Betrayal is the word that comes to mind.

In the early hours of February 28, the United States and Israel launched a ferocious strike on Iran, killing Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and several senior security officials at his residence in Tehran.

The attack came in the middle of negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, a dispute that has long divided Tehran and the West.

Washington and Tel Aviv allege that Iran has sought to develop a nuclear weapon. Tehran rejects the accusation, insisting that its program is peaceful and meant only for civilian purposes.

The dispute has turned Iran’s nuclear program into one of the most volatile flashpoints between Tehran and Washington.

Since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, Iran has been in the crosshairs of the United States. The U.S. does not recognize the Islamic Republic as a legitimate entity that represents the Iranians. It perceives it as a “regime” of “mad mullahs,” which confronts and resists Western hegemony in the region. 

The U.S. and Israel have used Iran’s nuclear programme as a pretext to topple the Islamic government in Tehran for decades. They have tried every coercion strategy: sanctions, assassination of Iran’s top nuclear scientists, cyberwarfare, industrial sabotage and espionage, so on and so forth to roll back Iran’s nuclear programme, but they failed to do so. 

The U.S. and Israel see regime change as a viable strategy to dismantle Iran’s nuclear programme. Since the 1990s, these two countries have used the nuclear issue as a casus belli for military strikes on Iran. 

To analyze the broad contours of the current U.S.-Iran conflict, one must understand its trajectory: how the U.S. and Iran have reached this cycle of violence. 

Before the Islamic Revolution of 1979, Iran was a key ally of the U.S. 

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During the Cold War, a period characterized by a ‘bipolar’ world order dominated by the U.S. and the USSR, Iran was the lynchpin in the U.S.’s ‘Twin Pillars’ strategy, which aimed to prevent Soviet influence in the Persian Gulf. 

This context is essential for understanding why the United States backed Mohammad Reza Shah’s ambitious nuclear program. 

In December 1953, U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower announced the ‘Atoms for Peace’ program, intended to mitigate the risks of nuclear proliferation while promoting the peaceful use of atomic energy. 

On March 5, 1957, Iran and the United States signed a framework agreement under this initiative, aimed at developing nuclear energy for civilian purposes, particularly for electricity generation. 

For Shah, the primary motivation behind his ambitious nuclear project was electricity generation. Iran signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1968 and ratified it in 1970. 

Under President John F. Kennedy’s administration, the U.S. constructed Iran’s first nuclear reactor, the Tehran Research Reactor (TRR), at the University of Tehran in 1967. This reactor was mainly used to produce medical isotopes for cancer treatment and nuclear medicine. 

Later, during Richard Nixon’s administration, the U.S. supported Iran’s 1974 plan to produce 20,000 megawatts of nuclear power through the ‘Twenty-Year Vision Plan.’

In 1976, the Ford administration agreed to sell Iran plutonium extraction technology, allowing the country to develop an indigenous nuclear fuel cycle to power its reactors. Furthermore, in October 1977, Gerald Ford signed a $6.4 billion deal with Shah to sell Iran eight light-water reactors and construct additional nuclear plants. 

Ironically, the United States laid the foundations for a nuclear Iran before the Islamic Republic, led by Ayatollah Khomeini, severed all ties with Washington. 

Around the mid-1980s, Iran began to rebuild its nuclear program. In 1995, Russia and Iran signed an $800 million deal to complete the Bushehr nuclear power plant, which had been abandoned by Kraftwerk Union, a German company. 

Since the 1990s, Russia has been the primary investor in Iran’s nuclear program. During this period, Iran’s nuclear programme faced heavy sanctions, notably the Iran Libya Sanctions Act (ILSA) in 1996 under the Clinton administration.

In August 2002, the Iranian nuclear “crisis” erupted when the world discovered Iran’s secret enrichment facilities at Natanz and Arak. To address the crisis, Iran and the E3 (Germany, France, and the U.K.) signed several agreements, including the Tehran Declaration (2003) and the Brussels Agreement (2004). 

