US/Israel-Iran: Peace was 'within reach'; so why the strike?

Screengrab from an 11-second video -- titled
'Dismantlement of a headquarters of
the Iranian terror regime" -- released by the IDF
yesterday showing plumes of smoke
after the bombing by US-Israeli forces.
The Iranian Supreme Leader and many other
top civilian andmilitary leaders are suspected
to have been killed in this attack. 
Source: X/IDF 

So, finally, what the US and Israel have wanted to achieve for close to 40 years has been accomplished.

The killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on Saturday (28 Feb) morning occurred while US-Iran negotiations regarding Iran’s nuclear programme were very much underway.

Just hours before the US and Israel launched the attack, the Omani Foreign Minister, Badr bin Hamad Albusaidi, -- one of the key mediators in the US-Iran talks -- had given broad indications in an interview with Margaret Brennan on CBS’s Face the Nation that Iran was coming around to accepting the demands of the US.

‘PEACE DEAL WITHIN REACH’

Watch the full interview here.

These are excerpts from what he said during the interview:

"In my assessment of the way the talks are going... I can see that the peace deal is within our reach." [00:41]

"If the ultimate objective is to ensure forever that Iran cannot have a nuclear bomb, I think we have cracked that problem through these negotiations by agreeing a very important breakthrough that has never been achieved any time before." [01:36]

"The single most important achievement, I believe, is the agreement that Iran will never, ever have a nuclear material that will create a bomb. This is, I think, a big achievement." [02:14]

"We are talking about zero stockpiling. And that is very, very important, because if you cannot stockpile material that is enriched then there is no way you can actually create a bomb, whether you enrich or don't enrich." [03:00]

"If there is a deal, an agreed deal, there will be full access (for UN inspectors)." [05:15]

"I'm not really in a position to go into the details of this, but the big picture is that a deal is in our hand, if we are only allowed the negotiators, and I believe both sides have been dead serious, very creative, very imaginative, to really reach where we have reached so far." [07:37]

"If we can agree tomorrow on this deal, and it can be agreed very fast, then there will be the access given to all the experts to go and assess what we have there. We will have the access diplomatically without having to go to war." [11:05]

"The big main issues, components, that really are the main areas of concern, I think that can be agreed tomorrow. The technicalities will take some time to work it out with the agency, the IAEA." [16:54]

Read the full text of the interview here.

MANY UNANSWERED QUESTIONS

If a “peace deal” was so close to being achieved, as the Omani Foreign Minister indicated, then I wonder: why did the US and Israel launch the attack?

Is it because America feared that if the deal was finalised, Ali Khamenei would stay in power and the US and Israel would have to continue dealing with him? Perhaps the stated goal of regime change would not have been successful otherwise.

So, was it a deal that US the never really wanted? 

Or was the whole deal really not about the nuclear issue at all?

Or was the "peace deal within reach" only in the minds of the mediators and not really something that the US or Iran really believed in.

Only on Friday (a day before the launch of the war), Trump said he wasn't happy with the way the talks were going. And in Iran, a fews ago, the Supreme Leader had charted out a chain of command in case the worst happened.

So, it looks like the writing was very much on the wall. 

It was also surprising that the first wave of attacks happened on Saturday morning. Such strikes rarely occur in broad daylight. Was the timing intended to take the Iranian leadership by surprise?

WHAT IF THE WAR PROLONGS?

With the removal of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the general hope is that the war will end soon.

However, there is no sign of that happening yet. More than 24 hours after the death of the Supreme Leader, Iran is continuing to launch missiles at targets across the Middle East.

Dubai was a particularly surprising target, especially its civilian airport — the busiest in the world — along with a hotel and a mall. The airport has been closed since yesterday, and its impact is already being felt globally.

If Iran’s military capabilities have been dented considerably, how are they managing to hold out? Incidentally, both Russia and China have condemned the US attack and the killing of Ali Khamenei.

If Iran manages to overtly or covertly reinforce its arsenal and the war prolongs, the impact on global supply chains and their cascading effects will be unimaginably severe. 

Oil is once again centrestage. Nearly a quarter of the global oil supply passes through the narrow, 50-km wide Strait of Hormuz, which is under Iran’s control.

WHEN WILL IT ALL END?

The war will surely end one day. But I don’t see an immediate end to the hatred and animosity that both sides have harboured for decades, the very feelings at the root of everything we are seeing now in the Middle East. If anything, those flames have likely been fanned exponentially.