Why did Israel launch an operation in Iran before the conclusion of the "nuclear deal"? Analysis

Israel has said that Iran is closer to building its own nuclear weapons. Tel Aviv attacked Iranian air defense systems and nuclear facilities on the night of June 13, two days before the announced sixth round of negotiations between Tehran and Washington on the nuclear deal, and thus provoked another round of the Iranian-Israeli conflict. What prompted Israel to unleash an armed confrontation with Iran right now is in the analysis of Izvestia.

The Mossad dossier

• Israel refers to its intelligence data, which shows that Iran has allegedly reached the "point of no return" in developing nuclear weapons. The Mossad believes that Iran is continuing to work on the secret AMAD project aimed at developing nuclear weapons. Tehran officially suspended work on this project back in 2003 after signing an additional agreement within the framework of the nuclear non-proliferation Treaty at the UN Security Council, and in 2005, Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued a fatwa stating that Islam prohibits the use of nuclear weapons (we discussed more about Iran's nuclear program here).

• The press reports that Tel Aviv provided its intelligence data to the allied countries some time after the start of the military operation "Lion Rising" in Iran. At the same time, the Economist, which published the Mossad version, reported that journalists were not given access to the original documents.

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• According to the IAEA report, as of May 17, Iran had accumulated 408.6 kg of uranium enriched to 60%. The Institute of Science and International Security (ISIS), after analyzing the report, concluded that this volume is enough to produce 233 kg of weapons-grade uranium in three weeks at the Fordo fuel enrichment plant. This volume can be enough for nine nuclear warheads.

• For the production of nuclear weapons, the presence of enriched uranium is not enough: it also requires the creation of the warhead itself and the detonation mechanism. It is assumed that Iran could be developing in this direction, but US intelligence has not confirmed Iran's work on developing nuclear weapons.

Israel's goals

• The expert community believes that Israel has decided to take advantage of the opportunity to rebuild the Middle East in its own interests. Thanks to the mediation of the United States, since 2020, peace agreements on economic and defense cooperation with Israel (the "Abraham Agreements") have been signed by the Middle Eastern states of the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco. Tel Aviv also hoped to conclude an agreement with Saudi Arabia, but Riyadh took the path of strengthening relations with Iran in order to stabilize the situation on the border with Yemen, and negotiations broke down.

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Will the Khamenei regime in Iran fall and what will happen to Netanyahu's government in Israel if the operation fails?

• After the attack of the Palestinian Hamas movement on Israel on October 7, 2023, Tel Aviv managed to weaken the forces supporting Iran - the Hamas movement in Palestine and Hezbollah in Syria and southern Lebanon. The United States, Israel's main ally, has carried out attacks on the Yemeni Houthis. Thus, Iran has been left with virtually no military assistance, while Israel is supported by the United States, France and the United Kingdom.

• Israel seeks to completely destroy Iran's nuclear facilities, or at least roll back its scientific developments by decades. Since the Iranian reactors are hidden deep underground, Tel Aviv has not yet managed to inflict serious damage on Tehran's nuclear program. In order to destroy underground nuclear facilities, Israel needs American GBU heavy bombs, but the United States has not yet agreed to their use, taking a two-week pause for thought.

• Israel may be interested in regime change in Iran. The Jewish state has repeatedly talked about the possibility of assassinating Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. At the same time, a change of power from within is almost impossible, since the Iranian population has rallied against Israel's military aggression, and there is no alternative to the ruling regime in the country. Iran's most famous opposition figure, Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, has been living abroad for 45 years and has organized meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu several times, which many Iranians regard as a betrayal.

U.S. involvement in the conflict

• Israel is interested in the United States becoming more actively involved in the Middle East conflict. This would provide Israel with continued military assistance and authorize risky military operations in Iran that would be difficult to carry out without American support. Currently, the United States provides Israel with military assistance and helps repel Iranian attacks, but avoids direct involvement in the conflict.

• Support for Israel in American society has noticeably weakened, and there is no unity in Congress or even among Republicans about continued support for Tel Aviv. The popular idea in the American press is that Israel should resolve the conflict alone, without waiting for the United States to participate, and use its own penetrating bombs, albeit less effective ones, to destroy Iranian nuclear facilities.

• The United States is not interested in changing the Iranian regime. The military interventions of the American armed forces in Libya, Syria and Iraq have shown that an attempt to change power from the outside leads to prolonged destabilization in the region and the activation of radical anti-Western movements, which will be much more difficult to negotiate with than with the regime of Ayatollah Khamenei.

During the preparation of the Izvestia material, we talked and took into account the opinions of:

• RIAC member Andrey Kortunov;
• Viktor Smirnov, Head of the Department of Israel and Jewish Communities at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences;
• Vladimir Sazhin, Senior Researcher at the Center for the Study of the Near and Middle East at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences;
• Program Manager (RIAC) Ivan Bocharov;
• political scientist Georgy Asatryan;
• the Americanist Malek Dudakov.