Featured Image Credit: Allison Robbert-Pool/Getty Images
Topics: Iran, Israel, Donald Trump, World News, Politics
Joe Yates
Topics: Iran, Israel, Donald Trump, World News, Politics
President Donald Trump has rallied behind Israel after news broke that it had bombed several nuclear sites across Iran, including its capital of Tehran.
The airstrikes came early this morning (June 13), with Israel revealing that it had used around 200 aircraft to send swarms of missiles towards roughly 100 targets - all understood to have been nuclear and missile sites.
In response, Iran fired over 100 drones at Israel - with both Iraq and Jordan confirming that they had flown over their airspace - as Israeli Defence Forces mentioned that they had been intercepting them. It remains uncertain whether any drones managed to pass through the country's Iron Dome.
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Trump has since confirmed that the US had no involvement in the strikes, although he did tell CNN that he believed the strikes were a 'very successful attack', adding that the US 'supports Israel'.
The attacks come as the 78-year-old Republican has been pushing for Iran to sign a nuclear deal - something that we've heard a lot of talk about as of late, but as for what that involves... we've kind of been left in the lurch.
Simply put, if Iran agreed to a nuclear deal, it would mean the country would have to cease and desist with its nuclear development program - with world leaders worried that the Middle Eastern nation intends to create nuclear artillery for warfare.
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The deal that Trump's hoping for would also mean the ballistic missile program would be halted, as well as Iran's involvement in regional conflicts.
In return for Iran axing it, the US and other leading nations would lift the sanctions placed on Iran - which has been an economic disaster for its natives, with Iran currently in a deep recession and has been since the sanctions were put in place.
The nuclear deal involves Iran and a group of world powers known as the P5+1 - which includes the US, UK, Germany, France, China and Russia, who've all been in negotiation with Iran in regard to its nuclear program since 2006.
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They've struck an agreement in the past known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), but it was disintegrated after Trump raised his concerns during his first term - we'll get into that later.
While the deal involves the five members of the UN Security Council - UK, France, China, Russia and the US, as well as Germany. The European Union is also an interested party - so to are Saudi Arabia and Israel.
Israel claims the deal is too lenient and so chose not to pursue it, while the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has met with Iranian officials in an attempt to talk them round - and has even offered to mediate any talks between the US and Iran.
"I gave Iran chance after chance to make a deal. I told them, in the strongest of words, to 'just do it,' but no matter how hard they tried, no matter how close they got, they just couldn’t get it done," the Republican wrote on Truth Social today.
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"I told them it would be much worse than anything they know, anticipated, or were told, that the United States makes the best and most lethal military equipment anywhere in the World, BY FAR, and that Israel has a lot of it, with much more to come - And they know how to use it."
Trump's post continued: "Certain Iranian hardliner’s spoke bravely, but they didn’t know what was about to happen. They are all DEAD now, and it will only get worse!
"There has already been great death and destruction, but there is still time to make this slaughter, with the next already planned attacks being even more brutal, come to an end.
"Iran must make a deal, before there is nothing left, and save what was once known as the Iranian Empire. No more death, no more destruction, JUST DO IT, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE. God Bless You All!"
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Before later adding: "Two months ago I gave Iran a 60 day ultimatum to 'make a deal.' They should have done it! Today is day 61. I told them what to do, but they just couldn’t get there. Now they have, perhaps, a second chance!"
The Institute for Science and International Security, a non-profit watchdog, believes the breakout time before Iran has the facilities to produce a nuclear weapon is at zero per cent, and estimates that it has enough highly enriched uranium that it could create more than a dozen nuclear bombs in less than two months - if the uranium was enriched to 90 per cent.
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Its monitoring report issued on Monday (June 9) stated that one of Iran's factories could produce weapons-grade uranium (WGU) in just days.
Chillingly, it read: "Iran could produce its first quantity of 25 kg of WGU in Fordow in as little as two to three days.
"Breaking out in both Fordow and the Natanz Fuel Enrichment Plant (FEP), the two facilities together could produce enough WGU for 11 nuclear weapons in the first month, enough for 15 nuclear weapons by the end of the second month, 19 by the end of the third month, 21 by the end of the fourth month, and 22 by the end of the fifth month."
Trump opted the US out of the first deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) - which was struck in 2015, in May 2018 during his first term as president, labelling it 'defective at its core'.
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The Trump administration then sought to reinstate the sanctions on Iran, a move which the country's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said 'disgraced' US prestige and liberal democracy, according to the BBC.
During his presidential campaign in 2016, Trump cited that the agreement failed to address Iran's development of its ballistic missile programme, as well as the country's destabilising influence in the region.
Now, upon his return to the White House, Trump issued a batch of sanctions on Iran, this time directed at their' oil network', as per Al Jazeera.
Between 2012 and 2016, the Iranian economy lost a total of $160 billion in revenue from its oil supply alone. After Trump reimposed sanctions in 2018, the Iranian rial, its local currency, dropped to a record low.
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As mentioned earlier, Iran is currently in a deep recession and has been since the sanctions were put in place.
Israel's attack in the early hours of this morning came as tensions escalated over Iran's rapidly advancing nuclear programme, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying that the strikes were 'a targeted military operation to roll back the Iranian threat to Israel's very survival'.
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Israel said it hit 'dozens of military targets, including nuclear targets in different areas of Iran', killing Iran's top military and nuclear scientists (via the BBC).
However, it was just the latest of a series of hostilities that the two nations have exchanged in recent years.
In 2018, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that Israel obtained tens of thousands of pages of data showing Iran covered up its nuclear program before signing a deal with world powers in 2015.
Two years later, a top Iranian military nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, was assassinated by a remote-controlled machine gun while traveling in a car outside Tehran - with a top Iranian security official accusing Israel of killing the scientist, who founded Iran’s military nuclear programme in the 2000s.
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Their relationship has since worsened due to Israel's war with Hamas - and the humanitarian crisis that is ongoing in the Gaza Strip.