice, which made it possible for no lives to be lost and nobody to be injured.” He added that the Iranian attacks on the US base let Tehran get the anger “out if its system” and encouraged Israel and Iran to pursue a peaceful solution to the conflict.
What will happen next depends on several factors. The first is the extent to which the Israeli and US attacks have damaged Iran’s nuclear programme. The second is whether the Iranian economy can withstand more pressure as a result of the sanctions against the country and the costs of the war, high for Israel as well, except that Israel has Washington’s economic assistance. The third is whether Iran can withstand more potential Israeli and US military attacks in the future.
The Trump administration argues that Operation Midnight Hammer totally obliterated Iran’s nuclear programme, despite reports from American intelligence agencies saying otherwise. Trump is saying this since otherwise he might be forced into a prolonged military conflict against Iran, which not even his supporters in the American public want.
Trump wants to look like a strongman, especially with the rise of the TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out) chant against him by those opposed to him in the US.
ISRAEL’S SAMSON OPTION: There were comments in Egyptian social media at the time of the Israeli and US attacks about how a nuclear war was about to break out and Egyptians would have to get used to breathing air polluted by nuclear radiation.
To be clear, Israel does indeed have nuclear weapons, a fact which shows the global double standards that have allowed Israel to acquire them (aided by France in the 1960s and, later, by the US) but have not done so for a Muslim country like Iran.
India and Pakistan surprised the world in 1998 when they carried out their first nuclear tests without the West’s approval, and Washington later signed nuclear cooperation deals with India, but not with Pakistan for fear of Islamist influence in the Pakistani government. North Korea, too, was able to acquire nuclear weapons without the approval of the West, because the West is afraid of Pyongyang’s possible retaliation against pro-American interests in Japan, South Korea, and the Far East in general.
When it comes to Iran, however, the West is trying to stop it from acquiring nuclear weapons before Tehran is able to have the technology. There has been disagreement over whether Iran actually wants to acquire these weapons or not. Iran has always insisted that its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes, such as generating electricity and other civilian uses. But the fact that it is enriching uranium to very high levels, which reach 60 per cent even though the enrichment level required for civilian purposes is only three per cent, tells against it.
True, the 60 per cent level is much less than the 90 per cent required for weapons grade uranium, but it still raises doubts in the West. The IAEA has repeatedly said that it does not have proof that Tehran is working on a nuclear weapons programme, but that the world should work to stop Iran from doing so. Recently, IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi said that Iran is enriching uranium to a 60 per cent level, which is concerning even if it is less than the 90 per cent required to build a nuclear weapon.
In June 2025, Grossi told the US network CNN that even though Iran has been enriching uranium to high levels, but not weapons grade levels, and even though Iran has been keeping some nuclear operations secret, “we [at the IAEA] do not have any proof of a systemic effort” by Iran “to move to a nuclear weapon.” Several similar statements have been made by the IAEA over the past 20 years.
Furthermore, any decision to use nuclear weapons against an enemy is a double-edged sword. If your enemies are also your neighbours (as in the case of Israel and Iran), then both countries will hesitate to use nuclear weapons. Israel would be very reluctant to use them, because any Israeli nuclear attack on any location within the Middle East region would result in extremely harmful nuclear radiation that would be carried to the rest of the region, including Israel itself.
This is why Israel would never use its nuclear weapons unless as a weapon of last resort in a situation where the country is under an existential threat. This Israeli nuclear mentality is called the “Samson Option” after the biblical figure Samson, who killed himself and his enemies by demolishing a temple while he and his enemies were inside it. If Israel used nuclear weapons, then it would destroy its enemies, but the resulting nuclear radiation would also reach Israel itself, causing effects potentially as harmful as those caused by the Chernobyl nuclear accident in Ukraine in 1986.
Iran is defending its right to have a nuclear programme, which it claims is for peaceful purposes while the West claims it is for military ones. The Iranian regime’s legitimacy is not based on democratic values, nor is it based on economic performance. Rather, it is based on Islamism, anti-colonialism, and resistance, for all of which the acquisition of nuclear power is a major pillar. This is why the regime in Tehran sees nuclear weapons as a matter of national security.
Israel, as a state recognised by the United Nations, has the right to live in peace, but not at the expense of others and not as a result of illegal and colonialist actions that risk an escalation of regional conflicts. Some have argued that Netanyahu also has a personal interest in prolonging the conflicts in the Middle East to distract from the corruption charges against him.
Washington, Tel Aviv, and Tehran all had something to win out of the Israeli-Iranian war. The biggest loser was regional peace, followed by the global economy as a result of higher oil prices. This short-lived war should also not distract us from the main war that has been going on in the region since October 2023 in the form of the Israeli genocide against the people of Gaza.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 3 July, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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