There has been a long history of a shadow war between Iran and Israel that goes back to the Islamic Revolution of 1979 when the new regime in Tehran declared Israel its arch enemy. It fully burst into the open this June in the so-called 12-day war. Were you surprised by the development?
I was surprised about the timing of the strikes. But they were a long time in the making. After the red line of direct confrontation between Iran and Israel was crossed twice in 2024, it appeared that Israel was keen to pursue a military solution to the nuclear standoff with Iran. However, most observers, including Iranian officials, believed that that could only occur once US President Donald Trump concluded that the diplomatic track was exhausted. The strikes happened two days prior to the sixth round of negotiations between Iran and the United States, which was scheduled to take place in Muscat in Oman, and that was a surprise—the more so since it appeared that President Trump was reluctant to greenlight an Israeli strike that could entangle the United States in another potential conflict in the Middle East.
Did the Israeli government act on its own account?
Since October of 2024, when Israel degraded Iran’s air defenses, it was trying to use this moment of Iranian vulnerability to do what it had always been reluctant to do out of fear of a potential backlash. By that time, it had already significantly weakened Iran's network of proxies and partners in the region, such as Hamas and Hezbollah.
So, this was a moment of a war of opportunity from the Israeli perspective that should not have been wasted. And in February, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was the first world leader to meet with President Trump, their agreement was reportedly that the US president would try diplomacy first, but if diplomacy did not work, that he would not prevent Israel from pursuing a military solution.
If you combine the amount of time that the Iranian and the American negotiators spent together, however, it’s less than 24 hours in the five rounds of negotiations that they had. So, to assume that a file that has been subject of negotiations for nearly 22 years could be resolved in negotiations that took less than a day in total is quite confounding, really. But that was, I think, what Prime Minister Netanyahu was able to use effectively to convince President Trump that a military option should be pursued—also with the belief that after the strike, Iran will become more amenable to accepting a deal based on the United States’ terms of completely dismantling its nuclear program.
So, the US gave the green light?
It is hard to imagine for an attack of that scale with the expectation of Iranian retaliation, that could endanger American lives in the region, that the United States was not aware of the strike. Now, one can say that it was not actively involved in facilitating it, but there is some evidence that the US was involved in deconfliction over the Iraqi airspace; most Israeli fighter jets flew over Syria and Iraq, and the US is in control of Iraq’s airspace.
There's also very likely a degree of intelligence cooperation that had existed. And again, the United States was involved in defending Israel. So, it is hard to describe this strike as a purely unilateral Israeli strike. I think there was a degree of US involvement. And as soon as President Trump saw how impressive initial Israeli gains were, he wanted to join in and get the credit. That is why I believe he eventually entered the conflict, because he wanted to demonstrate that it is only the United States that is able to finish off Iran's nuclear program.
In which ways has the 12-day war actually changed the region?
Undoubtedly, there is a shift in the balance of power. Iran’s stock has significantly diminished because its regional deterrence is in a shambles, and its nuclear program has suffered serious damage. But although Iran is down, it is not out. It still has significant offensive capabilities in the form of hundreds of ballistic missiles. We know that Iran could continue the conflict with Israel, turn it into an attritional one for at least another few weeks with its remaining stockpile of missiles. And there is still a potential pathway open for Iran to acquire nuclear weapons, because the two ingredients that Iran needs to achieve that objective, which is a stockpile of near-bomb-grade fissile material and a potential stockpile of advanced centrifuges, are still at Iran's disposal. So, a dash toward nuclear weapons in a secret facility is still something that Iran can do. It has the knowledge, the material, and the equipment needed. And without inspections, the world will be blinded to that possibility.
How are Iran’s neighbors reacting?
The Gulf countries are now even more uncomfortable about the fact that a cornered, wounded Iran—which already crossed the line of retaliating on Gulf countries' territory in response to US strikes on Iran—could lash out against them if the conflict resumes or if Iran is squeezed harder by Israel and the United States economically. In consequence, the Gulf countries are now even more keen on preserving equal distance from Iran and Israel, which means that any further normalization of Israeli relations with countries in the region are now even more unlikely than was the case before.
The other effect is that the strategic rivalry between Israel and Turkey is now the new game in town, in the sense that none of the traditional powerhouses in the region like Iraq, Egypt, and Syria, that could pose a challenge to Israel are standing anymore, and Iran is on its knees. Turkey is the only country that is still on its feet.
But I can’t imagine that this would be similar in terms of strategic rivalry to what we have seen between Iran and Israel in the past four decades, because at the end of the day, Turkey has diplomatic relations with Israel, it is a member of NATO and the G20, and it has a globally integrated economy. So, it would be different, but it would still, I think, become much more pronounced now in this new regional dynamic.
