WarSclerotic

As the Trump Administration attempts, again, to thwart Iran’s decades-long effort to attain nuclear weapons, a look at key dates in the long-simmering conflict

13 April 2025

https://www.timesofisrael.com/long-fraught-timeline-of-us-iran-tensions-as-nuclear-negotiators-meet/

Iran and the United States held talks in the sultanate of Oman on Saturday, jump-starting negotiations over Tehran’s rapidly advancing nuclear program.

Iran’s state-run broadcaster said US Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff and Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi “briefly spoke” together — the first time the two nations have done that since the Obama administration.

Araghchi said more talks are planned for April 17.

The talks represent a milestone in the fraught relations between the two nations over Iran’s program, which is enriching uranium close to weapons-grade levels.

Here’s a timeline of the tensions between the two countries over Iran’s atomic program.

Early days

1967 — Iran takes possession of its Tehran Research Reactor under America’s “Atoms for Peace” program.

1979 — Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, fatally ill, flees Iran as popular protests against him surge. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returns to Tehran and the Islamic Revolution sweeps him to power. Students seize the United States Embassy in Tehran, beginning the 444-day hostage crisis. Iran’s nuclear program goes fallow under international pressure.

August 2002 — Western intelligence services and an Iranian opposition group reveal Iran’s secret Natanz nuclear enrichment facility.

June 2003 — Britain, France and Germany engage Iran in nuclear negotiations.

October 2003 — Iran suspends uranium enrichment.

February 2006 — Iran announces it will restart uranium enrichment following the election of hard-line president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Britain, France and Germany walk out of stalled negotiations.

June 2009 — Iran’s disputed presidential election sees Ahmadinejad re-elected despite fraud allegations, sparking Green Movement protests and a violent government crackdown.

October 2009 — Under President Barack Obama, the US and Iran open a secret backchannel for messages in the sultanate of Oman.

July 2012 — US and Iranian officials hold face-to-face secret talks in Oman.

July 14, 2015 — World powers and Iran announce a long-term, comprehensive nuclear agreement that limits Tehran’s enrichment of uranium in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions.

The nuclear deal collapses

May 2018 — Trump unilaterally withdraws the US from the nuclear agreement, calling it the “worst deal ever.” He says he’ll get better terms in new negotiations to stop Iran’s missile development and support for regional militias. Those talks don’t happen in his first term.

May 8, 2019 — Iran announces it will begin backing away from the accord. A series of regional attacks on land and at sea blamed on Tehran follow.

Jan. 3, 2020 — A US drone strike in Baghdad kills Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the architect of Tehran’s proxy wars in the Middle East.

Jan. 8, 2020 — In retaliation for Soleimani’s killing, Iran launches a barrage of missiles at military bases in Iraq that are home to thousands of American and Iraqi troops. More than 100 US service members suffer traumatic brain injuries. As Iran braces for a counterattack, the Revolutionary Guard shoots down a Ukrainian passenger plane shortly after takeoff from Tehran’s international airport, reportedly mistaking it for a US cruise missile. All 176 people on board are killed.

July 2020 — A mysterious explosion tears apart a centrifuge production plant at Iran’s Natanz nuclear enrichment facility. Iran blames the attack on Israel.

April 6, 2021 — Iran and the US under President Joe Biden begin indirect negotiations in Vienna over how to restore the nuclear deal. Those talks, and others between Tehran and European nations, fail to reach any agreement.

April 11, 2021 — A second attack within a year targets Iran’s Natanz nuclear site, again likely carried out by Israel.

April 16, 2021 — Iran begins enriching uranium up to 60% — its highest purity ever and a technical step from weapons-grade levels of 90%.

Feb. 24, 2022 – Russia launches its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Moscow ultimately will come to rely on Iranian bomb-carrying drones in the conflict, as well as missiles.

July 17, 2022 — An adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, Kamal Kharrazi, says that Iran is technically capable of making a nuclear bomb, but has not decided whether to build one. His remarks will be repeated by others in the coming years as tensions grow.

Mideast wars rage

Oct. 7, 2023 — Hamas terrorists from the Gaza Strip storm into Israel, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 others hostage. This begins the most intense war ever between Israel and Hamas. Iran, which has armed Hamas, offers support to the group. Regional tensions spike.

Oct. 8, 2023 — Iranian proxy Hezbollah begins near-daily rocket and drone attacks on Israel in support of Hamas, which will continue for the next 13 months.

