Last week, Donald Trump asked his senior advisers for options to bomb Iran’s primary nuclear energy site.
The alarming possibility of a military attack on Iran — a nation that has long been in the sights of war hawks in the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Israel — was immediately invoked by foreign policy analysts Monday following reports that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met in secret late Sunday with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. First divulged by unnamed Israeli officials and publicly denied Monday morning by the Saudi foreign minister, the reported covert meeting in Neom, Saudi Arabia comes on the heels of news last week that U.S. President Donald Trump asked his senior advisers for options to bomb Iran’s primary nuclear energy site, prompting Iran to vow a “crushing response” to any attack. Trump’s request for military strike options came days after he lost the presidential election to Joe Biden, who has pledged to act quickly to reenter the Iran nuclear agreement that Trump violated in May of 2018. Contrary to baseless and ongoing allegations by the U.S. and Israel, Iran says it is not developing and has no plans to develop nuclear weapons — a claim U.N. inspectors have repeatedly verified in recent years. The context of the Trump administration’s aggressive posturing and militaristic threats against Iran fueled critics’ concerns following word of the secret meeting between MbS, Netanyahu, and Pompeo, which was also reportedly attended by Yossi Cohen, director of the Israeli spy agency Mossad.
