Any understanding of the conflict that has shaken the Middle East for the past two weeks must take into account the shifting relationship between Israel and Iran and the complex politics of nuclear technology in the region, which have seen Israel consistently project its military and intelligence strengths to resist any attempt of the part of regional states to pose a nuclear threat to its existence.
Although it seems unimaginable today, the relationship between Iran and Israel has not always been antagonistic. From the pre-revolutionary period under the Shah to the early years of the Islamic Republic, relations between Israel and Iran, while never friendly, were pragmatic and based on shared geopolitical interests.
In the 1950s the Israeli prime minister David Ben-Gurion developed the so-called “periphery” doctrine based on the view that Israel should develop close relations with non-Arab neighbours, such as Turkey, Iran and Ethiopia, to protect itself from hostile Arab states. The alliance was informal and consisted for the most part of secret and clandestine contacts. According to historian Avi Shlaim, Iran was “the jewel in the crown of the alliance of the periphery”.
The non-Arab states shared, with Israel, a fear of the expanding influence of Egypt’s charismatic president, Gamal Abdel Nasser, the leading figure in the pan-Arabist movement promoting Arab unity, and a supporter of the Palestinian cause. Iran and Israel also saw Iraq as a common threat and, by 1960, Israel was supporting Iraqi Kurds who were fighting the revolutionary regime in Baghdad.
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Israel’s Mossad created an intelligence alliance with Iran and Turkey in 1958, while Tehran and Tel Aviv developed a close military relationship that lasted until the 1979 revolution in Iran. Unlikely as it might seem, the relationship between the two countries did not end in 1979. Initially, the foreign policy of revolutionary Iran was hostile to Israel but soon the Islamic Republic saw the benefit of an Israeli counterweight to its Arab neighbours, especially Iraq. The Israelis shared the Iranian view of Iraq, under Saddam Hussein, as a threat to security and a low-level relationship between the two developed.
At the beginning of the Iran-Iraq war, in early 1980, the then Israeli prime minister, Menachem Begin, approved the shipment of weapons and materials for the Iranian army. By the 1990s, co-operation between Israel and Iran had diminished significantly. Nonetheless, relations were not entirely hostile. The reformist Iranian president, Mohammed Khatami, made conciliatory moves towards Israel as part of his policy of greater engagement with the United States, including the suggestion that Iran would support a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
But matters changed in the next decade. Ironically, the US-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq led to the defeat of long-standing Iranian rivals and resulted in growing Iranian influence in the region, while Israel began to see Iran as the source of every regional conflict. The 2005 election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the Iranian presidency, with his virulent anti-Israel rhetoric and Holocaust denials, deepened Israeli fears of Iran, as relations between the two assumed the hostile nature that has largely characterised them ever since.
Israel’s perception of its isolation in the region led to an early interest in the acquisition of nuclear capabilities. Ben Gurion launched Israel’s nuclear project in the 1950s with the construction of a large complex at Dimona, a city in the Negev desert. The project was developed with particular assistance from France, which at this time was intent on holding on to its colonial possessions in North Africa and saw Israel as a potentially powerful ally in the region.
In 1960, Israel and France signed a series of agreements that saw the French provide Israel with a large reactor. In addition to this, they supplied Israel with enriched uranium and a plant for the extraction of plutonium. Israel undertook formally to use these only for civilian purposes, but both sides understood their true intent. Co-operation between the two states was kept secret and the US was initially unaware of these developments. Declassified documents reveal that the US repeatedly questioned what Israel was doing at Dimona. It is estimated that the first nuclear weapons were produced at Dimona in 1966-67. By the end of the 1960s, the US finally became aware of its true purpose and a deal was struck whereby the US would remain silent if Israel also kept quiet.
In 1986 a former nuclear technician, Mordechai Vanunu, revealed the extent of the nuclear weapons programme by offering details and pictures of the Dimona reactor to the Sunday Times newspaper. Before the article was published, Vanunu was kidnapped in Rome by Mossad and returned to Israel, where he was convicted of treason and sentenced to 18 years in prison, 11 of which were spent in solitary confinement.