Nov. 19, 2023 — Yemen’s Houthi rebels, long supported by Iran, seize the ship Galaxy Leader, beginning a monthslong campaign of attacks on shipping through the Red Sea corridor that the US Navy describes as the most intense combat it has seen since World War II. The attacks mirror tactics earlier used by Iran.

April 14, 2024 — Iran launches an unprecedented direct attack on Israel, firing over 300 missiles and attack drones. Israel, working with a US-led international coalition, intercepts much of the incoming fire.

April 19, 2024 — A suspected Israeli strike hits an air defense system by an airport in Isfahan, Iran.

July 31, 2024 – Ismail Haniyeh, a Hamas leader, is assassinated by Israel during a visit to Tehran after the inauguration of reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian.

Sept. 27, 2024 — After massively ramping up the war against Hezbollah, an Israeli airstrike kills its leader Hassan Nasrallah.

Oct. 1, 2024 — Iran launches its second direct attack on Israel, though a US-led coalition and Israel shoot down most of the missiles.

Oct. 16, 2024 — Israel kills Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in the Gaza Strip.

Oct. 26, 2024 — Israel openly attacks Iran for the first time in response to the Oct. 1 missile attack, striking air defense systems and sites associated with its missile program.

Trump returns — and reaches out

Jan. 20, 2025 — Trump is inaugurated for his second term as president.

Feb. 7, 2025 – Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei says proposed talks with the US are “not intelligent, wise or honorable.”

March 7, 2025 – Trump says he sent a letter to Khamenei seeking a new nuclear deal with Tehran.

March 15, 2025 — Trump launches intense airstrikes targeting Houthi rebels in Yemen, the last members of Iran’s self-described “Axis of Resistance” capable of daily attacks.

April 7, 2025 — Trump announces the US and Iran will hold direct talks in Oman. Iran says they’ll be indirect talks, but confirms the meeting.

April 12, 2025 — First round of talks between Iran and the US take place in Oman, ending with a promise to hold more talks after US Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi “briefly spoke” together — the first time the two nations have done that since the Obama administration.

April 19, 2025 — Next round of talks scheduled between the US and Iran.

In rare coordinated effort, officials said to have warned Iran’s supreme leader that military threats from US and Israel are real, and country faces massive unrest if it goes to war

11 April 2025

https://www.timesofisrael.com/top-iranian-officials-warned-khamenei-regime-in-danger-without-nuclear-talks-nyt/

In a rare intervention, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was urged by his top officials to allow negotiations with the United States on the regime’s nuclear program or risk the fall of the Islamic Republic, The New York Times reported Friday.

The US and Iran are set to meet in Oman on Saturday for talks over Tehran’s rogue nuclear program.

According to The New York Times report, which cited two senior Iranian officials who are familiar with the details, Khamenei held a meeting last month attended by heads of the judiciary and parliament. Those officials, in what the sources described as an unusual, coordinated effort, pressured Khamenei into accepting talks with Washington, even direct ones.

They told Khamenei that the threat of military action by the US and Israel against its nuclear sites was serious.

“If Iran refused talks or if the negotiations failed, the officials told Mr. Khamenei, military strikes on Iran’s two main nuclear sites, Natanz and Fordow, would be inevitable,” the sources said, as reported by the Times.

The country, already in economic shambles, would be forced to respond, but then would also likely be plunged into domestic unrest if it were to go to war, they said.

The combination of such events would amount to an existential threat to the Islamic Republic, the officials reportedly told Khamenei.

The sources said that Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, an ex-Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps chief and current conservative head of Parliament, told Khamenei that a war combined with a domestic economic implosion could quickly get out of control.

They also quoted President Masoud Pezeshkian as telling Khamenei that managing the country through its current crises was not tenable. The report points to power cuts that threaten to shutter factories and water shortages in the central city of Yazd, which saw schools and government offices closed this week.

Iran previously rejected talks but has since relented amid US President Donald Trump’s threats.

Hossein Mousavian, a former diplomat who served on Iran’s nuclear negotiating team on a 2015 deal and is now a visiting fellow at Princeton University, told The New York Times that the change illustrated that preserving the regime was Khamenei’s main priority.

“Mr. Khamenei’s turnaround demonstrates his long-held core principle that ‘preserving the regime is the most necessary of the necessities,’” Mousavian said.

While Khamenei relented and agreed to talks, he also imposed his own conditions, the report said.

