In its commentary on the US–Israeli war against Iran, the US nuclear weapons community has tended to focus on either nuclear proliferation as a rationale for the strikes or the nuclear proliferation risks of the war. But any debates about nuclear security in the Middle East need to be set within the broader historical context of US and Israeli efforts to advance their interests in the region. There are three key themes that emerge.

1. The United States has been attempting to guide Iranian affairs (including nuclear power) for decades

In 1953, the United States and United Kingdom orchestrated a coup to depose the popular Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, who had succeeded in nationalizing Iran’s huge British oil holdings, and prop up the pro-Western monarch Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi as the country’s eventual autocratic leader.

As part of the Eisenhower administration’s “Atoms for Peace” program, the United States transferred nuclear technology to several countries including Iran, partially as a means of strengthening the Cold War pro-Western alliance, but also providing cover for the United States to expand its nuclear weapons arsenal. The beneficiaries (which also included Israel and Pakistan) received nuclear technology for scientific, medical, and energy applications. In 1967, the United States gifted Iran a nuclear research reactor. Iranian scientists were sent to the United States for training on nuclear technology and then helped expand Iran’s nuclear program in the 1970s.

In that period, certain actions by the Shah prompted US nuclear proliferation concerns. First, while Iran had signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) in 1968, the Shah hinted in statements responding to India’s 1974 “peaceful nuclear explosion” that he might consider pursuing nuclear weapons. Second, he negotiated big nuclear reactor purchase deals with France, the United States, and West Germany.

That was especially concerning, since the Shah had also developed an interest in pursuing spent-fuel reprocessing and had started to denounce restrictions on his country’s nuclear capabilities, asserting a national right under the NPT to develop the full nuclear fuel cycle, echoing the current theocracy’s claims to such a right. (Both regimes also justified this right on the basis of Iran’s need to diversify energy sources away from oil, in the event of declining oil reserves.) Spent-fuel reprocessing can produce plutonium that may be diverted to the development of nuclear weapons, and the Shah’s deals could have positioned Iran to produce hundreds of nuclear weapons.

Though successive US administrations feared nuclear proliferation by the Shah or his successors, they prioritized deals and regional allyship. The Shah eventually relented to US reprocessing restrictions by 1978, but the agreement didn’t bear fruit—the Islamic Revolution interrupted progress on nuclear cooperation.

The revolution was born out of frustration with economic difficulties arising from the Shah’s heavy spending on ambitious modernization projects, unequal wealth distribution and corruption, political repression, and forced Westernization. Following the Iran–Iraq war (1980–1988), in which the United States supported Iraq, Iran’s leaders attempted to revive the country’s nuclear program with centrifuge technology for uranium enrichment purchased from Pakistan through the black market.

This history reveals the continuity of US foreign interventionism from the overthrow of a democratically elected government in 1953 to President Trump’s stated desire for a second US-backed regime change. It also reveals the United States’ double standard in handling nuclear proliferation issues depending on whether a country aligns with US interests or not. As has become clear, neither approach has been conducive to Iran’s or the region’s stability.

2. The United States and Israel have repeatedly flouted international law to stop others from getting nuclear weapons

The historical record shows a pattern of collusion between the two countries on preemptive attacks in the region—and a pattern of impunity. The US and Israel attacked Iran on February 28, 2026, less than two days after US and Iranian negotiators held indirect talks in Geneva through Omani mediation to negotiate a deal over Iran’s uranium enrichment activities. The first Trump administration had withdrawn in 2018 from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or the “Iran nuclear deal,” agreed to in 2015 by Iran, the United States under the Obama administration, the other four permanent members of the United Nations (UN) Security Council, and Germany. Among other things, that deal capped uranium enrichment levels and capacity and put in place intrusive inspection measures by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in exchange for economic sanctions relief. Since the US withdrawal from the deal and imposition of renewed—and severe—sanctions, Iran increasingly restricted IAEA monitoring and verification activities and increased uranium enrichment levels to 60%, a short step away from weapons-grade enrichment at 90%.

While Iran’s ramped-up enrichment was alarming, President Trump’s Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard testified in March 2025 that the US intelligence community “continues to assess Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized a nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003.”

