AHRON SHAPIRO: Why Israel was forced to do the world's ‘dirty work' over Iran's non compliance

West Australian

18-06-2025

Forty-four years ago, then-Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin ordered the bombing of Iraq's nearly activated Osirak nuclear reactor to prevent Saddam Hussein from realising his ambition to produce nuclear weapons.
Pre-emptively destroying an aggressive enemy's nuclear weapons capabilities, as the prime minister said, to 'ensure our people's existence,' became known as the Begin Doctrine.
Before last Friday's surprise attack, Israel faced an Iranian nuclear ballistic weapons program far more advanced and threatening than that of Iraq in 1981.
According to Israeli intelligence, in recent weeks Iran had secretly begun working on developing all the components of a nuclear warhead and therefore had crossed the final red line and triggered the last-ditch option Israel had set for itself: to bomb Iran's nuclear sites and other affiliated targets.
What we are witnessing now is a return to the Begin Doctrine with full force. The Israeli Air Force's strikes on Iran's nuclear weapons development sites were an unavoidable consequence of Iran's determined and undeterred march towards a nuclear weapon.
Meanwhile, the IAF simultaneously moved to eliminate top Iranian military commanders and other strategic targets.
Jerusalem had good reason to do this — these are the elements that instituted a 'ring of fire' strategy which they openly say is designed to destroy Israel. This long-standing plan culminated in the Hamas invasion of Israel on October 7, 2023, subsequent attacks by Iran's other proxies, the Houthis, Hezbollah, Iraqi and Syrian militias, before Iran itself attacked Israel with huge missile and drone barrages twice last year.
Critics accuse Israel of acting recklessly or worse and not giving enough of a chance for diplomacy with the US and Europe to convince Iran to back down.
In truth, Israel — and the US, which must have green-lighted the attack — had given diplomacy every opportunity to work. Over the past three decades, culminating in the most recent round of negotiations with the Trump Administration, Iran was offered many compromises, incentives and exit ramps that would have allowed them to use nuclear technology in a peaceful way and also save face.
Yet the May 31 report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) described chapter and verse how obviously disinterested Iran was in any of that. The dire urgency of the situation leads to the inescapable conclusion: The time for diplomacy had finally run out.
Once again, the report detailed the blatant ways Iran has been evasive, uncooperative and downright deceptive with IAEA inspectors, doggedly concealing the use of undisclosed nuclear sites going back over two decades. Moreover, the IAEA says that over the past four years it has lost its ability to adequately monitor Iran at all — that is, the IAEA admits it doesn't know how much it doesn't know about Iran's current nuclear activity.
The body has determined that Iran possesses enough 60 per cent enriched uranium to produce up to 10 nuclear warheads. Iran is the only non-nuclear-weapon state ever to enrich uranium to this level, which has no civilian application.
The body has also uncovered that Iran has worked on triggers for nuclear bombs.
On June 12, the IAEA's Board of Governors finally had enough, formally declaring Iran in breach of its non-Safeguards Agreement, a crucial part of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
In response, Iran said it would activate a second, 'secret', enrichment site while upgrading its centrifuges at Fordow to make them enrich uranium ten times quicker.
The IAEA's findings and the Board's resolution could pave the way for the issue to be referred to the UN Security Council, potentially leading to the 'snapback' of international sanctions that were lifted under the 2015 nuclear deal (JCPOA) later this year.
But was too late for sanctions to work in time. Iran's breakout time to a nuclear weapon has dwindled to nothing.
Meanwhile, Israel cities are taking a pounding from Iran's indiscriminate attacks with its ballistic missiles. Given these realities, it seems hard to disagree with the comments of German Chancellor Friedrich Merz about the Israeli attack and Iranian response: 'This is the dirty work Israel is doing for all of us.'
How does this affect Australia? Reports from Israel say the current operation could last another week to ten days, but US President Donald Trump has indicated that Iran could achieve a ceasefire if it was ready to accept previously proposed terms designed to neutralise its nuclear threat.
The impact on the energy market may be sharp, but likely short-lived, since in order to affect actual supply, Iran would have to considerably escalate its attacks and spread them in new directions, against more regional countries. This could invite an American military response that would dwarf anything that Israel could muster.
For years, Iran has played the entire world in this catastrophically dangerous game. Left with no other recourse, their bluff has finally been called. In the long run, this may be for the best, creating an opening for a brighter Middle East finally devoid of Iranian aggression and destabilisation.
Ahron Shapiro is a Senior Policy Analyst at the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC).