The real debate has never been about what to do with Iran’s nuclear program. It’s always been about what to do with the regime.
For some people in Israel and the United States, the nuclear program itself is the security problem. They don’t want Iran to have nuclear weapons, and so it makes sense to incentivize 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 program 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.
Iran had a nuclear weapons program until 2003, despite its vociferous denials. When that program was revealed in 2002, the U.S. intelligence community believed, 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 U.S. intelligence community, complied with the terms of that agreement. This compliance continued even after U.S. 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 U.S. intelligence community believes Iran’s nuclear weapons program remains suspended, but also that there is growing pressure on the supreme leader to resume the program.
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 program is exclusively peaceful.”
Although the United States and Iran have been in talks in Oman, with the U.S. 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 intended 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 airstrikes 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 program, largely 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 percent, 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 characterize the strike as an act of preemptive self-defense.
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, the commander in chief of Iran’s military; Hossein Salami, the commander in chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC); Gholamali Rashid, deputy commander in chief of the armed forces; Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the commander of the airspace unit of the IRGC; 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 percent U-235. Weapons-grade is 90 percent. Netanyahu also claimed, “In recent months, Iran is taking steps … to weaponize this enriched uranium.” That’s probably also untrue as the Defense Intelligence Agency, as recently as May, stated that “Iran senior leaders probably have not decided to restart its pre-2003 nuclear weapons program, 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 U.N. 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 airstrike 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.
We don’t fully know why Khamenei halted Iran’s nuclear weapons program in 2003 or why he has stuck with this approach for so long. Clearly, some people in Iran wanted a bomb. Others, though, it seems did not. Until now, the nuclear doves have prevailed. After this strike, though, I imagine those debates are going to look very different. For one thing, there will be a lot of new faces around the table. For another, everyone will take note of what happened to the people who aren’t around anymore, and they’ll ask themselves whether Israel might have been so bold if Iran had nuclear weapons or if Israel did not.
If the regime does not fall, then Israel will have to do all this over again and again. Even if the strike significantly damages Iran’s nuclear program, Tehran can simply reconstitute it. When I asked one Israeli friend about the problem of Iran picking up the pieces and starting over, he compared it to “mowing the grass”—a comparison I didn’t find very compelling at the time. But having watched the carnage in Gaza followed by Netanyahu’s speech telling Israel’s soldiers and citizens to prepare for a protracted conflict, I realize endless carnage may suit Netanyahu and his government just fine.
The post Nuclear Claims Are a Smoke Screen for Hopes of Toppling Iran appeared first on Foreign Policy.