What is your assessment of the proxies Iran used to encircle Israel—Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis in Yemen, and also militias in Iraq? They have been degraded, but do you see any chance for Tehran to revive them?
There are people in Iran who are arguing that reviving the “axis of resistance” would be a good idea, simply because Iran doesn't have any viable strategic alternatives available to it. If Iran is to renew its air defense systems, it would have to acquire them from abroad. And the Russian technology proved to be pretty inefficient in countering US and Israeli offensive capabilities. So, the only option left for Iran is China. And China so far has been reluctant to enter into that kind of strategic military partnership with Iran. And again, the limits of Iran’s ballistic missiles were also exposed during this conflict. While Iran can inflict harm on Israel, it cannot really deter Israel and the United States purely with its ballistic missiles.
There are people in Tehran who still argue that the proxies, when they were strong and had not become fat bureaucracies who had taken their eyes off the target, were actually pretty efficient for more than three decades in deterring Israel from attacking Iran. But there are also those who say this exact policy is the reason that Iran eventually became the target of Israeli strikes. Since 2021, when Israel adopted the so-called Octopus Doctrine of fighting “the head of the octopus” instead of just its tentacles in the region, that the whole concept was turned on its head.
And the actions of freelancers like Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, which resulted in the October 7 catastrophe in Israel, basically brought upon this shattering defeat on the “axis of resistance” without Iran even having a say in it because it was not aware that Hamas was launching an attack against Israel. So, there are those who are saying this no longer works and it's actually counterproductive.
The ultimate decision, I think, depends highly on what happens on other fronts and negotiations with the United States. If Iran believes that it has no strategic alternative available, it is likely to use the ample ammunition that exists in the region because of what Israel has done in Gaza and in Lebanon. Civilian casualties in the region provide a degree of anger and hatred that could be cultivated by the Iranians to try to create new militant groups. But if Iran is given a way out and a degree of security guarantees, it might be willing to alter its regional policies and give up on the proxies.
How seriously damaged is Iran’s nuclear program? Has it been “obliterated” as US President Trump has claimed or, at best, slowed down?
We don’t know. The battle damage assessments conducted by the United States and Israel are primarily based on satellite imagery and signal intelligence. And that only tells you so much about what has actually happened on the ground. The only way to get an accurate image is to either have boots or inspectors on the ground. And none of that is currently available.
So, there are a lot of known unknowns. Key among them is the question of what has happened to the more than 400 kilograms of 60-percent-enriched uranium stockpiled in Iran. Because that provides Iran with the fastest route toward a nuclear weapon. If that stockpile is still available to Iran, it can generate enough fissile material for a single nuclear weapon in about four or five days, if it still has centrifuges that are operational.
We know that since 2021, Iran has produced hundreds of advanced centrifuges, but we are not sure where they were stockpiled. Because the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) lost access to monitoring of the equipment in Iran. It still had full oversight of material, but equipment oversight was lost after Israel sabotaged the centrifuge production facility in April 2021. So, it is quite possible that Iran has clandestine facilities where there are just a few dozen advanced centrifuges ready to be fired up to enrich to weapons grade. Iran still has to do the weaponization, which might take a few months, and estimates range from three to 18 months.
So, the bottom-line conclusion is that the industrial-scale civilian enrichment capacity of Iran was destroyed. But a small scale nuclear weaponization capacity still exists. And in the process, the international community has lost the ability of verifying what Iran is doing.
So, the “military option” has not worked?
Well, if you compare this outcome to the achievement of the diplomatic option, the agreement that was negotiated exactly 10 years ago, you see a difference in how the military option is held to a much lower standard. Because in the 2015 nuclear deal, the JCPOA, Iran had shut down the Fordow facility. This facility deep underground that the US bombed with bunker buster bombs did not pose a threat. Fordow was not allowed to have any fissile material in it until 2031, so for 15 years, under the terms of the agreement.
Now the US estimate is the strikes have set back Iran's nuclear program by one to two years. So, 15 years without firing a shot versus two years with massive bombing and destruction of trust and civilian lives. And in 2015, we had the ability for inspectors to go into these facilities, verify Iran's commitment, and Iran shipped out 97 percent of its stockpile of enriched uranium. None of those options are now available to the international community. So, the military option obviously has produced much less beneficial results than the diplomatic, if they’re compared one-on-one.
And the last point is, yes, it is true that, again, the Iranian capacity has diminished. There's no doubt about it. The overground facilities were destroyed. Underground facilities were probably seriously damaged. But what has been reduced in capacity has been compensated by increasing intent to get the ultimate deterrent.
