THE war that the US and Israel imposed on Iran this year has failed to achieve any of the objectives that the two countries had intended. The declared purpose was to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon. A fact-check indicates that Iran had kept its civil nuclear programme under IAEA safeguards. It had also willingly agreed to a nuclear deal in 2015. It was President Donald Trump who pulled the US out of the deal in 2018 and re-engaged with Iran in his second term under a “maximum pressure” campaign. While talks were still underway, Israel attacked Iran in June 2025, resulting in a 12-day war. Having failed to subdue Iran, the US and Israel launched joint strikes on Iran on Feb 28, this year, killing much of the Iranian leadership and relentlessly bombing Iranian facilities and installations for 40 days. All this while Iran remained in the NPT and maintained that it was not building a nuclear bomb, thanks in large measure to a directive from Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to not pursue a nuclear weapon programme.

This means that Tehran’s nuclear programme was only a pretext to attack Iran this year. Arguably, the real objective of the February strike was to change the ruling regime in Iran. It would........

© Dawn