Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on April 30, 2018, claims he can "prove" Iran's secret development of nuclear weapons. JINI/Press Association. All rights reserved.The international politics of escalating tension between Israel and Iran are in flux. In just three weeks, a change in the atmosphere can be measured in three ways.
First, the western airstrikes against Bashar al-Assad's regime on the night of 13-14 April were met with disappointment by advisors of Israel's prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu. Instead of a major operation that delivered a sharp warning to Iran over its military build-up in Syria, the attack was little more than symbolic. If the coordinated United States-France-United Kingdom action inflicted no real military damage, nor did it do anything to deter the Quds force – the external arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) – from further building up its forces in Syria (see "After the Syria raid: what next?", 17 April 2018).
Second, Trump's declared opposition to the nuclear agreement with Iran was leading three of its other signatories – France, Germany and the UK – to launch a strong diplomatic effort to dissuade him from repudiating it. For Israel, the deal's survival promised to be a worrying setback.
