After a 12-day conflict between Israel and Iran, major questions remain about the durability of the armistice and the prospects for future Iran’s nuclear deal.
Just over a week after the US forced two regional rivals into a ceasefire, Israeli airstrikes wiped out the top of Iran’s powerful revolutionary guards on June 13th, ending an air force war that targeted ballistic missile weapons.
The strike also struck Iran’s nuclear site, with Israel claiming that Tehran was within reach of nuclear weapons. Iran fought back against a barrage of missiles in Israel’s military facilities, infrastructure and cities.
The fragile peace was mediated by Washington on June 24, the day after bombing three major nuclear sites in Iran.
However, the updated US and the possibility of a lecture is in the air. Washington and Tehran were having discussions about Iran’s nuclear program when Israel began the war.
On Tuesday, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Aragci rejected the prospect of promptly resuming talks with the US after President Donald Trump suggested that negotiations with Tehran could resume this week.
“The end of the US military’s threat is a prerequisite for the resumption of talks between Tehran and Washington,” Araguchi said in an interview with CBS.
Iran’s side job United Nations nuclear watchdog
Last week, Trump said he would consider putting up a fresh strike against Iran if the country is found to be enriching uranium to a level.
Rafael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the United Nations nuclear watchdog, said on Sunday that the US was attacked by three Iranian nuclear sites: Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan.
However, he warned that Tehran could be producing enriched uranium “in a few months.”
Iranian President Masuud Pezeshkian ordered Wednesday to halt cooperation with the IAEA, according to state media. Trust in the country’s agency is currently broken, Pesechkian told French President Emmanuel Macron by phone on Sunday.
The satellite image dated June 29th was released by the US aerospace company Maxar Technologies and shows activity at the Fordow site, one of Iran’s leading uranium enrichment centres.
Images show miners and people at work around large vents in the ventilation system at the underground site.
Before the Iran-Israel conflict, the IAEA was granted regular access to Iranian enrichment sites to monitor them. However, under the law passed under the law on Wednesday, future testing of Iranian nuclear sites by the IAEA requires approval by the Supreme National Security Council.
“How do you think we can guarantee the safety of their (IAEA inspectors) when peaceful establishments were targeted a few days ago?” an Iranian diplomatic source told EuroNews.
There’s no chance of a contract
The conflict may have been considered concise by Israel and the United States, but due to Tehran’s leadership, the war has essentially been unresolved despite a ceasefire.
Perhaps it’s not surprising given that Tehran places war deaths on its citizens at 935, including 38 children and 132 women.
Israeli Prime Minister Benamin Netanyahu said there was “sufficient local opportunities” for 12 days of post-conflict stabilization, but this has not yet been seen.
According to Rafaelle Marchetti, director of the Center for International Strategic Studies at Lewis University in Rome, Tehran’s leadership opposes the ultimate strategic goals of Israel and the United States.
Netanyahu has destroyed Iran’s nuclear program as a matter of Israel’s national security, but Tehran’s strategic goal, according to Marchetti, will be a balance of regional power based on mutual nuclear deterrence.
“It’s not at all surprising that Iran has embarked on the nuclear development process, but here, at least officially, Iran has always adhered to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, unlike Israel,” Marchetti said.
Therefore, it is difficult for one of the parties to reach an agreement between them without giving in, he told Euronows. Changes to the regime could solve the problem in the long run, Israel and the US calculated.
Iran fears Israeli region hegemony
Israel does not officially recognize that it owns nuclear weapons, but unlike Iran, which signed an agreement during Iranian rule in 1970 during Iran’s control of Shah Mohammad Reza Paharabi, it does not comply with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
At the time, Tehran, along with Israel and Turkey, was in the balance of Western anti-Soviet power, now known as the “Expanding Middle East,” as one of three important pillars.
That year, before the Shia administrative revolution in 1979, Ankara, Tehran and Tel Aviv shared warm political and military relations based on the convergence of strategic interests.
But today, Iran speaks of his desire to destroy Israel.
Neither Israel nor Iran has official military nuclear doctrines. Because the former does not recognize that it has nuclear weapons, and the latter advocates for pursuing a nuclear program that is peaceful and dedicated solely to civilian purposes.
Israel does not accept or deny that it has atomic weapons. It is the so-called doctrine of intentional strategic ambiguity: a nation that keeps its potential enemy uncertainty about the reaction in the event of a conflict.
Israel owns a stockpile of 90-400 nuclear warheads, according to estimates by members of other countries, international organizations and scientific communities.
Although there is no official doctrine regarding the use of nuclear power, in reality, nuclear weapons are “the ultimate weapon” for Israel, says David Riglett Rose, a Middle Eastern scholar Iris, a Paris-based Institute for International Strategic Relations.
“We are totally deterred. Even in 1973 (when Israel risked military collapse in the face of Syria and Egyptian attacks), it was not used in the Yom Kipur war,” he said.
Pursuing strategic ambiguity
This is one solid reason despite the intentional strategic ambiguity, Rigoulet-Roze told Euronows.
“The Jewish state cannot withstand the presence of other nuclear forces in the region,” he said.
In fact, in 1981, Israel attacked and destroyed the Osirak reactor in Iraq. Iraq’s Osirac reactor is officially intended for civilian use and was developed with the help of France under then President Valerie Giscard de Estein and Prime Minister Jerks Chirac.
Israeli security services justified the attack by saying that nuclear reactors could be converted to plutonium production.
In 2007, the Israeli Jets attacked Syrian Dell Ezzore, and according to Mossad, the al-Assad regime was building nuclear reactors with support from North Korea.
Today, the balance between power and political and diplomatic relations has changed to Israel’s favor. Egypt and Jordan recognize the Jewish state, and Syria is no longer in a position to do anything harm after the collapse of the Arsad. Furthermore, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq is now only an ambiguous memory.
However, the presence of Iran’s strategic nuclear forces will break the balance of non-proliferation in infamous, unstable regions, analysts warn.
“Saudi Arabia’s bin Salman said that in the case of Iran’s nuclear forces, Saudi Arabia also pursued military atoms, and that there is a potential domino effect that forces Turkey and Egyptian sentiments to be equipped with atomic weapons,” Riglet Rose said.
“This was intended to be avoided in the Iranian nuclear deal signed by the EU, UK, Germany, France, the US, China and Russia in 2015, and was condemned by President Trump in 2018,” he added.