Citing three Iranian officials, the NYT said that Khamenei agreed to discuss strict monitoring for the nuclear program and a significant reduction of the enrichment of uranium. However, he has said that Iran’s missile program is off limits, regarding it as being part of Iran’s defenses. The sources said that was a “deal breaker.”

However, the report also said that Iran was “open to discussing its regional policies” and support for its terror proxies like Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis in Yemen.

Hamas and Hezbollah have been severely weakened by Israel in the conflicts since Hamas’s Oct. 7 2023 assault on southern Israel, and the US is currently carrying out massive strikes on the Houthis.

The US has vowed not to allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon, and Trump has repeatedly threatened “bombing” and a “very bad day for Iran” if no agreement is reached to prevent it.

Iran, which is sworn to Israel’s destruction, denies seeking a nuclear weapon, but it has ramped up its enrichment of uranium to 60 percent purity, which has no application beyond nuclear weapons, and has obstructed international inspectors from checking its nuclear facilities.

Iranian officials said Friday that the Islamic Republic is giving the talks “a genuine chance,” and that, if there are not further “threats and intimidation from the American side, there is a good possibility of reaching an accord.”

The talks on Saturday will be led by Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and US special envoy Steve Witkoff, with Omani Foreign Minister Badr al-Busaidi as intermediary, according to Iranian state media.

Trump has characterized the talks as “direct,” while Iranian officials have insisted they will be “indirect.”

Khamenei adviser Ali Shamkhani said in a post to X on Friday that Araghchi was heading to Oman “with full authority for indirect negotiations with America.”

“Tehran seeks a real, just deal—away from media show and rhetoric. Key proposals are ready. If Washington shows determination for a deal, the path to agreement will be clear,” he wrote, in a message posted separately in Farsi, English, Arabic, Russian, and Hebrew.

The Iranian foreign ministry said on Friday the US should value the Islamic Republic’s decision to engage in talks despite what it called Washington’s “prevailing confrontational hoopla.”

The ministry’s spokesman, Esmaeil Baqaei, said Iran was “giving diplomacy a genuine chance in good faith and full vigilance,” adding, “America should appreciate this decision, which was made despite their hostile rhetoric.”

In the lead-up to the talks, Trump reiterated his warning that military action was “absolutely” possible if talks failed.

During his first term, Trump withdrew from a 2015 deal between Iran and six world powers — the US, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany —  and also imposed stiff sanctions. Iran responded by dropping some of its commitments to the deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

Hardline media in Iran voiced skepticism on the talks.

For example, the Kayhan newspaper ran editorials warning that new sanctions imposed this week showed the United States was “an enemy of Iran and its people” and dismissed negotiations to lift sanctions as a “failed strategy.”

Reformist media outlets struck a more optimistic tone, emphasizing the potential economic and investment opportunities talks could create.

Witkoff, expected to lead the American negotiation effort, visited Russia on Friday for talks on Ukraine with Russian President Vladimir Putin, an ally of Iran.

Expert-level consultations between Russia, China and Iran on nuclear issues took place in Moscow on Tuesday, according to the Russian foreign ministry.

Iran has in recent months also been talking with the three European signatories of the 2015 nuclear deal, namely France, Germany and Britain.

On Friday, Germany urged the two sides to reach a “diplomatic solution,” adding that it is a “positive development that there is a channel for dialogue between Iran and the United States.”

13 February 2025

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/the-wall-street-journal/israel-sees-opening-for-strikes-on-iranian-nuclear-sites-us-intelligence/news-story/0beab805f30db7e9ee8d528831523bfe

US intelligence agencies concluded during the final days of the Biden administration that Israel is considering significant strikes on Iranian nuclear sites this year, aiming to take advantage of Iran’s weakness, officials familiar with the report said.

The finding was included in an analytical assessment produced around the new year as the Biden administration wound down. The analysis highlighted the risks of further high-stakes military activity in the Middle East after the degradation of Iran’s capabilities over the past year.

The intelligence analysis concluded Israel would push the Trump administration to back the strikes, viewing him as more likely to join an attack than now-former President Joe Biden and fearing the window for halting Tehran’s pursuit of a nuclear weapon was closing, two of the people familiar with the intelligence said.

The US intelligence community produced a second report delivered during the early days of President Trump’s administration reiterating that Israel is considering such strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, according to one of the US officials familiar with the intelligence.