Now that Iran’s regional deterrence has proven to be inefficient in protecting the country from external strikes, Iran is really left with very limited options. And the nuclear weapon option is now becoming so much more attractive, even among the broader population, not just among the political elite. And the reason that the population feels unsafe not knowing if the regime can provide control over its own airspace, given that ordinary people’s apartment buildings were targeted without much advanced notice, without them having shelters—this all means that the support for having the kind of deterrent that would prevent this from happening again has increased among the ordinary population as well.
This is why in the absence of some kind of a diplomatic settlement that first takes into account what has exactly happened, what capacity Iran still has, and prevents that increased intent for weaponization to materialize, this ceasefire that we're currently living through, I think, would be only a pause between two wars.
What is the general situation in Iran now?
I think the most important observation is that there is a wave of nationalism that has been generated as a result of the Israeli strikes on Iran, from which the regime is really benefiting. If you turn back the clock to a year ago, this was a regime that had lost a tremendous amount of legitimacy. More than 80 percent of the Iranian people wanted to see fundamental political change in the country and were sick and tired of corruption, mismanagement, and repression in Iran.
But now, a lot of the narratives of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei have been given credit. The fact that Iran was engaged in good faith negotiations with the United States and was bombed in the middle of it. The fact that Israel didn’t really engage in targeted assassinations, but in indiscriminate targeting of civilians proves that what Ayatollah Khamenei has been saying for years—that the animosity of Israel and the United States is not toward the regime but toward the country—has gained a lot of credence within the Iranian society.
This is, however, a transient moment. I do not believe that the Islamic Republic is capable of using this moment of national unity to pursue national reconciliation and the structural reforms that are needed to put the country, both in terms of domestic and foreign policy, on the right track. And in fact, it has already engaged in repression aimed at ensuring that it closes the security loopholes that Israel used to launch the opening salvo of its surprise attack against Iran.
But overall, this conflict demonstrated one thing very clearly, which is that there is no easy, clear pathway to regime change in Iran. As weak as the regime might be externally, it maintains a tight grip on power internally. It has the will and a fearsome capacity for repression, and the monopoly of force. Also, there are no viable alternatives to it inside or outside of the country. The Iranian opposition is disorganized. It doesn’t have a positive vision for the future of the country, and it doesn’t have an effective leadership. And as a result, even if there is regime destabilization or implosion, it is more likely to result in civil strife or the takeover of the system by the military than anything that would appear as a transition to any kind of Jeffersonian democracy.
In 2015, you and your organization, the International Crisis Group, helped pave the way for the nuclear deal. Based on that experience, do you see a viable path toward a new deal today? And if so, what provisions would you expect to be central to such an agreement?
There is always an option for diplomacy. But I think it has become so much more difficult now because the number one demand that the Iranians have in negotiating with an American president who wronged them once by reneging on a negotiated agreement between Iran and the world powers in 2018 and bombed them in the middle of another negotiations in 2025 is for security guarantees that this would never happen again. Now, the United States will not provide security guarantees to Iran as long as Iran poses a threat to Israel.
So, this is no longer just a nuclear negotiation, but it requires tackling broader issues between the two countries. And at the core of those issues, I think, is Iran's animosity toward Israel.
However, this change in facts on the ground and the regional balance of power, provides opportunities for smart diplomacy. For instance, I can see a scenario in which the United States would facilitate some kind of implicit non-aggression pact between Iran and Israel. As unrealistic as that might sound, the reality is that Iran has experienced the high costs of direct confrontation with a much more powerful conventional military like Israel, backed by the world's superpower, and does not want to continue directly striking Israel.
It has also, as I said, lost its axis of resistance, and reviving it would not be easy, especially because the land axis through Syria to Hezbollah has been lost, and the air bridge to Hezbollah through Beirut airport also has been blocked. So, Iran even logistically cannot continue providing arms to the “crown jewel” of its axis of resistance, Hezbollah.
So, it does make sense for Iran to agree not to pose a threat to Israel or support non-state actors who are seeking to do so and focus on rebuilding its economy and its country. It also makes sense for Israel not to continue striking Iran overtly or covertly, because that will provoke the Iranians to try to retaliate in kind, and Israel will be locked in a forever war against a nation that is 70 times larger in terms of territory, and nine times larger in terms of its population.
And I think that non-aggression is a prerequisite for any kind of nuclear agreement that is sustainable. But it has to be part of the same package. And there are already ideas out there that are workable but would require pragmatism and flexibility on both sides. This concept of Iran, instead of reconstituting its nuclear program in bunker facilities that could render it vulnerable to additional US or Israeli strikes, building a consortium on an island in the Persian Gulf, inviting the United States, the European countries, the Gulf states to join in as a joint project, I think is the best path forward. This way, Iran would be able to maintain the right to enrich uranium, but it would no longer really have a sovereign enrichment program. It will be a multinational one, as is the case in Europe, for instance. There would be additional eyes and ears on the ground on top of the IAEA inspectors to make sure that this program would remain civilian in nature.
