There is a pattern so consistent and methodically repeated across decades, that it can not be dismissed as a coincidence. Every time Washington and Tehran inch toward a diplomatic resolution, something happens to collapse it. And more often than not, when you trace the thread back, it leads to Jerusalem.
Israel’s opposition to any form of US-Iran rapprochement is not incidental. It is strategic, existential, and deliberate. Understanding it requires we go back to the beginning.
The Logic Behind the Sabotage
Israel’s core fear is not simply a nuclear Iran. It is a normalised Iran. A Tehran that re-enters the international order, sheds its pariah status, and becomes a legitimate regional power with whom Washington does business is a threat to Israel. Israeli analysts have long calculated that even if there is an improvement in US-Iran relations and a reduction in US-Iran tensions, it will not be accompanied by a reduction in Israeli-Iranian tensions, leaving Israel stuck with a hostile Iran but without American urgency to counter it. This is what scholars call the "fear of abandonment." A diplomatic Iran is an Iran that no longer justifies Israel’s position at the front of Washington’s foreign policy agenda.
The Obama Years: Fighting the JCPOA
The clearest early chapter of this story unfolded between 2013 and 2015, when the Obama administration pursued what became the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Netanyahu was openly, aggressively hostile, famously addressing a joint session of the US Congress in March 2015 to lobby against the deal in a move that was widely seen as an unprecedented intervention in American foreign policy. While negotiations on the nuclear file were ongoing between 2013 and 2015, Israel continued to carry out covert sabotage efforts against the Iranian nuclear programme, former Mossad director Tamir Pardo confirmed. The overt lobbying and the covert operations ran in parallel.
Israel denounced the eventual deal as legitimising the Iranian nuclear programme, with Netanyahu arguing that Iran would either violate the agreement or wait until its provisions expired. The Obama administration pushed through regardless, calculating that a constrained Iran was better than an unconstrained one. But Israel had planted a seed, and it found fertile ground in the next administration.
Trump’s First Term: The Demolition Job
Netanyahu has been on record taking credit for Trump pulling out of the JCPOA in the first place. In May 2018, Trump did exactly that, withdrawing from a functioning agreement, reimposing sanctions, and launching what his team called a "maximum pressure" campaign. The move was celebrated in Tel Aviv. It was also catastrophic for regional stability. Stripped of sanctions relief, Iran began systematically exceeding every nuclear limit the deal had imposed, enriching uranium well beyond permitted levels and expanding its centrifuge programme. The deal’s absence made the world more dangerous, not less but it also restored Iran’s pariah status, which was precisely the point.
Trump’s Second Term: Talks, Then Strikes
When Trump returned to office in 2025, he initially surprised observers by pursuing direct US-Iran negotiations, the first direct talks since he had withdrawn from the JCPOA in 2018. Israel was wholly opposed to the negotiations. The talks proceeded nonetheless, with rounds in Oman through April and May 2025, and the White House describing them as "constructive."
Then came June 13, 2025. Three days before Iranian and US negotiators were scheduled to meet in Oman, Israel launched airstrikes. The attacks were designed to sabotage the talks as much as they were intended to damage Iran’s nuclear capabilities. Netanyahu had reportedly convinced Trump to join militarily, arguing that US participation was key to eliminating Iran’s most fortified sites. The Israeli-US military campaign inflicted heavy damage on Natanz, Fordow, and Isfahan, but did not eliminate Iran’s nuclear potential. What it did eliminate was the diplomatic track. The JCPOA formally expired in October 2025. Some Iranian politicians openly called for Iran to leave the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and develop nuclear weapons in direct response to the strikes.
The Structural Truth
What this timeline reveals is not a series of reactive decisions but a coherent, long-running strategy. A diplomatically integrated Iran removes the justification for Israel’s strategic primacy in Washington’s Middle East calculus. It weakens the argument for unconditional US military and financial support of Israel. It potentially opens space for Palestinian statehood to return to the international agenda. Diplomacy, for Israel, is not just inconvenient, it is an existential threat to the architecture of its regional dominance.
The tragedy is that every act of sabotage has made the outcome Israel fears more likely, not less. A cornered, sanctioned, and now bombed Iran is an Iran with far greater motivation to pursue nuclear capability than one offered genuine integration. The spoiler, in disrupting every deal, has brought the very outcome it claimed to be preventing measurably closer.
Written by:
*Dr Iqbal Survé
Past chairman of the BRICS Business Council and co-chairman of the BRICS Media Forum and the BRNN
*Chloe Maluleke
Associate at BRICS+ Consulting Group
Russia & Middle East Specialist
**The Views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of Independent Media or IOL.
** MORE ARTICLES ON OUR WEBSITE https://bricscg.com/ (https://bricscg.com/)
** Follow @ (https://x.com/brics_daily)brics_daily (https://x.com/brics_daily)on Twitter for daily BRICS+ updates and instagram @brics_daily (https://www.instagram.com/brics_daily?igsh=bmhvbTd0YzA4a2wx)
