The world has long tried to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, and rightly so.

US President Donald Trump never ceases to proclaim that had he been president in 2022, the Russia-Ukraine war would never have happened. As with many of his claims this counterfactual – the mental simulation where you think about something that happened, and then imagine an alternate ending – is not based on any concrete evidence other than his supposed chummy relationship with Vladimir Putin.

The current war between Iran and Israel, however, has come under his watch, and is a direct result of his chummy relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It is almost certain that had Trump not been in power this war would not have happened.

The justification that Israel gave for starting the war was that Iran was imminently about to develop a nuclear weapon. It is a plausible reason, one that most people would view as requiring forceful action, as the idea of nuclear weapons in the hands of the Iranian regime is a frightful proposition. This was exemplified by the comments of new German Chancellor Friedrich Merz when he said that Israel was doing the world’s dirty work.

However, Iran’s proximity to getting a nuclear weapon was not as clear cut as Netanyahu and Trump would have us believe. Netanyahu has been crying wolf about this issue for almost his entire 17 years in office. In 2012 he was sounding the alarm that Iran was within months of achieving that aim. In 2015 his claim was that the period was shortened to within weeks, while in 2018 we came down to within days. 

While many people justifiably have doubts about Iran’s claim that it did not plan to develop nuclear weapons – Iran claims it is focusing on developing nuclear power for energy purposes – there is no concrete evidence that Iran was about to develop a nuclear weapon anytime soon. This is supported by the comments of Tulsi Gabbard, the US director of National Intelligence, who testified in March (later retracted after Trump said that “he did not care what she said”) that even though Iran had proceeded on the path to enrich uranium, it had not developed any weapons and was not near that purpose. The same view was expressed by the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Mariano Grossi.

The world has long tried to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, and rightly so. In 2015, after painstaking negotiations, an agreement was reached under President Barack Obama, which established a framework for Iran’s nuclear programme. Unwisely, Trump in 2018 at the insistence of Israel pulled out from that agreement, which allowed Iran to start enriching uranium again.

It is said that it is easier to predict what will happen in seven years, rather than in the next seven days. Indeed, one could possibly predict that the path we were on in 2018 was the one with a destination of the US bombing Iran in 2025. After all, Trump’s strategy was publicly stated as one of maximum pressure on Iran. That was amply demonstrated in the early hours of last Sunday. (Incidentally, the most vocal advocate of the US using force against Iran was John Bolton, Trump’s National Security Adviser in 2018-2019, who ironically was fired by Trump because he felt he was too pro-war).

Why though, would Netanyahu start a war with Iran now, if preventing the imminent development of nuclear weapons was not the pressing target? Apart from the fact that the timing was just right for Israel to proceed with its meticulous planning, as Hamas, Hezbollah and Syria had been eliminated as a threat near the Israel border, there were two other developments that Israel wanted to prevent from happening.

First, it did not want the US to reach an agreement with Iran, as was the case in 2015. The US was engaged in talks with Iran regarding its nuclear programme and had another summit meeting on Sunday, June 15, even though the supposed deadline of 60 days that Trump gave in finding an agreement had lapsed three days previously.

The second development that Israel wanted to prevent was the UN conference planned for June 17-20 and to be co-chaired by France and Saudi Arabia. The conference on a possible two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians was vehemently opposed by Netanyahu.

Such was the opposition to the conference that the US was discouraging governments around the world from attending according to a US cable seen by Reuters. It added that countries that take “anti-Israel actions” following the conference will be viewed as acting in opposition to US foreign policy interests and could face diplomatic consequences from Washington.

The above two events never took place, as Israel’s attack put an end to those prospects. Even if stopping the above two developments were not directly the cause of the attacks, the truth is that Israel went ahead with its “Israel first” military plans as it knew it had the support of the US. Netanyahu has skillfully managed Donald Trump, by offering him a “victory” on a plate which he knew Trump’s ego could not pass by.

Ever since Trump suggested that Gaza should be turned into a beach resort, he has effectively given the Israeli prime minister carte blanche in the Middle East. Among the chaos of all the war hostilities, one forgets that the primary source of conflict in the Middle East has been the failure to address the Palestinian issue and the lack of a credible plan for a Palestinian state.

So, what happens now? There are many possibilities, and as I said above predicting the next seven days is inherently difficult. One possibility is that the leadership in Iran will not be there for long. If so, Iran quite possibly will follow in the footsteps of Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq and Syria in another example of countries where a power vacuum will bring a lot of misery to its people.

If the Iranian regime does survive, then in all probability it will be driven to the open bosom of Russia in an unholy alliance with North Korea. If Iran acquires a nuclear deterrent through that route, then the world would be a much riskier place.

That would also be a testament to the failure of the world to find diplomatic answers to problems such as the Palestinian autonomy or the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Back on October 20, 2024, I wrote an article in the Sunday Mail, on the need to remodel the UN to be fit for purpose. I concluded then that this was needed before another world war made it a necessity, pretty much like the UN itself came to replace the League of Nations after the Second World War. I regret to say that we are nowhere near building a UN fit for purpose.

Instead, we are left with a world where we celebrate the rise of defence expenditures from 2 to 5 per cent of GDP, as witnessed in the recent Nato summit, as if this was a major achievement and ignoring that this means making us all poorer. And the person responsible for making that happen (notwithstanding that this increased defence spending is necessary to safeguard us from the dangers “the daddy” himself poses), wants to be awarded the Nobel peace prize. Go figure.