Nuclear claims are a smoke screen for hopes of toppling Iran

For some people in Israel and the United States, the nuclear programme itself is the security problem. They don’t want Iran to have nuclear weapons, and so it makes sense to incentivise the Islamic Republic to behave better. That way, you can offer a deal: Don’t build nuclear weapons or support terrorism, and we will remove sanctions and welcome the Iranian people back into the global community.

For others, the problem is the very existence of the Islamic Republic itself, which they sincerely believe is incapable of changing its foreign policy and is building weapons to annihilate Israel, not deter it. For these people, any diplomatic solution is a false peace that only strengthens Iran, because an illicit nuclear programme is a broadly acceptable reason to maintain sanctions that they hope will cripple an Iranian regime they view as irredeemable.

There is no way to resolve that difference in opinion. And never has it been clearer than today that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in the latter camp. These strikes weren’t primarily targeted at nuclear facilities, but at the top military leaders of the Islamic Republic. Israel isn’t trying to knock out Iran’s centrifuges; it’s trying to knock out the regime itself.

On Sunday, Netanyahu told Fox News that Israel would do whatever is necessary to remove the "existential threat" posed by Tehran and that regime change could be a result of Israel's military attacks on the country.

Asked if regime change was part of Israel's military effort, he said: "It could certainly be the result because the Iranian regime is very weak."

"We're geared to do whatever is necessary to achieve our dual aim, to remove two existential threats: the nuclear threat and the ballistic missile threat," Netanyahu said in one of his first interviews since Israel's attacks began.

Meanwhile, Reuters reported, citing two unnamed US officials, that President Donald Trump vetoed an Israeli plan in recent days to kill Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

"Have the Iranians killed an American yet? No. Until they do, we're not even talking about going after the political leadership," one of the sources, a senior US administration official, said.

Iran had a nuclear weapons programme until 2003, despite its vociferous denials. When that programme was revealed in 2002, the US intelligence community believed that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei halted it. (“Halt” is the word the intelligence community used, but suspended or paused is a more natural description.)

Iran agreed to the so-called Iran nuclear deal in 2015. Iran, according to both the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the US intelligence community, complied with the terms of that agreement. This compliance continued even after US President Donald Trump withdrew from the deal, during his first term, in 2018, until May 2019.

The Biden administration did not reenter the agreement, and talks dragged out. Despite the breakdown, the US intelligence community believes Iran’s nuclear weapons programme remains suspended, but also that there is growing pressure on the supreme leader to resume the programme.

Iran has been gradually reducing its cooperation with the IAEA since 2019, especially in recent months. Iran’s reduced cooperation put the director general in the position of stating just this week that, without resolution of the outstanding issues, the IAEA would “not be in a position to provide assurance that Iran’s nuclear programme is exclusively peaceful.”

Although the United States and Iran have been in talks in Oman, with the US even offering Iran a watered-down version of the previous nuclear deal, those talks dragged past a 60-day deadline set by the Trump administration.

The IAEA Board of Governors—who are just ambassadors from various member states of the IAEA, including the United States—voted 19-3 with 11 abstentions that Iran’s actions “constitute non-compliance with its obligations” under its safeguards agreement. The Iranians were, obviously, not psyched about this.

Iran, in response, notified the IAEA that it had constructed a third underground enrichment site and would soon be installing new centrifuges there. The notification to the IAEA is a “design information questionnaire” (or DIQ) that indicates Iran intends to put the new facility under IAEA safeguards, as are all of its other known facilities with nuclear material.

Then Israel struck—and at an unexpected set of targets.

While the initial wave of Israel’s air strikes was widely described—including by Netanyahu himself—as an attack against Iran’s nuclear and missile facilities, the only nuclear facility that Netanyahu mentioned in his speech was the large enrichment facility at Natanz.

For years, the consensus has been that Israel probably can’t meaningfully eliminate Iran’s nuclear programme, mainly because the most important elements are safely buried deep underground at places like Natanz and Fordow. Getting at those facilities would require much more powerful weapons of the sort that only the United States possesses.

