Amid protracted negotiations between the Trump Administration and Iran over a potential nuclear deal, Israel is preparing a possible strike on Iranian nuclear facilities, multiple U.S. officials told CNN in a Tuesday report.
Washington and Tehran have for more than a month been negotiating a diplomatic deal over Iran’s nuclear program. An Israeli strike on Iran could upend those efforts and also risk escalating Israel’s war in Gaza to a wider conflict in the Middle East.
Officials told CNN that it’s not yet certain whether or not Israel will decide to ultimately act on its plans, adding that Israeli leaders are likely watching for how the U.S.-Iran deal evolves. The National Security Council, the Israeli Prime Minister’s office, and the Israeli Embassy in Washington did not confirm the reports when asked by CNN and Reuters.
“The chance of an Israeli strike on an Iranian nuclear facility has gone up significantly in recent months,” one source familiar with the matter told CNN. “And the prospect of a Trump-negotiated U.S.-Iran deal that doesn’t remove all of Iran’s uranium makes the chance of a strike more likely.”
Here’s what to know.
Israel appears to consider a strike on Iran
U.S. intelligence reportedly intercepted Israeli communications that suggest a potential strike. That’s in addition to apparent military preparations, including the movement of air munitions and the completion of an air exercise by Israel, CNN reported, although those movements could also be an attempt to pressure Iran amid its talks with the U.S.
Senior Israeli officials have on multiple occasions signalled that they are considering strikes on Iran. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz posted on X in November: “Iran is more exposed than ever to strikes on its nuclear facilities. We have the opportunity to achieve our most important goal—to thwart and eliminate the existential threat to the State of Israel.” In February U.S. intelligence agencies warned that Israel will likely attempt a strike on Iranian nuclear facilities this year.
“I think it’s more likely they strike to try and get the deal to fall apart if they think Trump is going to settle for a ‘bad deal,’” one person familiar with U.S. intelligence told CNN. “The Israelis have not been shy about signaling that to us … both publicly and privately.”
It’s unclear, though, to what degree Israel will be able to carry out strikes without support from the U.S., which a source familiar with the Trump Administration told CNN is unlikely to materialize without a major provocation from Iran.
Iran’s nuclear facilities are deep underground and heavily fortified. An effective attack by Israel would require U.S. assistance for both mid-air refueling and munitions, according to the February intelligence report.
President Donald Trump said in February that he wants a “verified nuclear peace agreement” with Iran, which joint military action with Israel would jeopardize. “I would like a deal done with Iran on non-nuclear. I would prefer that to bombing the hell out of it,” Trump told the New York Post. “If we made the deal, Israel wouldn’t bomb them.” Trump also reportedly told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on April 7, the same day he announced talks with Iran, that the U.S. opposed military strikes on Iran.
Trump told TIME in an April 22 interview that he had not stopped Israel from attacking Iran’s nuclear sites but that he “didn’t make it comfortable for them, because I think we can make a deal without the attack. … Ultimately I was going to leave that choice to them, but I said I would much prefer a deal than bombs being dropped.”
But, Trump told TIME that he would be “leading the pack” in a war with Iran if a deal isn’t reached. “It’s possible we’ll have to attack because Iran will not have a nuclear weapon.”
U.S.-Iran talks
Talks between the U.S. and Iran began on April 12 in Muscat, Oman. U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi have met four times since, with the latest round of negotiations in Oman on May 11. Recent talks have included technical discussions that an Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson said were “difficult but useful,” but disagreements remain.
The deal will likely involve limits to Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for lifting economic sanctions on Iran, officials have said.
Trump told NBC on May 4 that he is seeking a “complete dismantlement” of Iran’s nuclear program, which Iran has rejected. Witkoff told ABC News on Sunday that Washington “cannot allow even 1% of an enrichment capability.” Other Trump officials, including Vice President J.D. Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, have made conflicting comments on the degree to which the U.S. would require Iran to dismantle its uranium enrichment. Netanyahu has publicly put pressure on the U.S. to push for zero enrichment and a complete dismantlement of Iran’s nuclear program.
“This is the clearest sign yet of how high the stakes are in the U.S.-Iran nuclear talks and the lengths Israel may go to if Iran insists on maintaining its commercial nuclear capabilities,” Robert Rennie, head of commodity and carbon research for Westpac Banking Corp, told Bloomberg in reference to the intelligence reports of a potential Israeli strike.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Tuesday that he does not expect talks to “reach a conclusion” and called the U.S. demand for Iran not to enrich uranium “excessive and outrageous” and a “big mistake.” Iran maintains that its uranium enrichment is part of its right to a peaceful nuclear program under the United Nations’ Treaty on Nuclear Non-Proliferation.
In a mid-March letter to Khamenei, Trump set a deadline of 60 days to reach an agreement, officials told CNN. It’s been 60 days since the letter and more than a month since talks began.
Talks may continue this week in Europe, Witkoff told ABC News.