Under the Brussels Agreement, Iran ‘voluntarily’ and temporarily agreed to halt enrichment activities and adopted the Additional Protocol to the 1967 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). 

However, the Europeans were unable to resolve the stalemate because the U.S. government, led by the Bush administration, demanded “zero enrichment”, leading to the collapse of talks in March 2005. 

Between 2006 and 2010, six UN Security Council resolutions were passed against Iran, imposing “biting” sanctions. 

In July 2015, the ‘P5+1’ (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, plus Germany) and Iran reached an agreement known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), or the Iran nuclear deal. 

Tehran consented to limit its nuclear program in exchange for relief from sanctions. However, in 2018, Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the agreement and initiated a “maximum pressure” campaign, imposing more than 1,500 sanctions on Iran. 

The Biden administration (2021-2024) has also struggled to break the deadlock regarding Iran’s nuclear program. 

When Trump resumed office in January 2025, he expressed a desire to renegotiate with Iran. In June 2025, amid ongoing nuclear negotiations mediated by Oman, Israel and the United States conducted joint military strikes on Iran, targeting nuclear sites and civilian infrastructure. 

The conflict resulted in the deaths of many Iranian nuclear scientists and top military generals, with over a thousand Iranians were killed. 

On June 22, 2025 under the “Operation Midnight Hammer,” Trump claimed to have “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program.  

Following that summer strike, Iran and the US returned to the negotiating table, with Oman mediating the talks. 

On February 26 this year, Iran and the US held the third round of indirect talks in Geneva. Iran is believed to have made major concessions on “zero stockpiling,” and the deal was very much within reach, noted the Omani Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi, who mediated the talks. 

Just two days after, on February 28, under “Operation Epic Fury,” the US and Israel launched coordinated military strikes on Iran, killing Iran’s Supreme Leader instantly. Currently, the death toll has surpassed a thousand.

There is a major escalation in the region. Iran, fighting for survival, has launched a massive retaliation. 

Tehran has expanded the geography of risk by striking US bases in the Persian Gulf. It has widened the escalation trap to Tel Aviv, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE, and Oman. 

Ali Khamenei had clearly stated that if Iran were attacked, it would be a “regional war.”

Trump betrayed diplomacy, and the consequences have been catastrophic for everyone to see. The GCC countries have been drawn into this conflict, causing irreparable damage to Iran’s relations with its Arab neighbours. 

A regional war was the last thing the Gulf monarchies wanted, knowing that it could spill over into their territories. 

Iran has already closed the Strait of Hormuz, a vital chokepoint in the Persian Gulf through which about 20 percent of global oil and gas passes, with serious consequences for the global economy.

Since returning to office, Donald Trump has ordered military strikes in several countries, including Iran, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Iraq, Venezuela and Nigeria. 

In less than nine months, he has drawn the United States into another war with Iran, openly aiming to “decapitate” the regime in Tehran.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio acknowledged that Washington knew Israel was preparing to strike Iran and feared Tehran would retaliate against American forces, prompting the United States to act pre-emptively. 

Trump now appears trapped in a war that was not entirely of his choosing, one that followed Israel’s decision to attack.

Washington and Tel Aviv believed that eliminating Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, would cause the Islamic Republic to collapse like a house of cards. That calculation has not held.

Iran is fighting back. 

If it were really about Iran’s nuclear programme, there were diplomatic off-ramps available in June 2025 and in February this year to resolve the Iranian nuclear imbroglio. 

However, as Ali Khamenei said, Iran’s desire for a nuclear weapon is a bogeyman that the US has created. 

The real objective of the “Great Satan” (a sobriquet constructed by Khomeini for the US) is to smash the Islamic Republic to the ground. 

Trump used negotiations as a ruse. The sinister aim is regime change. 

In June 2025 and now again, Trump abandoned diplomacy, and the consequences are obvious: regional apocalypse.

The writer is a PhD candidate at the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi. He can be reached at [email protected].

© Kashmir Observer