The United States did not participate in Israel’s initial attacks on Iran but it certainly knew they were coming. Donald Trump admitted as much to the US media yesterday morning.

As early as Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had indicated to him on a call that military action was looking imminent. He spoke again with the President on Thursday to give him a further ‘heads up’.

Even though US-Iranian talks were ongoing it doesn’t look as if the President made much of an effort to dissuade Netanyahu. Instead, the US started evacuating non-essential personnel and the families of diplomats and the military from the region in anticipation of Israeli strikes. By mid-week most senior aides in the White House were expecting an Israeli attack ‘within days’.

It is true that Trump and Netanyahu don’t get along. Both are strong-willed, self-serving men with massive egos. They tend to rub each other up the wrong way.

Trump’s personal likes or dislikes often play a disproportionate part in determining US policy. But not this time. The President was more miffed by Iran rejecting his peace proposals than he was by Netanyahu’s determination to launch an attack.

On Thursday, Trump was dropping so many hints of impending military strikes that Israeli officials feared he was giving the game away, and unwittingly alerting Iran to what was in store. ‘I don’t want to say it’s imminent but it [an Israeli attack] looks like something that could very well happen,’ he said at one stage.

Israel prevailed on him to post a ‘give peace a chance’ message on social media to put Tehran off the scent, which he duly did around midnight Tel Aviv time on Thursday, with a tweet declaring that ‘we are still committed to a diplomatic solution’.

A few hours later Israel launched 200 jet fighters against Iran and activated its covert operations inside the country.

The strikes were mounted under cover of US talk about of continued diplomacy – a modern version of the Trojan Horse.

Throughout its negotiations with Iran, the US insisted that the Islamist regime in Tehran must give up its ambitions to develop nuclear bombs, which meant ending its efforts to enrich uranium to so-called ‘weapons grade’, which is far beyond the level needed for nuclear power stations. Throughout Iran refused point-blank to any such commitment.

Then, this week came a crucial development. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), tasked by the UN with getting a handle on Iran’s secret nuclear activity, ruled that Tehran was failing to comply with its obligations under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty – the first such ruling in two decades of arm-wrestling with the Iranian regime.

The IAEA’s report on the extent of Iran’s efforts to avoid detection was devastating. Every time an illicit nuclear site was identified by the UN agency, Iran would destroy the facility, move the uranium containers to another site and rake over the ground to make it seem as if nothing had ever happened there.

Iran remained defiant. The head of its atomic agency vowed to accelerate its production of near-weapons-grade uranium and open a previously unknown enrichment site in what was said to be a secure location – likely in the mountains of Natanz. At the same time Iran was upgrading its centrifuges (for enriching uranium) at another location to make them ten times as powerful.

In other words, they had committed to accelerating the enrichment of larger amounts of uranium for more bombs, at not one site but two, and with both designed to be difficult to destroy in a military strike. Iran had run out of road with the IAEA – and with the Trump administration. When Trump began his efforts to clinch a deal with Iran he gave negotiations two months to succeed. That deadline was reached on Thursday.

On that very day, US defence secretary Pete Hegseth stated that Trump had ‘given Iran every opportunity’ to agree a deal. Though a sixth round of talks was scheduled for this weekend in Oman it was clear Trump now thought the time for talk was over.

The President has stayed pretty much onside with Israel in the aftermath of its initial strikes. Speculation of a rift with Netanyahu has proved unfounded. Trump has told Iran that much worse is to come. The talk in Israel is of a two-week onslaught, maybe more.

Israel’s ambition is to do to Iran what it’s already done to Hezbollah, Iran’s terrorist proxy in Lebanon, but on a much larger scale.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu launches Operation Rising Lion against Iran

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu launches Operation Rising Lion against Iran

Israel's Iron Dome at work during an Iranian bombardment over Tel Aviv. Mr Netanyahu’s next move might well be to threaten Iran’s vulnerable oil refineries, Andrew Neil writes

Israel’s Iron Dome at work during an Iranian bombardment over Tel Aviv. Mr Netanyahu’s next move might well be to threaten Iran’s vulnerable oil refineries, Andrew Neil writes

That means decapitating the leadership (three generals, including the head of the regime’s praetorian troops, the Revolutionary Guard, were killed in the first strike); degrading its arsenals of missiles and drones (the covert teams on the ground are doing that as much as the Israeli jet fighters); and – specific to Iran – destroying its nuclear bomb facilities (Israel claims it’s already done ‘significant damage’ to the Natanz enrichment site).

The strategy is to force a much-weakened Iran into a settlement. Trump agrees. ‘Iran must make a deal,’ Trump urged ‘before there is nothing left.’ Early assessments by various intelligence agencies suggest Iran’s skies are already largely open and undefended after just the first wave of Israeli strikes.

Yesterday Trump warned Tehran that Israel had access to US-made ‘lethal military equipment’ which ‘they know how to use’ and that further attacks would be ‘even more brutal’.

I am told by one usually reliable source (but have not been able to confirm from other sources) that the US has made its infamous ‘bunker buster’ bomb available to the Israeli air force.

Technically known as the ‘GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator’, it is 30,000lb of explosive and the only bomb likely to take out Iranian nuclear bomb-making facilities buried deep underground.

The US air force uses the stealth B2 bomber to deliver it but the Israeli air force has no B2s. It’s not clear on what Israeli military aircraft it could be deployed. America is not inclined to oblige with a B2 bombing run of its own. The US administration clearly approves of – and has even been complicit in – the Israeli strikes. Even so, Trump is anxious to avoid any direct military involvement unless US bases or close allies in the region are attacked.

America’s Sunni Arab allies in the Gulf have criticised Israel’s actions. But such criticism is simply a matter of course.

In truth, the largely Sunni Arab Gulf states have every interest in Iran – a Shia theocracy that seeks to dominate the region – being humiliated and deprived of the ability to develop nuclear weapons.

The Jordanian air force has already taken to the skies to take down Iranian drones dispatched to Israel in retaliation.

The usual anti-Israeli voices are loud in their outrage at the attacks on Iran. Yet even European governments are quietly agreeing with America that Iran was given every opportunity to make a deal – but chose to string the US along instead.

And that Trump had made it clear from the start that a nuclear-armed Iran was not something that would be tolerated.

On both sides of the Atlantic there is admiration for Israel’s military prowess, especially the destructive work of its covert operations inside Iran, and for the strategic thinking behind its strikes.

The Trump-Netanyahu bust-up so hoped-for by Israel’s enemies has failed to materialise. Fashionable opinion is now saying the strikes will only delay Iran developing the Bomb – indeed it might even speed it up. But that is less credible with every day the effectively defenceless facilities of Iran are pounded from the skies.

The fact is that Israel holds most of the cards. America has been squared. The Europeans barely matter. The Sunni Arabs are quietly content.

An unpopular Iranian dictatorship is reeling from the onslaught. Its terrorist proxies throughout the region have been largely brought to heel. It must now fear for its own future.

Israel’s next move might well be to threaten Iran’s vulnerable oil refineries, which would destroy an already tottering economy whose fossil fuel revenues are the only thing propping it up. That, in turn, would further undermine the regime.

Of course Israel might equally say: we’ll leave the refineries intact if you let us destroy your nuclear bomb facilities. That would leave the mullahs in a real quandary – a Catch-22 for Tehran if ever there was one.

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