Adding Fuel to a Nuclear Fire: The Israel-Iran Conflict
- mcoswalt
- Jun 18
- 7 min read
—
A new eruption of violence has been shaking the Middle East this week, as Israel has begun bombing Iran, and Iran has retaliated in kind against Israel. Israel initiated the attack on its long-time adversary in an attempt to destroy, or at least damage, Iran’s capacity to build nuclear weapons.
Whatever effect the current conflict may have on Iran’s nuclear ambitions, what is certain is that the conflict has already killed large numbers of people and will kill many more so long as it continues. A dramatic increase in violence is especially likely if the United States becomes involved in the conflict. The conflict is also likely to harm the larger cause of preventing the spread of nuclear weapons and reducing the nuclear threat.
The fighting between Israel and Iran needs to stop immediately, before more lives are lost.
How the Current Conflict Came to Be
Israel is currently the only Middle Eastern state armed with nuclear weapons. The possibility of Iran building nuclear weapons has been a long-running concern for Israel and many other nations.
To prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons, a coalition of nations, including the United States, negotiated the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran in 2015. The JCPOA lifted economic sanctions on Iran in return for Iran accepting temporary limitations on its ability to enrich uranium, enriched uranium being a crucial component of nuclear weapons.
The JCPOA collapsed in 2018 when US President Donald Trump, during his first term in office, decided to withdraw the United States from the agreement. The Biden administration and the second Trump administration subsequently pursued negotiations with Iran in the hopes of reaching a new agreement to prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons.
In the absence of a new diplomatic agreement, the Iranian government has continued to stockpile uranium: in May 2025, the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported that Iran has amassed almost 409 kilograms (over 900 pounds) of highly-enriched uranium. Such material could be used to build nuclear weapons, although doing so would require the uranium to be enriched further. IAEA chief Rafael Mariano Grossi warned that the current amount and enrichment level of Iranian uranium gives Iran the capability to build several nuclear weapons.
Iranian officials criticized the IAEA report as based on “unreliable and differing information sources.” They also emphasized that Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has prohibited nuclear weapons and that Iran has a right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded to the IAEA report with a statement declaring that “Iran is totally determined to complete its nuclear weapons program.” The Netanyahu statement also called for the international community to “act now to stop Iran.”
Tensions increased further in early June when the IAEA censured Iran for not fully cooperating with the UN agency’s investigation of its nuclear-related activities. Iranian officials responded defiantly that they would expand their uranium enrichment activities: “Our production of enriched materials will significantly increase,” a government spokesman stated.
The next day, Israel launched its present attacks on Iran.
Twin Bombing Campaigns
Israel began bombing Iran in the early morning hours of Friday, June 13. Israeli officials claimed about 200 fighter jets were involved in bombing roughly 100 targets. Drones were also reportedly involved in the attack.
The Israeli bombing campaign hit Iran’s primary nuclear enrichment facility, located in Natanz. Also hit were a secondary enrichment facility in Fordo and a nuclear research facility in Isfahan. The bombing also struck various military facilities and the Iranian capital of Tehran, including the city’s main gas depot.
The Israeli campaign includes targeting top members of the Iranian government. Iranian media and officials report that Israeli strikes have killed at least 10 top generals in Iran’s military, including the chief of staff of the armed forces and the commander of Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. Those killed also include five nuclear scientists and a prominent politician overseeing negotiations with the United States over Iran’s nuclear activities.
In response, Iran has launched hundreds of missiles and drones at Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities.
Both nations’ attacks on each other have taken a toll. As of this writing, Iranian officials report that Israeli bombing has killed at least 224 people and injured 1,400. The dead include 60 people, 20 of them children, who were killed when the bombing struck a residential building in Tehran.
Far fewer Israelis have died to date, perhaps because of Israel’s missile defense system. Nevertheless, Israeli officials report that 24 people have been killed by the Iranian bombing.
The United States’ Role
The precise involvement of the United States, Israel’s closest ally, in the current conflict is ambiguous. Shortly after the Israeli bombing campaign began, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated that Israel’s actions were “unilateral” and the United States was “not involved.” President Trump later stated on social media, “The U.S. had nothing to do with the attack on Iran, tonight.”
However, a Trump statement to the Wall Street Journal suggests that the United States was at least aware that Israel was going to attack Iran. The American decision to evacuate embassy staff across the Middle East shortly before the attack strongly supports such an interpretation.
Moreover, US officials have told multiple media outlets that the United States played a key role in shaping the Israeli campaign. The Trump administration reportedly vetoed Israeli plans to kill Ayatollah Khamenei. The Netanyahu government denies this story.