History between Israel and Iran
Iran and Israel have in recent decades been described as “archenemies.” But it wasn’t always that way.
Iran was one of 11 members on the U.N. Special Committee on Palestine in 1947 that concerned the future of the Palestinian territory after British control ended. Along with India and Yugoslavia, Iran voted against the U.N.’s partition plan out of concern that it would lead to violence in the region. The three countries instead proposed a federated state of Palestine, which would have kept the territory as a single state but with Arab and Jewish cantons.
“That was Iran’s compromise to try to maintain positive relations with a pro-Zionist West and the Zionist movement itself, and also with its Arab and Muslim neighbouring countries,” Oxford historian Eirik Kvindesland told Al Jazeera.
Still, in 1950, Iran became the second Muslim-majority country, after Turkey, to recognize Israel as a sovereign state following the first Arab-Israeli War in which Israel broadened its territory beyond the bounds of the U.N.’s plan and forcibly displaced more than 700,000 Palestinians from their homes. At the time, Iran was ruled by Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, the second shah in the Pahlavi dynasty. At the same time, Israel was pursuing its “periphery doctrine,” under which Israel sought to establish relations with non-Arab states, including Iran and Turkey, to “end its isolation in the Middle East,” Kvindesland told Al Jazeera.
In 1951, however, Iran’s new Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh severed ties with Israel as part of an effort to nationalize oil in Iran and push out a British monopoly over the industry. Mosaddegh saw Israel as an extension of Western interests and cutting ties as “collateral damage,” Kvindesland told Al Jazeera.
Mosaddegh was toppled from his seat in a 1953 coup led by the Iranian army and backed by the U.K. and the U.S. In the two decades that followed, Iran’s now pro-Western, secular government began a friendly relationship with Israel, including establishing an active Israeli embassy in Tehran in 1960, exchanging ambassadors in the 1970s, and a supply of Iranian oil to Israel.
In 1979, the Iranian Revolution led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini overthrew the shah and established the Islamic Republic of Iran. The new leadership brought about a radical shift in foreign policy towards a more pro-Islamic, anti-Western approach—and a reversal of its stance towards Israel. Iran ended diplomatic ties with Israel, rejected Israel’s legitimacy as a state, cancelled flight routes and civilian travel between the countries, and turned the Israeli embassy in Tehran into a Palestinian embassy.
Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, told Al Jazeera that Iran adopted a “more aggressive position on the Palestinian issue to brandish its leadership credentials in the Islamic world and to put Arab regimes allied with the United States on the defensive.”
The makings of a modern conflict
The two countries have engaged in proxy conflicts across the region. Iran has backed a “resistance axis” of groups including Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, as well as groups in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen. Meanwhile Israel has supported groups deemed terrorist organizations by the Iranian government, including Mojahedian-e Khalq and Kurdish armed groups in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Iran has blamed Israel for a number of attacks over the years, including alleging that Israel and the U.S. were behind the Stuxnet malware attack on Iranian nuclear facilities in the 2000s, as well as alleging that Israel was behind the 2020 murder of Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. Israel has accused Iran of a number of cyberattacks and strikes on Israeli-owned oil tankers.
After the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, 2023, that ignited Israel’s war in Gaza, tensions were brought into sharp relief. Iran has remained staunch in its support of Palestinians, early on calling Israel’s siege on Gaza an attempt to seek “genocide.”
In the months since, Iran and Israel have engaged in tit-for-tat strikes. In April last year, Iran said an Israeli air strike on an Iranian consulate building in Syria had killed several officials in the Revolutionary Guard Corps. That prompted Iran’s first direct attack on Israel, with around 300 missiles and drones targeting sites in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights as well as two airbases—nearly all of which were intercepted without causing damage, according to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Israel responded with a strike on a missile defence system in Iran’s Isfahan region.
Iran also blamed Israel for the assassination of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in an explosion in Tehran last July and warned Israel of a “crushing response” after Israeli strikes killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, as well as a high-ranking Iranian official, in Beirut last September.
At the start of October last year, Iran launched more than 180 ballistic missiles at Israel in response to those deaths. Then-President Joe Biden said the attack appeared to have been “defeated and ineffective.” The U.S. Department of Defense and the IDF said they intercepted a majority of the missiles. Israel carried out airstrikes on military sites in Iran later that month.
The October strikes have pushed Iran into its weakest military position in years, while Israel’s continued bombardment of Gaza and strikes on Lebanon, Yemen, and Syria have weakened Iran’s proxies. At the heart of their escalating tensions is Iran’s nuclear program. While Israel is thought to possess clandestine nuclear weapons in its arsenal, it has insisted it will not allow Iran to develop a nuclear bomb. And with a weakened Iran and potentially dissatisfactory U.S.-Iran talks, U.S. officials told CNN, Israel could see more of an opportunity than a risk in attacking Iran.
The post The Tense History and Modern Context Behind Israel’s Reported Plan to Attack Iran appeared first on TIME.