In June 2025, amid the war between Israel and Hamas (for years supported by Iran financially and militarily) in the Gaza Strip, Israel launched attacks on Iranian military and nuclear facilities and killed Iranian nuclear scientists, with Trump’s knowledge. The United States had been in negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program and Trump had given Iran an ultimatum should a deal not be reached. US forces joined Israel in attacking Iran 12 days after the first Israeli strikes, and Trump declared Iran’s nuclear program “obliterated.”

Attacking nuclear facilities violates international law, but it wasn’t Israel’s first time, since it had previously attacked nuclear facilities in Iraq in 1981 and Syria in 2007. In the Iraq case, the United States blocked punitive action at both the UN and the IAEA General Conference. In the Syria case, the attacks occurred with tacit US approval. Israel also assassinated scientists working on Egypt’s missile program in the 1960s and Iraq’s nuclear program in the 1970s.

Apparently, President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu had been planning the current war on Iran for months as negotiations were taking place, and Arab states were appealing to Trump through back channels to avoid a war. One of Trump’s rationales for the war turned out to be a pretext with which to manufacture domestic and international consent. Without an imminent threat posed by Iran (from a nuclear bomb to missiles capable of reaching the United States, both bogus claims belied by US intelligence assessments), the attacks were illegal according to international law.

The nuclear bomb pretext is reminiscent of the one employed by President George W. Bush to invade Iraq in 2003 (with regime change another rationale): allegations of weapons of mass destruction that the IAEA tried to refute in advance of the war and that proved to be false. That invasion has had long-lasting regional and global repercussions.

3. Transparency around nuclear activities in the region, including Israel’s weapons program, is needed

Israel’s nuclear weapons program—the only one in the Middle East—started in the 1960s with help from France, and Israel exercises deliberate ambiguity over its existence, neither confirming nor denying possession of nuclear weapons. The program remains officially unacknowledged by the United States. Former Israeli nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu exposed details about the program to the press in 1986 out of his opposition to nuclear weapons and was severely punished. (And yet, during the Hamas–Israeli war, an Israeli minister and a member of parliament both referenced Israel’s nuclear weapons by suggesting they be used in Gaza.)

Juxtaposing Israel’s monopoly on nuclear weapons in the region with the United States’ self-proclaimed role as the pioneering voice on nuclear nonproliferation exposes US hypocrisy. And the perception of a double standard is reinforced by US–Israeli collusion in preemptive attacks against nuclear facilities in the region. It should come as no surprise then if other states in the region undertake what the United States perceives as unacceptable activities to preserve their security. For its part, Iran threatened to act in kind and target Israel’s Dimona nuclear weapons facility if the United States and Israel continued to pursue regime change as an objective.

An initiative that would contribute to nuclear security and safety—and beyond—in the region is the Middle East Weapons of Mass Destruction-Free Zone (MEWMDFZ), a version of which was proposed as early as 1974 by Egypt and Iran at the UN General Assembly. The MEWMDFZ proposal, which covers nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons as well as their delivery systems, was adopted as a 1995 “Resolution on the Middle East” to help secure the indefinite extension of the NPT.

The zone would promote disarmament in exchange for peace among the Arab states, Iran, and Israel. Any progress on the zone hinges on Israeli and US diplomatic cooperation with the Arab states and Iran on the issue in a UN General Assembly framework. Until the zone is realized, the region and the world are faced with the prospect of an Iranian bomb, and maybe a Saudi Arabian bomb, should these countries increasingly believe in the utility and legitimacy of a nuclear deterrent. (For more MEWMDFZ background and information on current efforts, see here%20in%20the%20Middle%20East.), here, and here.)

Long-term regional stability is at stake

If US policies in the Middle East remain on the same careless, narrow-interest course as in the Cold War, one can only begin to imagine the scope of the risks—nuclear and otherwise—facing the wide swath of actors embroiled in regional geopolitics. It is certainly questionable whether the United States’ Gulf allies would continue to trust this country, having been drawn into a war of choice by their longtime partner without their consent, with prospects for long-term US defense of their states uncertain, and the specter of both a destabilized Iran and a hegemonic and expansionist Israel. For any chance of lasting peace in the region, the United States and Israel must eventually move toward diplomacy and multilateral approaches like the weapons of mass destruction-free zone.

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