One of the top reasons that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched a surprise attack on Iran was to prevent President Donald Trump from reaching a new nuclear agreement with Tehran.
The Jerusalem Post spoke “to a wide range of top political and defense decision-makers” about Tel Aviv’s decision to begin an offensive war against Iran. One of the reasons that Israel attacked Iran when it did was that Tel Aviv became concerned that Trump could reach an agreement with Iran that made too many concessions from the perspective of Benjamin Netanyahu.
“Trump continued to flirt with Iranian diplomacy, letting two of his own deadlines pass, proceeding on a path that only seemed to make sense if he was going to eventually be willing to make concessions that Israel did not want him to make,” the outlet reported.
However, Tel Aviv did manage to interfere in the nuclear negotiations. “Mossad Director David Barnea and IDF Intelligence Chief Maj. Gen. Shlomi Binder, along with Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer and others, did all they could to convince Trump’s team to harden their negotiating positions, with some success.” The article continues, “But when they saw that Iran was digging its heels to maintain low-level uranium enrichment and refusing to destroy its advanced centrifuge fleet, conceding only that it would put them on ice, these intelligence and diplomatic officials feared the worst could come if a new and bad nuclear deal would be agreed to at any moment.”
Other factors that led Tel Aviv to attack Iran were the weakness of Tehran’s allies in the region, Washington normalizing ties with Damascus, and Iran’s two missile attacks on Israel in 2024. Those strikes were responses to Israel bombing the Iranian embassy in Damascus and the assassination of a Hamas political leader in Tehran.
Notably, one of the decisive factors was not Iran’s nuclear program.
“Yes, the Islamic regime had accelerated the activities of its weapons groups so that maybe the time it would take to make a nuclear weapon – or many of them – was reduced from two years to one year or even several months,” the Jerusalem Post explained. “But seeing the degree to which Israel had penetrated Iran’s nuclear and military programs, it is clear that Jerusalem had a clear line of vision on how far Iran had progressed – and sources had conveyed to the Post not long ago that Tehran was still not that close to the point of no return.”
American and Israeli officials have attempted to justify their offensive war on Iran by claiming Tehran could obtain a nuclear weapon within weeks.
