On Monday morning, Iranian state media said that Iran had launched a new wave of missiles towards Israel. Earlier on Monday, Israel bombed Iranian cities—with explosions heard in Tehran, Tabriz, and Isfahan—as well as an Iranian petrochemical plant in Bandar-e Mahshar after intercepting a wave of ballistic missiles from Iran on Sunday night. Iran had claimed that the missiles were a warning to Israel to halt its attacks on Lebanon, which have continued despite a cease-fire that took effect last week.
Israel’s decision to retaliate against Iran may have contradicted the advice of President Donald Trump, who had reportedly told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to hold off on an attack in hopes of reaching a U.S.-Iran deal.
While the U.S. and Iran have exchanged low-level attacks since the cease-fire, both sides have continued to participate in negotiations toward ending the war and finding a consensus around Iran’s nuclear program. Israel’s attacks on Iran, however, are a significant test for Trump, who has sought for weeks to wind down U.S. engagement in the war.
“He won’t have any choice,” the U.S. President told the FT, referring to Netanyahu. “I call the shots. I call all the shots. He doesn’t call the shots,” Trump insisted—a claim challenged, however, by the latest attacks as well as Israel’s criticisms of U.S.-Iran diplomacy.
Netanyahu tests Trump
Experts previously told TIME that there is precedent for Israel attacking Iran if it feels dissatisfied by U.S.-Iran negotiations. Last June, Israel attacked Iran in the midst of U.S.-Iran nuclear negotiations, eventually drawing the U.S. into a bombing campaign on Iranian nuclear facilities before reaching a Trump-brokered cease-fire. The U.S.-Israel strikes on Feb. 28 that launched the war had again interrupted ongoing U.S.-Iran nuclear talks. In early March, Secretary of State Marco Rubio suggested that Israel may have pushed the U.S. into the war with Iran, though Rubio and Trump later rejected that.
William Figueroa, an assistant professor of international relations at the University of Groningen, previously told TIME that in seeking to attach the Abraham Accords to a U.S.-Iran peace deal, Trump may have hoped that “the prospect of wider normalized relations and economic investment” would discourage Israel from restarting hostilities with Iran.
The U.S. has brokered multiple cease-fires between Israel and Lebanon, but Israel has continued to carry out near-daily strikes, including on civilian areas, killing more than 3,500 people since early March according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry. Iran has repeatedly objected to Israel’s fighting with Hezbollah and said that a permanent cessation of Israeli attacks across the region is a precondition for any U.S.-Iran deal.
Still, Trump has insisted that talks with Iran are progressing in spite of its fighting with Israel. The U.S. President told the FT on Sunday that Iran’s strikes were “not going to have any impact on the deal.”
U.S. officials had for weeks suggested that a U.S.-Iran deal is imminent, but both sides appear unwilling to budge on certain key points, including a moratorium on Iran’s nuclear program and its handing over of its uranium stockpile. Iran has also repeatedly said it intends to continue managing transit through the Strait of Hormuz, which it militarized at the start of the war, including a possible arrangement with Oman to charge ships fees to sail through its waters. The U.S. has strongly opposed such an arrangement.
“I think the deal is going on,” Trump told the FT. “We’ll see what happens.”
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