On 13 June Israel launched a series of ‘pre-emptive’ attacks against Iranian nuclear facilities and senior members of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, with the direct/military support of the United States coming later on. Iran retaliated by sending a wave of missiles across Israel.
For nearly two weeks, Israel and Iran traded missile strikes amidst growing calls for de-escalation. Several countries, including Britain, Canada and Germany, emphasised the danger of Iran’s nuclear program while calling for a return to diplomatic measures.
On 16 June, the UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy released a statement stating that “further escalation in the Middle East is not in Britain’s interests, nor the interests of Israel, Iran or the region”. Lammy also drew attention to the importance of stopping Iran’s nuclear programme, and to the implications of this conflict for the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
US attack on 23 June
At first, the US appeared uncertain about their approach to the conflict. At the time of Israel’s attack, the US was in formal discussion with the Iranian Government, negotiating potential hard limits on Iran’s uranium enrichment programme. On 7 June, The Oxford Blue reported on the stalemate in these negotiations, as Iran refused to acquiesce to the US demands for the termination of high-level uranium enrichment in Iran.
In response, US President Donald Trump threatened Iran with significant US and Israeli military action. This threat became a reality on 23 June, when the US did what no other military in the world had the capacity to do.
The Fordo nuclear facility, Iran’s most secure known uranium enrichment site, is located within a mountain region near the Iranian city of Qom, deep underground. The only weapons thought to be potentially capable of penetrating Fordo are the 13000 kg GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP). Only the US military is believed to have these MOPs.
This meant that while Israel dealt significant damage to Iran’s more exposed uranium enrichment sites, detrimental damage to Fordo could only be enabled through direct US involvement.
In the late hours of Saturday, 23 June, this came to pass. 125 US military aircraft, including seven B-2 stealth bombers, were involved in a strategic attack on Iran’s key nuclear facilities in Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan.
This attack marked the first direct military involvement from the US in the conflict between Iran and Israel. Several MOPs were dropped on Fordo in ‘Operation Midnight Hammer’. While Trump reported that the operation successfully destroyed the nuclear sites targeted, as of the time of publishing it is too soon to tell the level of internal damage to the bunker.
But why now?
The conflict between Israel and Iran is not a new occurrence; rather the result of decades of proxy wars and animosity between the two.
In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Iran has powerfully funded, trained and supported the Palestinian militant group Hamas. Their support has extended to other groups that are opposed to Israel, such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah and the Yemeni Houthis. While it is not clear the extent to which Iran influences Hamas’ activity, Israel has presented some documents to suggest that Iran had advance knowledge of Hamas’ attack on Israel on 7 October 2023.
Following the 7 October attack, in which around 1200 people were killed and 251 people taken hostage, Israel launched a major military offensive on Gaza. Their supposed goal was to destroy Hamas and secure Israel’s future. The conflict has continued to this day. Although the statistics from different sources conflict, several sources say that at least 60,000 Palestinians have been killed, as well as 1,139 Israelis between October 2023 and January 2025.
While direct military attacks on Gaza have officially ceased, Israel has maintained a strict blockade on Gaza, even heavily restricting the delivery of humanitarian aid. The Israeli Defence Minister, Israel Katz, has argued that the blockade prevents weapons from reaching the remaining members of Hamas. Several international bodies, including the UN, have called for the blockade to be lifted.
Iran also supports several Lebanese Shia militias including Hezbollah. In October 2023, Hezbollah joined the Israel-Palestine conflict by firing rockets at Israel. However, in November 2024, Hezbollah agreed to end its attacks on Israel and its armed presence in areas of southern Lebanon. Israel’s attacks on Hezbollah had completely decimated its leadership and military capacity, leaving them with no choice but to accept the ceasefire.
However, this ceasefire has been short-lived. In early June, Israel resumed military activity in Lebanon against Hezbollah, which has included the resurgence of missile strikes on military targets. Israel has stated that there will not be peace with Lebanon until Hezbollah fully disarms.
With several of Iran’s allies, such as Hamas, Hezbollah and other non-state actors across the Middle East, in a critically weak position, Iran’s allies in the region have been powerfully undermined. Iran’s international allies, including Russia and China, also appeared less likely to intervene in an attack in Iran, with other national operations taking priority.
For Israel, this provides an opportunity like never before to take action against Iran’s nuclear weapons programme—or what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calls “the Iranian threat to Israel’s very survival”. Netanyahu has made statements claiming Iran poses an existential threat to Israel since 2005, and called the 2015 Iran deal too lenient.
International fears of an Iranian nuclear weapon
Iran’s unique vulnerability was not the only factor influencing Israel’s decision to strike Iran on 13 June. Growing international concerns over Iran’s nuclear program means Israel’s and the US’s attacks, at least insofar as their damage to the nuclear facilities, have received praise alongside calls for caution. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer for example showed his support for Trump’s decision but advocated for diplomacy.
