The unprovoked US-Israeli war against Iran launched on 28 February had “been planned for months, and the launch date decided weeks ago,” even as the US and Iran carried out indirect nuclear negotiations, an Israeli defense official told Reuters.
Washington and Tel Aviv renewed negotiations in February over Iran’s nuclear program. President Trump was under pressure from Israel force Iran to give up uranium enrichment, as well as its ballistic missile program and support for regional resistance forces.
Amid the negotiations, Trump sent an “armada” of US naval ships and warplanes to the region, threatening to launch an attack if officials in Tehran refused to make a deal.
After the latest round of talks on Thursday, a senior US official told Axios the talks were “positive.”
Omani Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi, who mediated the talks, said the talks had shown “significant progress.”
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi also expressed optimism, saying both sides had shown a “clear seriousness” about getting a deal.
However, the US and Israel launched large-scale attacks against Iranian targets early Saturday, suggesting the negotiations had never been serious.
In the wake of the attacks, Omani Foreign Minister Albusaidi said that the negotiations he mediated had been “deliberately undermined.”
Mehran Kamrava, director of the Iranian studies unit at the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies and professor at Georgetown University in Qatar, stated that Israel “appears to have launched an attack designed to derail the negotiations.”
Hellbound and Down 