Today it is estimated that Israel has about 90 nuclear warheads and has produced enough plutonium for 100-200 weapons. However, Israel neither acknowledges nor denies the existence of its nuclear weapons, is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and is not subject to inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Israel’s nuclear ambitions extend beyond possessing weapons to a concern to ensure that no other state in the region should do so. The attacks on Iran over the past two weeks are the most severe in pursuit of this objective but certainly not the first.
[ Israel-Iran conflict: Does Israel have a secret nuclear programme?Opens in new window ]
Over the past five decades, Israel has undertaken a variety of actions to stymie the nuclear ambitions of others in the region. From the 1970s onwards, Iraq under Saddam Hussein, pursued the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear capabilities in the belief that this would make his regime secure. The French were involved in this once more.
In 1976 Iraq bought a nuclear reactor from France together with a limited supply of enriched uranium and technical training. The Osiraq reactor, as it became known, was purchased under an agreement that it would be used for peaceful purposes and was also subject to International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards.
However, the Israeli leadership thought otherwise. On June 7th, 1981, Israel attacked and partially destroyed Iraq’s nuclear research reactor, killing 10 Iraqi soldiers and one French engineer in the air strike. Before this, they had sabotaged equipment intended for delivery to the facility and in 1980 assassinated a leading scientist working on Iraq’s nuclear programme. Afterwards, Israel claimed that the attack represented a big setback to Iraq’s ambitions. Other observers argued that they simply convinced Saddam of the need to move faster and in greater secrecy to pursue nuclear weapons capability.
Twenty-six years after the attack on Iraq, the Israeli air force destroyed a nuclear facility that was being developed in Syria with the assistance of North Korea. In the early 1980s, the Syrian regime began to develop weapons of mass destruction in response to its recognition that its conventional military capacity was no match for Israel’s forces.
To begin with, the focus was on developing chemical weapons such as Sarin nerve gas and a reliable “delivery” system, in the form of Soviet-built Scud missiles. However, before his death in 2000, Hafez al-Assad entered into negotiations with North Korea to build a secret nuclear reactor in western Syria. Co-operation between the two regimes began in the late 1990s.
The Israelis identified the reactor for what it was in 2006, Mossad having gained access to the laptop computer of a senior Syrian government official while he was visiting London. However, US intelligence on the extent of Syria’s nuclear capabilities was less than definitive and the then US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, adopted the view that to bomb the reactor in the face of uncertain intelligence was reckless, favouring a diplomatic route instead.
The then Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, told US president George W Bush that a Syrian nuclear weapons program represented an existential issue for Israel, and, on September 6th, 2007, Israel launched a military strike that destroyed the reactor and maintained Israel’s own nuclear monopoly in the Middle East.
Although it is strongly associated with the Islamic Republic, Iran’s nuclear programme began under the Shah. In 1972 he announced that Iran would build a nuclear apparatus to generate 23,000 megawatts of power. Two years later the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran was established with a commitment to build 40 reactors.
Iran’s nuclear programme drew on assistance from the US, West Germany, France and South Africa. From the outset, there was speculation that the ambition was to build a nuclear bomb in addition to the overt aim of civil power generation, given the Shah’s broader objective of establishing Iran as a regional power. Following the 1979 revolution, the nuclear programme was initially cancelled by the Ayatollah Khomeini who regarded it as another ploy to make Iran dependent on the West. But it was revived during the 1980-1988 war with Iraq when it became clear that Saddam Hussein was moving forward with a nuclear weapons programme.
Iran has been a signatory of the NPT since 1968 and has repeatedly declared its adherence to the provisions of the treaty, as well as its commitment solely to the civil application of nuclear power, and its position that nuclear weapons are contrary to Islam. While doubts about its intentions persisted, its religious stance against weapons of mass destruction has been consistently asserted since Khomeini’s time.
There were negotiations on Iran’s nuclear programme in the aftermath of the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, but these were undermined by the hostile stance of the Bush administration and the subsequent election in 2005 of the hardline, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to the Iranian presidency.
Twelve years later, Iran concluded a deal negotiated with the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany – the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – under which Iran committed to enrich no uranium beyond 3.67 per cent and to limit its stockpile of uranium enriched to that level to a maximum of 300kg. In return Iran secured an easing of sanctions to the value of several billion dollars. The agreement was immediately attacked by Israel, Saudi Arabia and US Republicans in Congress. In July 2018, during Trump’s first presidency, the US withdrew from the deal.
