Publicly, Iran and the US were pursuing a nuclear deal that, on paper, was meant to prevent a devastating regional war. But beneath the diplomacy, a far more dangerous reality took shape.
For Middle Eastern officials, a nuclear agreement may no longer be sufficient, given the widening gap between what Iran wants from the talks, and what the US and, by default, Israel are seeking.
Tehran has been clear and consistent: negotiations should focus strictly on its nuclear programme. Iranian officials argue that its enrichment activities are a sovereign right, and that the purpose of diplomacy is to establish limits, oversight and sanctions relief in exchange for transparency.
Washington's strategic calculus is broader. US officials have increasingly signalled that Iran's nuclear capabilities cannot be viewed in isolation from its ballistic missile programme and its network of regional militant proxies. And for Israel, in particular, this network represents an existential threat regardless of whether Iran possesses a nuclear weapon.
There is growing concern, then, that a nuclear deal may simply remove one layer of confrontation while exposing others.
Regional officials, speaking privately and publicly in recent weeks, described a sense of unease. While diplomacy appeared to be moving forward, the strategic environment remained tense with military deployments, intelligence operations and confrontational political rhetoric, a contradiction that fuels suspicion that negotiations may have been serving multiple purposes simultaneously, including buying time.
The memory of last year's war between Israel and Iran looms heavily over current calculations. Though limited in duration, it marked a historic escalation, as the two nations fought each other directly and openly for the first time after decades of shadow conflict. Israeli strikes demonstrated reach and intelligence penetration, targeting senior commanders, nuclear scientists and strategic infrastructure deep inside Iran. Tehran responded with ballistic missiles, calibrating its retaliation to avoid triggering a wider war. The confrontation ended without a decisive victory for either side, but it fundamentally reshaped perceptions.
Knowledgeable students of Middle East history and politics didn’t see that war as an isolated episode but rather as a strategic probe. Israel was clearly testing Iran's responses, measuring escalation thresholds and assessing military readiness. The US, while not directly involved until the final act, was closely watching and setting the broader strategic environment. The conflict armed both with invaluable intelligence that would later help shape future options, including today's strikes on Iranian cities.
Therefore, it seems that the current diplomatic track exists alongside a parallel strategic reality. And there is a harder question beneath that: how can the US and Israel be satisfied with a nuclear deal alone when they see Iran weakened by war and protests, its influence in Lebanon and Syria severely diminished or even completely vanished and its economy under unprecedented strain?
We are witnessing a moment less for compromise and more like a strategic opportunity, one that could be pushed toward broader goals, including regime change in Tehran.
For Israel, a nuclear agreement may have removed the urgency of immediate strikes, but at the same time reinforce the long-term objective of weakening Iran's strategic position. Economic pressure, sanctions and domestic unrest have already placed significant strain on the country. Protests in recent months have exposed widespread dissatisfaction, driven largely by economic hardship. Iranian authorities have responded forcefully with a bloody crackdown on the protests, and the combination of internal pressure and external threats created a volatile mix, leading to this morning's war.
On the US side, Washington has become increasingly unpredictable, and some regional officials believe its diplomacy may be bluff as much as policy. Take Venezuela, an ally of oil and gas-rich Iran, as an example. The US still holds immense military, economic and diplomatic power in the Middle East, and its signals shape the decisions of others. But the uncertainty makes it harder to know how far it is willing to go. Until this morning.
Regional actors beyond Iran, Israel and the US are also watching closely. Gulf states across the waters fear becoming battlegrounds in any confrontation. The prevailing narrative here is that if broader issues are not addressed now, any nuclear deal must be quickly followed by negotiations over Iran's ballistic missile programme and its support for regional proxies.
For us here in the Middle East, we realised long ago that a nuclear deal couldn't have eliminated the possibility of conflict, as the confrontation with Iran evolves well beyond the nuclear file and reaches deeper questions of power, deterrence and regional order, at a moment when Tehran is arguably weaker than at any point since its war with Iraq between 1980 and 1988, when Israeli military dominance and intelligence reach have never been greater and when a Trump administration with an appetite for bold, power-driven foreign policy is actively reshaping the strategic landscape across the globe, amid a relative absence of other more balanced players, such as European counties.
