OF course, one must ask that question because everyone, especially those accusing Iran of inching towards acquiring the nuclear bomb, knew it was not so. After all, the country spent a whole year implementing the JCPOA agreement, even after Trump unilaterally tore up the deal reached after exhaustive negotiations lasting eighteen months.
Iran waited, giving the USA a chance to return, before continuing with the enrichment of uranium, only to be accused of violating an agreement that the US had already abandoned. How Janus-faced!
For the past 41 years, Israel – often with Netanyahu as Prime Minister – has been alleging that Iran was just a few months away from acquiring the nuclear bomb. However, not a few observers of international affairs believe that these are merely excuses to attack and destroy Iran, in a classic case of giving a dog a bad name to hang it.
The main grievances with Iran are twofold. First, Iran has always been an unapologetic supporter of Palestine, and secondly, unlike other Muslim countries, it refuses to kowtow to Western hegemonic interests championed by America. After all, it was the same America that began building nuclear facilities for Iran.
During the reign of the former Shah, Reza Pahlavi, the government initiated a large-scale nuclear programme to enrich uranium and develop nuclear power plants. The Shah’s government planned to build numerous nuclear facilities and acquire nuclear technology, including uranium enrichment capabilities.
Perhaps America was more comfortable with its minion, Pahlavi, a Swiss-educated aristocrat who was installed in a 1953 coup backed by the CIA, in which the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran, Mohammad Mosaddegh, was toppled. Mosaddegh was an author and lawyer who served as the 30th Prime Minister of Iran from 1951 to 1953.
And so, in the 1970s, during the Shah’s reign, while the US was involved in supporting Iran’s nuclear programme through the “Atoms for Peace” initiative, Siemens KWU, a German company (then a subsidiary of Siemens AG), was the primary contractor for building the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant. The project, halted by the Iranian Revolution in 1979, was to produce 23,000 MWe of electricity.
Nuclear energy for peaceful development projects remains the goal of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Still, the Iran of the Ayatollahs is not the Iran of the Shahs, and so the West must conjure up all manner of excuses to destroy it, with Israel as the arrowhead.
Beyond Iran’s unwavering support for the Palestinians and its refusal to grovel before the “almighty” USA or tremble at the name of the overhyped Israel, as so many other nations, particularly Arab ones, do, there is the issue of Iran challenging the global order. It stands at the forefront of advocating a world in which American dominance and blackmail no longer hold sway.
Some Middle East observers contend that this is another fundamental reason behind the constant attacks on Iran. China and Iran, they say, are constructing a railway linking China to Europe, with Iran serving as the main transfer point for Chinese goods to various European nations. In essence, the old Silk Road is being resurrected, with goods travelling via high-speed Chinese trains. This rail line will be shorter, faster, and cheaper, thereby reducing dependence on sea freight.
European and American shipping and insurance companies are likely to lose a significant market share, as China is expected to dominate these industries, resulting in losses of trillions of dollars.
For Iran, long subjected to merciless, wide-ranging, and excruciating sanctions imposed by the United States and its Western allies, the benefits will be immense. It will be able to sell its products at competitive prices and generate sufficient revenue to develop its infrastructure and strengthen its economy.
Iran maintains control over key sectors, including monetary policy, energy, and capital markets, unlike many countries that have adopted Western norms and standards. It resists neoliberal globalisation, standing out as an exception.
Currently, Western-imposed sanctions are intended to undermine Iran. These sanctions ensure that no cargo ship will transport goods to or from Iran, and no insurance company will cover ships willing to do so. Without insurance, exorbitant fees must be charged to move goods in or out of Iran, rendering them unaffordable and unsellable. But all this may soon become history with the advent of the Silk Road.
And they ask themselves: “If Iran has managed to develop this far under unrelenting ‘maximum pressure’, how much further could it go with the Silk Road?” That prospect is deeply unsettling to them. So, the answer? Obliterate Iran the way they did to Iraq and Libya, or install a pliant leadership in place of the principled and altruistic one in power. Otherwise, Iran is on course to becoming an independent regional superpower capable of holding its own against any global power.
Now, the Silk Road project must be powered by nuclear energy. Do you see, then, why all the hullabaloo about Iran’s nuclear programme?
From the above, you can appreciate the hypocritical stance of nations that possess nuclear weapons, are not signatories to the NPT (such as America and Israel), and regularly attack other countries, destroying lives and infrastructure, assassinating leaders across the globe—yet proclaim that others must not have nuclear weapons because they are a “terrorist state”.
According to Wikipedia, the US has been involved with (or invaded) at least 84 of the 194 countries recognised by the United Nations. In the past 40 years alone, it has attacked no fewer than 20 countries, with Iran as the latest target. Israel, too, has been another warmonger over the past four decades. It is currently hell-bent on annihilating Gaza and its inhabitants. Iran, by contrast, has fought only one war, a defensive one, when Iraq attacked it at the behest of America and the West, egged on by Netanyahu’s Israel, obsessed as he is with his “Seven Wars in five years” doctrine.
Netanyahu dreams of the destruction of seven countries via American military might: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran. Of these, only Iran remains. And it proved its mettle recently when it defended itself gallantly against the combined onslaught of America, Israel, France, Britain, Germany, Turkey, Cyprus, and all the Arab Gulf countries save Oman—in a 12-day war of attrition with Israel, which attacked it in the early hours of Friday, 13 June 2025.
Israel launched a surprise strike designed to paralyse and disorient Iran through aerial bombardments and internal sabotage, resulting in the loss of top Iranian generals and compromised air defence systems. Yet, Iran emerged as the last “man standing” after Trump brokered a ceasefire.
Saved by combined American and British forces in the Six-Day War, Israel was again rescued by the Trump-brokered ceasefire in the just-concluded “12-Day War” with Iran. However, the question now is: Will Israel, renowned for its habitual breach of international laws and agreements, honour the ceasefire? And will the IAEA and NPT treat all nations fairly and equitably? Only the hands of the clock will tell.
Concluded.
- Dr Gimba, anipr, is the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Neptune Prime. His syndicated column, The Arbiter, appears on News Point Nigeria newspaper on Mondays.