US military support and munitions would likely be needed for an Israeli attack on Iran’s heavily fortified nuclear sites given their complexity, US military officials say.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office didn’t respond to requests for comment, and Israel’s military declined to comment. Israeli officials have repeatedly signalled that there is an opportunity for more aggressive action against Iran.

“Iran is more exposed than ever to strikes on its nuclear facilities,” Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said in November. “We have the opportunity to achieve our most important goal – to thwart and eliminate the existential threat to the State of Israel.” Iran in the past has threatened a massive retaliation if its nuclear sites were hit, but Tehran is now significantly weakened after Israel’s strikes last year on its conventional military sites, and the heavy losses suffered by its regional proxies, including Hezbollah and Hamas.

During the presidential transition, some members of Trump’s team considered the viability of Israel launching preventive strikes on Iranian nuclear sites, including having US forces join Israeli aircraft in a bombing campaign. Now as president, Trump has said he prefers a negotiated solution.

Trump last week signed a national-security memorandum to reimpose his policy of “maximum pressure” on Iran and didn’t rule out supporting Israeli strikes if his desired negotiations to end Iran’s nuclear work fail.

“Reports that the United States, working in conjunction with Israel, is going to blow Iran into smithereens, ARE GREATLY EXAGGERATED,” he wrote last week on Truth Social.

A spokeswoman for the Office of the Directorate of National Intelligence declined to comment. A spokesman for the National Security Council said the administration doesn’t comment on intelligence matters.

Tehran has been signalling that it is open to talks with the US “If the main obstacle for the US is Iran pursuing nuclear weapons, then that can be resolved,” its foreign minister told state television last week. “Iran’s stance on nuclear weapons is clear.”

In December, the US intelligence community issued its sharpest warning yet that Iran could move to develop nuclear weapons. Iran has amassed a large stockpile of highly enriched uranium and is thought to have been working on the technical details of completing work on a bomb should it make the political decision to go ahead.

Iran has long forsworn development of a nuclear weapon, but the December report concluded the risks have increased that it could change its mind to develop an effective deterrent, pointing to a public debate in the country over going nuclear. Israel over the past year wiped out the top leadership and much of the arsenal amassed by Lebanese militia Hezbollah, an Iran ally and a deterrent to Israeli attacks, and crippled Iran’s air defences.

The fall of the Assad regime in Syria also deprived Iran of one of its most important allies and a crucial platform for projecting power in the region. Meanwhile, Iranian missile strikes against Israel in retaliation for Israeli attacks have failed to do much damage.

Iran’s leaders are also struggling with an economic crisis brought on by bad management, corruption and heavy sanctions, leaving the country in a weakened state as international pressure builds.

The Biden administration successfully urged Israeli leaders to avoid strikes on Iran’s major nuclear facilities last year when Israel retaliated for an Iranian missile and drone strike. The Israeli attacks instead hit Iran’s air defences and missile-production facilities, diminishing the country’s overall military infrastructure.

The timing and nature of any Israeli strikes on Iran would likely be subject to negotiations between the US and Israel and influenced by other factors, including the fate of fragile ceasefires in Gaza and Lebanon.

Any Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities would need to hit multiple sites, some in underground fortifications, and be thorough enough that Iran couldn’t quickly rebuild what was destroyed, Israeli analysts said.

Israel would be better served by a new deal in which Iran agrees to dismantle its nuclear program, said Yakov Amidror, a former Israeli national-security adviser under Netanyahu.

“If a good agreement cannot be achieved, Israel will have to act against the nuclear project of Iran” he said.

The Middle East has been struggling with several crises over the past year and a half, including wars in Gaza and Lebanon, the collapse of the Assad family’s half-century dictatorship in Syria, and direct attacks between Iran and Israel. Biden worked to contain the fighting, but Iran and the US were drawn deeper into the conflicts.

Trump’s intervention helped achieve a ceasefire deal in Gaza in January after a year of fruitless efforts. He has also pushed for a normalisation of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel.

The president roiled the Middle East and Western policy establishments last week by saying the US would take control of Gaza, redevelop the enclave and empty it of Palestinians.

Avner Golov, a former senior director at Israel’s National Security Council and now vice president of MIND Israel, a security-focused non-profit based in Tel Aviv, said while Netanyahu’s priority is the Iranian nuclear issue, Trump seems more interested in ending the war in Gaza and moving toward regional peace deals.

“At the end of the day,” Golov said of Trump’s priorities, “it’s Saudi first with all the deals around it, then Iran.”