Share Strategic Reflections by Shemuel Meir
In the Middle East, strategic surprise is an almost regular occurrence. Not exactly an unusual phenomenon. On the night of June 13, 2025, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu surprised the world by launching a preventive war aimed at eliminating Iran’s nuclear project, the 12 day war known as Operation Rising Lion. Israel failed. The war’s objective was not achieved. A year later, on June 17, 2026, the United States and Iran surprised both Israel and the world by announcing the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding providing for “the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts” (Article 1). The MoU is intended to serve as the basis for a final permanent agreement ending the conflict through a binding resolution of the UN Security Council (Article 14). In essence, the MoU constitutes an interim nuclear agreement leading toward a new nuclear deal, should the parties succeed in concluding one during the following 60 days.
The MoU was received extremely negatively in Israel. Headlines described it as a resounding failure and a document of surrender. The headline splashed across the entire front page of the Yedioth Ahronoth daily summed it up succinctly: “Good for Iran, bad for Israel.” In this article, I will ask what occurred between the two surprises. I will focus on the analysis of the nuclear issue in the MoU. It is the nuclear issue, not the Strait of Hormuz, that was the reason for the war and the trigger for all the developments of the past year. This, after all, is the only aspect that truly interests Israelis. I will present a reading of the MoU through the prism of the nuclear issue: what is, and what is not, in the future nuclear agreement toward which the parties appear to be heading. In my analysis, I will try to separate signals from the background noise of emotions and political narratives. In strategic analysis there is no place for Netanyahu’s metaphors about existential threats of destruction. Metaphors are not explanations, especially when Netanyahu fails to present evidence of the “new intelligence” allegedly showing that Iran possessed a nuclear weapon within an immediate timeframe. Readers seeking a detailed discussion of this issue can find it in my previous article The Iran War: Faulty Conceptions, the Existential Threat, and the Craft of Intelligence (Hebrew).
Three articles of the MoU deal directly and exclusively with the core nuclear issue (Articles 7, 8, and 9). These are the articles which determine the parameters of the new nuclear agreement. They are defined as critical, and the parties “express their intentions to immediately address this issues “. Iran reaffirms its commitment (Article 8) that it will neither procure nor develop nuclear weapons. This is a fundamental non-proliferation commitment, binding on Iran as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The wording is identical to that of Iran’s commitment to the United States and the major powers in the preamble of the JCPOA. In my view, a direct declaratory commitment by Iran to the United States, both in the previous agreement and in any future one, has added value in preventing nuclear proliferation.
The United States and Iran also agreed (Article 8) to jointly address the stockpile of enriched uranium still buried at the bombed nuclear sites. This stockpile poses a clear risk that nuclear weapons could be produced if it remains there without regulation and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) supervision. The first step will most likely involve diluting the enriched uranium at those sites to lower enrichment levels (although the MoU does not specify which levels), under IAEA supervision, without removing the material from Iranian territory. This would have an immediate positive effect by lengthening Iran’s estimated breakout time for producing weapons-grade highly enriched uranium and would somewhat roll back Iran’s status as a nuclear threshold state.
The MoU does not specifically mention the dangerous stockpile of 440 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent—the material closest to weapons-grade uranium (90 percent enrichment). Nor does it address the stockpile of approximately eight tons of uranium enriched to lower levels, which also poses a significant potential proliferation risk. It is possible that precisely through the absence of a specific reference, the MoU hints that the entire enriched uranium inventory, regardless of enrichment level, will be addressed in the future agreement. It should be recalled that under the JCPOA, Iran agreed to remove approximately 10 tons of enriched uranium from its territory. Only 300 kilograms of low-enriched uranium (below 5 percent) remained inside the country.Top of Form
The discussion of Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium focuses on troubling developments in the past. The MoU, however, is primarily forward-looking. It seeks to define what must be done from this point onward. The two parties agreed to discuss “the issue of enrichment and other mutually agreed matters relating to the Islamic Republic of Iran’s nuclear needs” (Article 8). This is very general laconic formulation lacking any details. When read together with Article 9, which stipulates that until a final agreement is concluded “Iran will maintain the current status quo of its nuclear program”, there may be more than meets the eye. There is no mention whatsoever of dismantling Iran’s nuclear program. Nor is there any hint of President Trump’s public demand, which he repeatedly presented as a red line during the war, for a permanent end to uranium enrichment on Iranian soil.
If this interpretation is correct, it may signal a dramatic shift in the Trump administration’s nuclear agenda. The President who dismantled the JCPOA because it was identified with President Obama, his political nemesis, now appears to be moving toward the very outline that lay at the heart of the Obama agreement: not zero enrichment, but rather permitting low-level civilian uranium enrichment inside Iran under intrusive, continuous IAEA monitoring, in exchange for Iran’s commitment not to develop nuclear weapons. This arrangement is fully consistent with Article IV of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and as it is implemented in other countries that enrich uranium on their own territory, including Argentina, Brazil, Germany, and Japan. Read in this way, the MoU represents a significant American concession. The right to enrich uranium on Iranian soil has long been defined by Tehran as a non-negotiable condition. If this Iranian demand is ultimately accepted in a final nuclear agreement, Iran will be expected to “pay” President Trump with an equally significant concession that effectively blocks the pathway to nuclear weapons.
There have also been public declarations indicating a possible shift in President Trump’s position. For quite some time, he has omitted the demand for “zero uranium enrichment” from both his speeches and social media posts, while consistently repeating that “Iran will not have a nuclear weapon.” From a nuclear policy perspective, uranium enrichment for peaceful purposes is compatible with a prohibition on nuclear weapons.
