Israel-Iran war live: Trump says Iran’s key nuclear facilities ‘obliterated’ in US strikes and that Tehran must now make peace

The Iranian response to US strikes on its nuclear facilities will depended on whether the attacks were as successful as Trump claims, a Middle East analyst says.

Speaking to the Australian national broadcaster, Mouin Rabbani, a nonresident senior fellow at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs, said what happens next will depend on whether Iran directs its anger at Israel, or the US. The scale of the damage, he said, may create an incentive for Iran to close the Strait of Hormuz in the Red Sea and seek to block the Bab Al-Manab to disrupt global oil and gas supplies.

On the prospect of Iranian retaliation, Rabbani said there were more questions than answers.

One thing that has distinguished the Iranians over the years is that they tend to act strategically rather than impulsively.

Rabbani said that in the context of an escalation by Israel and a direct strike on its facilities by the US, he would be “extraordinarily surprised” if Iran were to respond to the attack on its nuclear facilities by re-entering negotiations.

I think one thing we can exclude is seeing American and Iranian diplomats sitting around the negotiating table later this week.

Rabbani said that striking the Iranian nuclear program is not enough to end the program as the knowledge of how to construct the weapon remained. He added that the attacks are likely to create internal pressure within Iran for the regime to acquire nuclear weapons to defend itself.

Rabbani said that, unlike Israel, Iran was a signatory to the Nuclear non-proliferation treaty since 2015 and had been complying with requirements as part of its obligations.

He said a change of course by Iran followed a decision by the first Trump administration to rip up an earlier deal over the future of its nuclear program in 2018 that it changed.

I think it’s also important with all this talk about the Iranian nuclear weapon, which should, of course, be discussed. We often forget Iran is not a nuclear power. It is a nuclear threshold state. There is only one nuclear power in the Middle East, and that is Israel. And Israel is fighting this war very much to maintain its monopoly on the possession of these weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East.