The atomic bomb, Trump and Netanyahu's excuse to attack Iran
Washington and Tel Aviv have insisted that Tehran was enriching uranium for non-civilian purposes, but the regime denied it.
BarcelonaWashington launched the 2003 invasion of Iraq repeating the lie that Saddam Hussein's regime possessed weapons of mass destruction, weapons that were never found. In January 2026, a US special forces guerrilla captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, claiming he was the leader of a drug cartel, an argument that has now evaporated. The United States and Israel justified their joint attack on Iran this Saturday with the argument that Tehran could develop an atomic bomb, a tool some consider a global deception used to justify an attack without legal backing against an inconvenient third country. In reality, Iran had already placed its nuclear program under international control. in an agreement he signed in 201The 2015 Iran nuclear deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), aimed to ensure that Iran's nuclear program was exclusively peaceful. Tehran supposedly committed to reducing its stockpile of enriched uranium and allowing rigorous inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), in exchange for the gradual lifting of international sanctions. Trump withdrew from the agreement during his first term, at Israel's urging, by imposing new sanctions on Iran and on companies worldwide with Iranian projects. Trump withdrew because Netanyahu had always opposed it, and for several years the European Union, along with the IAEA, maintained these principles alone. Talks resumed under Joe Biden, but with Iranian support for the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the already doomed agreement was definitively shelved.
Futile negotiations
How close was Iran to possessing nuclear weapons? The IAEA estimates that Iran produced 400 kg of uranium enriched to 60%, well above the civilian use of nuclear fuel for power plants or medical applications, but still far from the 90% enrichment required to make nuclear bombs. The Iranian regime continued negotiating to ease international sanctions that were crippling its economy and fueling social unrest, and had a plan to build nuclear power plants with the help of its allies, Russia and Iran, claiming it was solely for civilian purposes and offering guarantees. In subsequent negotiations, it even proposed sharing its enrichment program with two US allies: Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Alejandro Zurita, former head of international cooperation for nuclear research at the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom), explained to ARA that "Iran's interest in eliminating economic sanctions to reduce social dissent and ensure the continuity of its regime clashed head-on with its primary objective." He asserted that "Iran was able to reach 90% uranium enrichment in the more than seven years since Trump broke the agreement, but its priority was easing sanctions." He also warned that this new crisis could favor sectors of the Iranian regime that advocate burning bridges and withdrawing from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, as North Korea did. Israel, on the other hand, is also not a signatory to this agreement and, according to the prestigious international military research center SIPRI, has at least 90 nuclear warheads outside of any international control.
Then came the Twelve Days' War of June last year In which Israel, with US support, attacked a significant portion of Iran's nuclear infrastructure. The extent of the damage cannot be independently determined, as the regime did not allow IAEA inspectors to visit its facilities. Experts believe they are inoperable. The US attacks of June 2025 severely damaged Iran's main uranium enrichment facilities, but not its resolve to maintain a nuclear program or its technical expertise in this area. Nor did the operation eliminate or help locate stockpiled enriched uranium. Instead, the military operation derailed diplomatic talks and Iranian cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). As a result, the IAEA has been unable to access any of the bombed sites or verify the nuclear material, which constitutes a breach of Iran's safeguards obligations.
The US-based Arms Control organization also notes that Iran would need years to completely rebuild its enrichment plants and months to enrich small quantities of uranium to military grade and transform it into a weapon-grade metal: "There is no imminent threat to the material that would justify another US attack."
In the latest negotiations with the Trump White House, which in light of Saturday's attack seem more cosmetic than a genuine commitment to diplomacy, Tehran also showed a willingness to dilute the uranium it had enriched.
