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Could Iran's nuclear bunker increase risk of Israeli attack? [1]
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Date: 2023-05
Reports that Iran is constructing a very large, deep bunker as part of its nuclear programme mean there is a renewed risk of an upsurge in tension, and the potential for conflict, most likely involving Israel but always with risk of it spreading much wider.
Context here is important.
During Barack Obama’s second term in the White House, countries including the UK, France and Germany, worked hard with the US to forge an agreement with the Iranian regime to avoid Iran developing nuclear weapons. A powerful motivation was the risk of Israel otherwise taking unilateral action.
Israeli politicians, and especially prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, have long regarded a nuclear-armed Iran as an existential threat, with the clear implication that they would take military action to prevent it developing such weapons. It would not be the first time that Israel has taken such action. It destroyed Iraq’s Osirak nuclear research reactor in Baghdad back in 1981, and more recently Israeli aircraft were involved in an assault on a Syrian nuclear facility in 2007.
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After protracted negotiations, a successful agreement with Iran was reached in 2015, and the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was adopted as part of UN Security Council Resolution 2231, coming into effect in January 2016. The agreement itself involved the US, Russia, China, UK, France, and Germany, together with the EU, all committing to the progressive easing of economic sanctions on Iran. Tehran, for its part, agreed to limit its nuclear programme so that nuclear weapons development would be stopped.
The Israeli government was against the agreement from the start, and many hard-line elements in Iran were also cautious, if not actively opposed. Even so, the deal held and was viewed in Western capitals as the best that could be achieved in the circumstances. Much would depend on whether the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was able to verify compliance with the agreement.
In the event, that became irrelevant with Donald Trump’s election in November 2016, bringing in an administration opposed to the deal from the start. By 2018 the US had withdrawn its support on the grounds that Iran was developing long-range ballistic missiles (primarily designed for nuclear weapons delivery) and was, at the same time, increasing its influence across the Middle East.
In practice, much of Iran’s increased influence stemmed from the West’s disastrous war in Iraq more than a decade earlier, but for Trump that was beside the point.
Trump’s withdrawal was accompanied by the imposition of even more severe economic sanctions on Iran than had been in place before, leading many in Tehran to argue that negotiating with the United States had been a complete waste of time.
After Trump lost the 2020 election, Biden’s administration did engage with Tehran to seek a way out, but although there has been some progress, with both sides saying they want a renewed deal, it has been minimal because of disagreement as to how to proceed.
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[1] Url:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/iran-nuclear-deal-revival-israel-netanyahu-trump-attack/
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