The Iranians have made their own views on this point clear. Iran’s Foreign Ministry has stated that Israel’s attacks “could not have been carried out without coordination with and approval of the United States.” The statement adds that the United States will be “held responsible for the dangerous consequences of Israel’s adventurism.”
For his part, Trump has declared “If we are attacked in any way, shape, or form by Iran, the full strength and might of the U.S. Armed Forces will come down on you at levels never seen before.”
Meanwhile, further US-Iranian negotiations on a new nuclear agreement have been cancelled. Iran’s Foreign Ministry has called such negotiations “meaningless.”
A Hypocritical and Counter-Productive Campaign
How the current conflict will end and what long-term consequences it will have are impossible to say. A few preliminary judgments can be made, though.
Attacking Iran to prevent it from building nuclear weapons is massively hypocritical. The prospect of Iran having nuclear weapons is certainly frightening. The more nations that possess nuclear weapons, the more likely it is that those weapons will be used. However, for Israel, the Middle East’s sole nuclear-armed state, to attack Iran to prevent it from building nuclear weapons is the height of hypocrisy. Israel is contributing to the nuclear threat far more than Iran simply because it already possesses these weapons.
The hypocrisy charge applies with equal or greater force to Israel’s main supporter, the United States. The United States also possesses nuclear weapons and is the only nation ever to use such weapons in wartime. Moreover, any support from the Trump administration for Israel’s campaign is especially perverse given that Trump’s 2018 abandonment of the JCPOA is part of what created the present crisis.
The current campaign is in response to a potential, rather than actual, threat. The IAEA’s report about Iran’s enriched uranium and Iran’s threats of further enrichment are troubling. Nevertheless, how likely Iran was, prior to the current campaign, to become a nuclear-armed state any time soon is unclear. When announcing the campaign Netanyahu was vague about when Iran might build such weapons: “It could be a year, it could be within a few months.”
Further, even if the Iranians built such weapons, they are hardly guaranteed to use them, against Israel or any other nation. Using nuclear weapons would relegate Iran to the kind of international pariah status from which the JCPOA was meant to free the nation.
The current Israeli campaign is thus a case of using violence not in response to an attack, or even the threat of an imminent attack, but in response to a speculative future threat of attack. Such a campaign is hard to justify.
The current campaign could increase the nuclear threat over the long term. Israel’s bombing may well do serious damage to any nuclear ambitions Iran has (although it also may not). However, the broader, longer-term effect of Israel’s campaign may be to encourage more nations to build nuclear weapons.
The attacks on Iran are the latest in a series of historical episodes in which a nation that sought nuclear weapons and then either failed to build them or voluntarily gave them up suffers terrible consequences at the hands of a nuclear-armed nation. Iraq’s nuclear ambitions came to nothing, and it was invaded by the nuclear-armed United States. Libya gave up its nuclear program only to be devastated by the United States and fellow nuclear powers Britain and France. Ukraine gave up the nuclear weapons on its soil and is now suffering invasion from nuclear-armed Russia.
The lesson many nations may draw from these episodes is “Build nuclear weapons as quickly as possible, at any cost, lest you suffer a similar fate.” The current campaign may thus contribute to the world becoming a more, not less, dangerous place.
The conflict will get worse if the United States is dragged in. American involvement in Israel’s campaign will escalate the violence and is not in the interests of either the United States or the Middle East. Yet the United States might be pulled in if Iran decides to attack US military personnel or other American targets as retaliation for US support for Israel.
The Netanyahu government may be hoping the United States is dragged in. A recent Netanyahu statement suggests his ambitions extend to overthrowing the present Iranian regime. US intervention could help the Israeli prime minister achieve this grandiose goal. Yet a war of regime change aimed at Iran would be a catastrophe for the Iranian people, as the dismal history of such wars reveal.
Seek an End to the Conflict
The longer the Israeli-Iranian conflict goes on, the more people will be killed, and the more probable it becomes that the conflict will escalate. The goal should be to seek a cease-fire.
American citizens should contact President Trump by phone at 202-456-1111 or by email and contact their elected officials in the House and Senate. Urge them to support negotiations to broker an end to the Israel-Iran conflict (the United States can exert influence on Israel in this area) and to oppose any US military involvement in the conflict.
The Middle East is in agony today. The least we can do is not to add to the suffering.
—
Editor's note:
Since the writing of this piece, resolutions have been introduced in the House and Senate that would curb the Trump administration’s ability to intervene in the war. Urging our members of Congress to support these resolutions would be a positive step:
Comentários