arly on Friday morning, Israel began a process that had long been discussed in the West: the bombing of Iran’s nuclear program. Soon after, Iran began launching waves of missiles at Israel.
The suggestion that Israel or the US should bomb Iran’s nuclear sites has been around for quite a while. The bombing of Iraq’s nuclear reactor in 1981 and of a suspected nuclear reactor in Syria in 2007 suggested the same course of action in Iran. However, Iran’s nuclear program has been much more widespread and protected, and it was designed inside the country rather than being imported from outside. Destroying it wouldn’t be as easy as bombing a single reactor.
The debate that has raged for years about attacking Iran came to a swift conclusion, it seems, last week, even as the US and Iran were ostensibly in the middle of nuclear negotiations.
According to some American news outlets, like The Wall Street Journal, those negotiations were a smokescreen, allowing the Iranians to believe they were in no danger. US President Donald Trump confirmed that the Americans had been aware of Israel’s plans beforehand, though he said that the US was not involved in them. At the same time, critics of Trump and Israel—as well as some far-right supporters of Trump—claimed that Israel had disrespected Trump by attacking when he wanted negotiations.
One story that has emerged about Trump’s involvement is a Reuters story, confirmed by other outlets, that Trump stopped Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from having Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei killed. Israeli strikes over several days took out a wide swath of the very top Iranian military and intelligence leaders, depleting the high-level ranks of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. But Trump allegedly wanted the head honcho spared.
(In an interview with Fox News, Netanyahu responded to a question about that by saying, “There are so many false reports of conversations that never happened, and I’m not going to get into that.” Israeli National Security Advisor Tzachi Hanegbi called the report “fake news from the land of the fakes.”)
Khamenei and his family are reportedly holed up in a bomb shelter in Lavizan, a northeastern neighborhood in Tehran.
Meanwhile, Israelis have found themselves in their own bomb shelters. Iran has fired more than 350 ballistic missiles at Israel, with at least two dozen Israelis killed and hundreds injured. Those killed included a number of people in their 60s and 70s, as well as children.
Israel’s targeting of ballistic missile sites in Iran appears to have brought down the number of missiles that have been fired in each successive wave of attacks.
So far, there has been no definitive United Nations statement on the Israeli attacks, though both UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and International Atomic Energy Agency head Rafael Grossi expressed “concern” about the attacks that were seen as a condemnation.
Grossi said that attacks on nuclear installations could cause a release of radiation that could harm people and the environment. He later said that there was likely radioactive contamination inside the buildings at the Natanz nuclear site, one of the sites most heavily damaged by the Israeli bombardment, though not outside them.
When Israel attacked, the IAEA had just issued its first censure of the Iranians ever in regard to their nuclear program, saying that Iran was not complying with its non-proliferation requirements—something even the IAEA had finally noticed.
Meanwhile, there has been talk about the possibility of negotiations to end the war. Trump has said that the Israeli bombings should bring Iran to the negotiating table with the US on the subject of their nuclear program. But he also said that Russia’s Vladimir Putin—who has condemned the Israeli operations publicly—could serve as a negotiator between Israel and Iran. (Both Trump and Putin spoke to Netanyahu earlier this week.)
This strange suggestion was almost as ridiculous as the suggestion by the Democrats’ 2024 vice presidential candidate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, that China could be a neutral negotiator in the conflict.
For the moment, there is no open negotiating going on. The Wall Street Journal reported that Iran has been sending messages to both the US and Israel saying that it wants to de-escalate, but Netanyahu responded to that in an interview by saying, “They want to continue to have these fake talks in which they lie, they cheat, they string the US along. And, you know, we have very solid intel on that.”
For the moment, as things stand as we go to press on Monday, the only dialogue going on is between the missiles from both sides.
In the following pages, we discuss the ongoing situation with former US National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien, former Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren, Professor David Des Roches and Jonathan Pollard.
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