[ Israel’s ambition: Destroy the heart of Iran’s nuclear programmeOpens in new window ]
The Israeli attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities that began two weeks ago represent the culmination of a series of efforts at disruption that go back decades and have taken a number of forms. In 2009, Israel and the US combined to mount a cyber attack by installing a computer virus, known as Stuxnet, on computers at the Iranian nuclear plant at Natanz. The virus caused about 1,000 of the roughly 7,000 centrifuges at the facility to fail, significantly impacting Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
Between 2010 and 2012, a series of targeted assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists were carried out, responsibility for which is generally attributed to Mossad. In November 2020, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a scientist believed to be the key figure in Iran’s nuclear programme, was killed outside Tehran. However, the bombing campaign that began on June 13th is by far the most significant attempt yet to deal with Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
Netanyahu’s ostensible motivation for the launch of hostilities was the release of an International Atomic Energy Agency report that found that Iran was in violation of its nuclear nonproliferation obligations for the first time in 20 years, prompting the Israeli leader to declare that Iran was taking steps to weaponise enriched uranium such that it represented an existential danger to Israel.
The decision on the part of Donald Trump to join the Israeli assault is less straightforward to explain. In part it may have stemmed from divisions within his own administration over the merits of attacking Iran. It may also be a reflection of frustration with Iran’s approach to the negotiations that the US had restarted on the nuclear issue and Trump’s concluding that a show of force would push Tehran towards more far-reaching concessions in the event of a return to the negotiating table.
All of this raises the question of what exactly Israel and the US have, in fact, achieved. Netanyahu described Israel’s objectives in terms of eliminating the two concrete threats to its existence: the nuclear threat and the ballistic missile threat. Trump, on the other hand, characteristically set out a number of possible outcomes of the US intervention from a limited operation to destroy Iran’s nuclear enrichment capacity and an end to its nuclear threat, to the “unconditional surrender” of Iran and regime change.
[ If Netanyahu wants regime change in Iran, it is unlikely to end wellOpens in new window ]
Netanyahu has declared success on his terms, while Trump has spoken of the “obliteration” of Iran’s nuclear capabilities. However, all the early indicators are that the attacks may have accomplished no more than setting back Iran’s nuclear programme by a matter of months. A widely leaked report by the US Defence Intelligence Agency (the intelligence arm of the Pentagon) concludes that key elements of that programme could be restarted within months, and, as has been widely speculated, that much of Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium had been moved before the attacks, most likely to other secret sites.
This is not to say that the Iranian regime has not been severely weakened by the attacks. Its effective inability to protect its own airspace and the loss of senior military and scientific personnel at Israeli hands represent both substantial losses and a blow to the already eroded legitimacy of the Islamic Republic for many Iranians. Nor did its erstwhile external allies offer any meaningful support.
[ Did Iran move its uranium? Opinions split on fate of 400kg stockpileOpens in new window ]
However, despite Netanyahu’s calls on Iranians to rise up against the regime, there is no sign of this. Iranians are only too well aware of the regime’s capacity for repression. Hundreds of thousands took to the streets in protest after the death in custody in 2022 of Mahsa Amini, whose offence was the incorrect wearing of her hijab. In response, the regime deployed the full force of its repressive apparatus. Women were blinded with acid and beaten by members of the Basij militia that is part of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Hundreds of protesters were shot.
In November 2022 there were reports of poison gas attacks on girls’ schools where the students had supported the protest movement. There is some organised opposition to the regime. However, it is highly fractured, ranging from Kurdish groups to monarchists, from small nationalist and leftist groups to reformists within ruling structures. But there is little co-ordination between them and no real prospect of a coalition of opposition forces capable of acting on a national level.
The likeliest eventuality in the immediate aftermath of the attacks is of regime attempts at consolidation and control. Since June 13th there have been daily announcements of the arrest of those charged with “spreading rumours” on social media. Iran has already executed a number of prisoners convicted of spying for Israel. A near total internet blackout is in place.
With the Islamic regime still in place in Tehran and the likelihood that much of its nuclear capabilities remain intact, it appears that, at great cost in terms of human lives and increased regional instability, the war which began on June 13th may have done little more than bring all the key actors back to positions similar to those in which they found themselves at its outset.
Dr Vincent Durac lectures in Middle East politics in the UCD school of politics and international relations