The Iranians also told the IAEA that while Natanz was targeted, other sites with nuclear material were operating normally. The strike on Natanz is the only strike on a nuclear facility that my colleagues and I at the Middlebury Institute have been able to verify with open-source information so far. Satellite images seem to show that Israel targeted a small number of above-ground buildings at Natanz, including the Pilot Fuel Enrichment Plant and buildings associated with the power supply.

The loss of those buildings will interfere with operations at the site, but it is unlikely to destroy many centrifuges. Israel did not strike the underground facility at Fordow on the first day, where Iran is enriching material to 60%, although that will presumably change. Netanyahu has promised continued strikes, but at this point, it doesn’t seem like Israel is attempting more than a minimal attack on the nuclear infrastructure, just enough to be able to characterise the strike as an act of preemptive self-defence.

What the first wave does seem to have accomplished is to kill a lot of senior Iranian military officials. Several nuclear scientists were reportedly killed as well, but the strikes were far more sweeping than that. The Israelis seem to have struck the residences of Iran’s leadership, reportedly killing Mohammad Bagheri, chief of staff of Iran’s armed forces; Hossein Salami, commander in chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC); Gholamali Rashid, deputy commander in chief of the armed forces; Amir Ali Hajizadeh, head of the IRGC’s ballistic missile unit; and Ali Shamkhani, who was leading nuclear talks with the United States.

One reason that many hawkish Israelis and their Washington fanboys opposed the nuclear deal was precisely because it might work. Resolving the nuclear issue would have removed some sanctions on the regime. This initial wave of attacks isn’t about the nuclear threat; it’s about using the nuclear threat to justify an attempt to topple the regime. Netanyahu essentially admitted this, telling Iranians: “Our fight is with the brutal dictatorship that has oppressed you for 46 years. I believe that the day of your liberation is near.”

Focusing on the political goals for the strike helps explain why Netanyahu took this step now. His speech made the degree to which the nuclear issue is window dressing clear. He claimed that “Iran has produced enough highly enriched uranium for nine atom bombs. Nine.” This is an outright falsehood: The most recent IAEA report confirms that Iran has not enriched uranium above 60% U-235. Weapons-grade is 90%. Netanyahu also claimed, “In recent months, Iran is taking steps ... to weaponise this enriched uranium.”

That’s probably also untrue, as the Defence Intelligence Agency, as recently as May, stated that “Iran senior leaders probably have not decided to restart its pre-2003 nuclear weapons programme, but since April 2025, Iranian officials have threatened to revisit their nuclear doctrine if its nuclear facilities were attacked.”

Netanyahu himself said that Iran might be able to build a nuclear weapon in a year or even months, something he has been saying for decades, even before he dragged out a cartoon bomb at the UN General Assembly in 2012.

So why is Netanyahu acting now? First, he has a compliant partner in the Trump administration, which doesn’t seek to be directly involved but also isn’t interested in restraining him. Netanyahu seems to have given Trump his 60 days to reach a deal, but not a day more.

Then there’s the domestic politics. As has been evident throughout the military operation in Gaza, an ongoing security crisis is an essential element of Netanyahu’s strategy for prolonging his hold on political power and delaying his verdict for corruption.

If Israel succeeds in toppling the Islamic regime in Tehran, the strike will have been worth it. But if Israel doesn’t—and honestly, regime change by air strike alone has a pretty lousy track record, from Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi in 1986 to Iraq’s Saddam Hussein in 1991 and after or Yugoslavia’s Slobodan Milosevic in 1999—Iran will retain a residual nuclear capability. Israel’s national security advisor has already admitted as much. What then?

The answer from the Israelis, which I don’t believe, is that maybe Iran will then make a deal with Trump to disarm itself. It seems more likely to me that Iran will follow North Korea’s example, withdrawing from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and finally getting around to building that nuclear weapon.

It seems very unlikely that either Russia or China will support additional sanctions on Iran for doing so, given what has transpired, nor will they enforce existing sanctions. Russia, after all, is a major customer for Iran’s military drones, and China buys a lot of Iranian oil.