Which roles could other actors play—the EU or China, for instance?
This is primarily going to be a US-Iran negotiation. Other actors and stakeholders can either facilitate it or make it harder. Right now, the Chinese wouldn’t be able to play a constructive role because the US already has its own tensions with China. And China, even when it was actively engaged in negotiations that led to the 2015 nuclear deal, was more of a passive actor than a proactive one.
As far as the Europeans are concerned, I think neither Iran nor the United States are too keen on having them involved. But they still have a powerful card in their hands, which is the ability to “snap back” the UN sanctions that were suspended as part of the 2015 nuclear deal. And that ability to use the measures in UN Security Council Resolution 2231 that enshrined the JCPOA would expire in October of this year. But if the Europeans snap back the UN sanctions, the risk is that Iran, which has already ejected the IAEA inspectors, would decide to completely withdraw from the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which is what North Korea did in 2003 before it became a nuclear weapon state. So, I see more ways that the Europeans can complicate matters and the diplomatic pathway than they can constructively contribute to it.
Other regional countries can play a positive role in facilitating talks between Iran and the United States, such as leaders who have good personal relationships with President Trump and do not benefit from the continuation of this conflict or its exacerbation, like President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey, like Mohammed bin Salman, Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, like the Emir of Qatar. These are individuals who in the past have played an intermediary role and now can also potentially contribute to a solution, especially if they are to remain engaged in this concept of a regional consortium for enrichment.
Europeans have reacted to the Israeli and US strikes on Iran in various ways. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz initially praised the strikes, others worry about international law being eroded. What’s your take?
I think the Europeans’ frustration with Iran is understandable. They have been confronted with Tehran’s inflexibility during the nuclear negotiations, with Iran’s support for Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine, and its covert operations on European soil against Iranian dissidents or against European citizens. And the regime is taking European citizens hostage in Iran.
But frustration and anger and emotions in general should not dictate policies that undermine the values that the Europeans have been upholding for more than 70 years now. I think, in general, double standards and hypocrisy have the effect of undermining the rules-based international norms in ways that might not be repairable in the short run.
If the German chancellor can go out and praise Israel’s attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, which was against international law in more than one way—not only are pre-emptive strikes not recognized, but also attacks on nuclear facilities that are safeguarded are also illegal, in addition to attacks on hospitals and prisons and other facilities that could endanger civilians—then basically the message that the European leaders are sending is that might makes right.
And that makes it so much more difficult to condemn what Russia does in Ukraine or what another bully could do in Europe’s backyard or on European territory in the coming years and months. It already has become so much more difficult for Europe to talk about human rights after the atrocities that have happened in the region in the past year and a half. But when it gets to matters of war and peace, I think the treatment of Iran during this crisis has set a very problematic precedent and basically has demonstrated that Europe believes that some countries have the right to self-defense, but not all countries. That some countries need to comply with international law, but not others. That some countries would have to uphold human rights standards, but not others.
That’s very problematic in a world that is becoming more chaotic and more polarized. And Europe—without multilateralism, without upholding international humanitarian law and international law in general—I think will become a much weaker actor on the international stage than was the case in the past.
What’s your sense of the outlook for the region?
In general, I'm a short-term pessimist and a long-term optimist. But in this case, I do believe that what is likely to happen is that, in the short run, Israel has almost exhausted its target list in Iran. It has achieved a lot of its objectives. There is no political necessity for Prime Minister Netanyahu to resume the conflict. With the Knesset going into recess, his position is secure at least until October.
So, there is no need for immediate military action unless Iran either tries to dash toward nuclear weapons or engages in activities related to restoring its air defense systems or its offensive capabilities. But in the absence of those moves, I do think that a return to a hot war is unlikely in the coming weeks.
However, if a sustainable solution is not found to the nuclear issue, if the “snap back” is triggered, if Iran withdraws from the NPT and this crisis continues and escalates, for sure it would result in the resumption of conflict that at that point could also expand and spiral out of control.
One of the things that we saw was the Iranian attack on the US base in Qatar, which was symbolic more than anything else. But it also crossed a new red line. For the first time, Iran directly attacked a Gulf state. And that means that if this conflict resumes, the risk of its expansion is very real. And the fact that we have come to the brink multiple times over the past few years but have not fallen into the abyss does not mean that you can do this again and again and again and still avoid a fully-fledged regional conflagration.
The interview was conducted by Anna Brugger, Henning Hoff, and Tim Hofmann.
Ali Vaez is the International Crisis Group’s Iran Project Director and Senior Advisor to the ICG president.
