In the early hours of Friday, Israel launched Operation Rising Lion, a sweeping airstrike against what Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz described as military and nuclear installations in Tehran — including the Natanz uranium enrichment complex — marking a dramatic escalation in a quagmire long fraught with covert actions and regional brinkmanship. 

A move Prime Minister Netanyahu deemed necessary for Israel’s survival, claiming Iran was “days away” from several nuclear bombs and emphasizing that, when it comes to Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, “never means never.” The attack, which struck at least six military bases around Tehran and at least two residential buildings, swiftly prompted Iran to declare a state of emergency. 

So, what does this mean for President Trump’s highly touted deal with Tehran? “These strikes facilitate and complement diplomacy. They show there is a credible military threat against Iran’s regime which for too long hasn’t been backed up with action,” Ambassador Mark Wallace, founder of United Against Nuclear Iran, tells The New York Sun. “As President Trump has this morning already noted, the regime can now see in starkly plain terms the result of that action with threats of more to come.”

Not everyone sees it that way. Iran’s government denounced the operation, which also killed the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, as a violation of its sovereignty and vowed retaliation.

In the immediate aftermath, a spokesman for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard wrote on social media, “never be the one to invite someone to fight (do not be the aggressor in war), but if someone calls you to battle, answer the call (and show no laxity in sacred war against the enemy), for the one who invites to fight is a tyrant — and a tyrant is always defeated.”

Talks in Limbo

In an apparent bid to sustain pressure for a deal, the Trump administration quickly clarified that this was not a joint strike and that the White House did not endorse it. In private meetings with aides earlier this week, Mr. Trump warned that an Israeli operation now could “blow” fragile negotiations between Washington and Tehran, which were reportedly set to resume this month in Oman. Some reports from the region indicate that Tehran will not attend the planned sixth round of discussions this weekend, but the government has not issued a formal withdrawal. 

“Diplomacy will be off the table until Iran finishes its retaliatory strike against Israel. There may not be a nuclear program left to negotiate over,” a nuclear proliferation research fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, Andrea Striker, tells the Sun. “Only if additional escalatory rounds put additional regime economic and leadership targets at risk will Tehran see reason to seek a truce.”

One expert on the Arab Middle East, James Bowden, concurs that “the diplomatic path is likely at a dead end.” He tells the Sun that it is “not immediately clear, but it appears that there will not be a need for a diplomatic response as the program is being either entirely eliminated or set very far back, far back enough to make it a non-issue Iran’s hegemonic status has been entirely eliminated at this point given that it can no longer use the nuclear program as a trump card.”   

The administration this week ordered the evacuation of non-essential personnel from American embassies in Iraq and restricted government travel to Israel, citing potential retaliation from Iran. The United States has maintained a military presence in the Middle East for decades, currently stationing between 40,000 and 50,000 troops across at least 19 sites.

Mr. Trump, however, appears not to have given up. “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, they just couldn’t get it done,” the President wrote Friday morning. “Iran must make a deal before there is nothing left and save what was once known as the Iranian empire.”

The International Atomic Energy Agency had recently warned that Iran’s uranium enrichment had reached levels of concern. Iran maintains that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes, though American and Israeli officials have long asserted otherwise.

Whether there is anything left of the program for Washington to negotiate is yet to be determined. Ms. Stricker cautioned that Tehran “may take some capabilities underground and try to rebuild with the aim of building nuclear weapons,” but even so, that “could take months or even years depending on the damage.” Israel has warned that its operation will go on for as long as it deems necessary. 

Implications for U.S.–Israel Relations

While America and Israel remain close strategic allies, Friday’s events underscore a divergence in how both governments approach the Iranian nuclear issue. American officials indicated that they urged restraint and discouraged unilateral action, yet Israel chose to act independently.

“Israel likely provided the U.S. with a window of operations, informing us that they were going to go into Iran within a certain timeframe. The relationship may be damaged because Trump was seeking a signature policy achievement, a nuclear deal with Iran, and this has seized that away from him,” Mr. Bowden reckons. “There does not appear to be closer cooperation in this event; the U.S. did not participate in this but rather retreated from it. That may hamper future relations.”

Mr. Wallace, however, contends that the “U.S.-Israel relationship remains ironclad.” “President Trump is leveraging Israel’s tremendous capabilities and willpower, and this is new,” he surmised. “This wouldn’t have happened under the Biden administration, and the Iranian regime now knows that the U.S. means what it says.”

“Iran’s regime would be foolish to accelerate its nuclear program as that would imperil the survival of its regime, which is fragile and sclerotic, hated by the people of Iran, and rife with corruption,” Mr. Wallace added. “President Trump gave the Ayatollah and his cronies’ chance after chance.’ As many predicted, they failed to take any of them.”