The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) is a deeply important international treaty written up in 1968, which Iran is a signatory to. Iran insists that its nuclear programme is only for “peaceful” purposes, but has been found to be in violation of the NPT requirements several times. In particular, Iran’s growing supply of uranium, which has been enriched far beyond civilian thresholds, has been a major point of contention.
Iran has been involved in several armed conflicts since the turn of the century, meaning that the potential development of a nuclear weapon makes several global powers, including the UK, anxious. In particular, the US has been focused on curbing Iran’s nuclear capacity since the peak of President George Bush’s war on terror.
US foreign policy towards Iran has been focused on holding them to their obligations under the NPT and curbing the level of uranium enrichment, to very little success. Iran’s refusal to be transparent regarding their nuclear programmes further escalated the issue. By the time Trump was engaged in diplomatic talks with Iran, the 23 June attack was slowly being planned.
Trump claims that his involvement in the conflict has been limited to removing the nuclear threat. The apparent success of ‘Operation Midnight Hammer’ in destroying nuclear facilities and Trump’s subsequent announcement of a ceasefire appears to support this.
Given many US citizens’ fatigue around long-term involvement in the Middle East, restricting direct military involvement could be a decision designed to appeal to the American population, and his own supporters. Many MAGA Republicans, including Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, and social media influencers Candace Owens and Alex Jones, have been outspoken in their criticism of the strikes.
Currently, nine countries in the world are known to have nuclear weapons: Russia, the US, China, France, the UK, Pakistan, India, Israel and North Korea. Several of these countries are also those the most outspoken about the danger of other countries acquiring nuclear weapons.
The question of who should be allowed to have a nuclear arsenal, as well as if any country should be able to decide this, has been continuously debated since nuclear weapons were first created and deployed. Iran argues they need them for self-defence against attacks like those from Israel and the US.
Calls for Iranian regime change
At the beginning of the conflict, Netanyahu emphasised that Israel’s goals in the conflict were not only to “decapitate the nuclear programme”, but also to encourage “regime change”.
On 13 June, he said that the time had come for “Iranian people to unite around its flag and its historic legacy, by standing up for [their] freedom from the evil and oppressive regime.” Supposedly, the attacks on the nuclear facilities and several high-ranking members of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps were also designed to provide the Iranian people with an opportunity to rise up.
This was unsuccessful. It is true that there are some Iranian people who are not satisfied with their socio-economic situation within their country. In 2022, the arrest of Mahsa Amini, an Iranian-Kurdish woman, and subsequent death within police custody triggered widespread protests across Iran.
However, the attacks on Iran from Israel have rallied many of the population against Israel, seeing the attacks as a threat to the whole population rather than to the military or the government.
This is not the first time external powers forced a regime change in Iran. In 1953, a CIA organised coup resulted in Iran’s first democratically elected leader, Mohammed Mossadegh, being replaced by Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran. Pahlavi’s regime violently suppressed political dissent and increased wealth inequality, eventually becoming so unpopular that he fled the country. In the aftermath, the Islamic Republic of Iran, as it is now, was created.
Furthermore, while Trump has engaged in controversial public speculation about the possibility of regime change in Iran, many other countries seem less inclined to encourage regime change now that the nuclear threat seems pacified.
An uneasy peace?
In the early morning of 24 June, Trump announced that he had established a ceasefire between Iran and Israel and an end to the ‘12-Day War’.
Iran had responded to the US attack the day before by launching missiles at the largest US military base in the region, the Al-Udeid base in Qatar. Iran gave warning that the strike would occur, meaning that no casualties have been reported, and Trump dismissed the attack as “very weak”. Iran has previously done similar; it is a move many see as political posturing, giving the appearance of retaliation without stoking a conflict they would lose.
Israel announced that it had agreed to the ceasefire, before accusing Iran of launching missiles into the territory after the ceasefire had come into place. Iran argued that the missiles had been launched before the ceasefire was agreed. Israel retaliated by bombing a military target near Tehran, before Trump lashed out at both Iran and Israel for violating the truce.
Whether the ceasefire will stay remains to be seen. Already, Israel has violated the ceasefire negotiated last year with Lebanon through several attacks on southern Lebanon. Israel also has not achieved its goal of regime change in Iran, which means that it may feel that Iran remains a threat. However, this threat may need to be addressed diplomatically, now that the US appears to be against further military engagement with Iran.
Iran may also feel that it has unfinished business with Israel and the US. Not only is there no evidence as to the extent of the destruction to Iran’s nuclear facilities, as US Vice-President JD Vance has pointed out, but Iran may also escalate the situation on an economic front. Iran can shut down the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial global choke point for oil trade, a route that carries 20% of the world’s oil supply.
Closing the Strait of Hormuz would give Iran significant economic leverage and punish the countries that attacked the nation, but it would also anger some of Iran’s international allies depending on the Strait.
The issues which have triggered the conflict are not resolved, but they may be somewhat satisfied for the present, having had a taste of the violence a full-scale war could bring. At present this conflict appears to have reached an uneasy peace. Careful diplomacy will be necessary to allow these deep-rooted issues to be resolved, allowing this uneasy peace to become a lasting peace in the region.