A senior European diplomat said Israel has already decided it will attack Iran’s nuclear sites, implying such an attack was not imminent but also not in the too distant future, Al Arabiya reported over the weekend.
“We believe Israel has taken the decision to attack following the developments in the Middle East over the last several months,” one senior European diplomat said, according to the report.
Next, the report said the diplomat did not say the attack was believed to be imminent but said several European countries have opened talks with the incoming Trump administration to check if there is still a chance to use diplomacy or other tools to block Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
According to the report, European diplomats’ activity on the issue has spiked, given their fears that the Trump administration will be far more aggressive with the Islamic Republic.
England, France, and Germany (the E3) held talks with Iran last week to try to gauge the ayatollahs’ readiness for diplomacy in anticipation of new moves by Trump.
Concerns over Iran's uranium enrichment
In December, the E3 expressed “extreme concern” over Iran’s enrichment capacity, with France calling the uranium enrichment close to the “point of no return.”
On Friday, US Senate Foreign Relations Committee chair Jim Risch said the US would return to “President Trump’s maximum pressure campaign on Iran and safeguard American national security.”
Israeli officials, from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Defense Minister Israel Katz to top IDF officials, have made numerous statements in recent months indicating a greater readiness to attack Iran’s nuclear sites.
Those statements came after Israel destroyed most of Iran’s advanced air defense systems on October 26 in retaliation for a second direct massive ballistic missile attack by Tehran on the Jewish state on October 1.
Most of the Israeli statements have drawn attention to the idea that Iran’s nuclear sites are now close to defenseless or the most vulnerable to a strike in years that they have been.
In fact, given those statements, what was new about the European official’s statement to Al Arabiya was less the idea of an attack but the idea that it had actually been decided and the idea that the Trump administration is seriously weighing being involved.
According to the report, the Trump administration is considering being directly involved or giving Israel a green light.In public statements, Trump has refused to rule out military action.