Further support for the notion that the administration may be embracing the model of the JCPOA, which constrained and blocked Iran’s pathway to a nuclear weapon, can be found in White House leaks referring to a 20-year “suspension” agreement on uranium enrichment. Those reports were vague and ambiguous, making it impossible to determine precisely what was meant. Viewed in light of the MoU, however, they may refer to extending the duration of the agreement’s Sunset Clauses governing uranium enrichment and the development of advanced centrifuges for a significantly longer period than under the JCPOA. Perhaps for twenty years. Such an arrangement would also allow Trump to distinguish his agreement from Obama’s.
Attention should be paid to the US obligations under article 7 of the MoU which deals with the removal of the sanctions. This issue lies at the heart of the nuclear issue. The commitment goes beyond lifting the primary and secondary unilateral U.S. financial and economic sanctions imposed under the “maximum pressure” campaign. It explicitly encompasses all categories of sanctions, including the repeal of every United Nations Security Council sanctions resolutions. The implications are far-reaching. It would mean rescinding the Security Council’s “snapback” sanctions mechanism, which was reinstated only last October at the initiative of the three European powers that were parties to the JCPOA. Those Security Council sanctions prohibited Iran entirely from enriching uranium or separating plutonium under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, the chapter for maintaining international peace and security and one that authorizes the use of military force against states found to be in violation.
In the same article, the United States also agreed to rescind the IAEA Board of Governors’ resolutions against Iran. This is a far-reaching step in international relations. Its significance lies in reversing the IAEA resolutions that, under the Agency’s mandate, provided the legal basis for referring the “Iranian file” to the United Nations Security Council and for declaring Iran to be in non-compliance with its obligations under the NPT.
The IAEA’s findings of Iranian non-compliance stemmed from the discovery of uranium traces at undeclared sites associated with Iran’s old nuclear weapons program, which was terminated some twenty years ago, and from the deadlock reached in the Agency’s investigation due to inadequate Iranian explanations. If a new nuclear agreement is concluded, the declaration of Iran’s non-compliance with the NPT is rescinded, and Iran scrupulously implements all the agreement’s provisions and IAEA safeguards, as it did between 2015 and 2019, its chances of receiving what is effectively an IAEA “exoneration” (Broader Conclusion in IAEA terminology) that Iran is fully meeting its obligations under the NPT would increase substantially. This was Iran’s goal under the JCPOA and in this it differs completely from the North Korea nuclear case. This would provide Iran with a significant incentive to comply with all the provisions of a new nuclear agreement. It is worth noting that South Africa which built six nuclear weapons before dismantling them after the fall of the apartheid regime, required nine years to receive the IAEA Broader Conclusion.
The interim nuclear arrangement outlined in the MoU still contains considerable ambiguity and lacks important details regarding its duration, the scope of its restrictions, and the expiration dates of its various provisions. Every international agreement dealing with nuclear arms control contains Sunset Clauses that are generally subject to renewal. Furthermore, how will the agreement’s stringent verification mechanisms will be structured and implemented. President Trump and Vice President Vance, responsible for the Iran portfolio within the administration, have stated publicly that, under the agreement, IAEA inspectors, who had been denied access to the bombed uranium enrichment facilities, will soon return to Iran. In the same context, IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi announced that inspectors are expected to resume their activities at Natanz, Fordow, and Isfahan in accordance with the explicit provisions of Article 8 of the Memorandum of Understanding. The IAEA inspectors have already had an initial exchange with Iranian officials to discuss technical issues. Effective IAEA verification is indispensable to the agreement’s success.
Like its predecessor, the new nuclear agreement will not include restrictions on ballistic missiles. Contrary to Prime Minister Netanyahu’s repeated assertions that Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal constitutes an existential threat equivalent to its nuclear program, the prevailing view in international relations is different. Conventional ballistic missiles undoubtedly represent a significant strategic threat with considerable destructive capability. But only nuclear weapons possess the capacity for mass destruction on a scale capable of killing hundreds of thousands of people. Nuclear weapons are in a league of their own, which is precisely why they are governed by dedicated international treaties aimed at their prohibition and limitation. No comparable international treaties prohibit conventional ballistic missiles. This is apparently what President Trump meant, presumably after receiving strategic and military briefings, when he stated that, under a new nuclear agreement, Iran could retain conventional missiles, just as Saudi Arabia and many other countries do.
Conclusion
Two rounds of preventive war against Iran within a single year not only failed to resolve the problem but, in fact, exacerbated it. The prospect of a third military confrontation loomed on the horizon. Israel and Iran were at risk of becoming trapped in a cycle of escalating retaliation and a prolonged war of attrition, one that it is far from certain Israeli society and its economy could have sustained.
A third preventive war might also have produced a dangerous boomerang effect: accelerating Iran’s motivation to withdraw from the NPT, and pushing it onto an overt nuclear weapons path. From there, the road to a regional nuclear arms race, and the emergence of new nuclear-armed states in the Middle East, such as Saudi Arabia, would be short. At the last moment, diplomacy reemerged. A new nuclear agreement, if and when it is concluded, would reduce the risk of another war and avert the negative consequences outlined above.
A final observation is worth considering before politicians and commentators in Israel rally behind Netanyahu’s narrative of a “bad nuclear deal.” A new nuclear agreement that effectively blocks Iran’s path to nuclear weapons, along the lines of the Obama-era agreement, would make a positive contribution to Israel’s security. Israel is a country that is neither a party to nuclear arms control agreements nor a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty nonetheless benefits from the security dividends generated by international agreements designed to prevent nuclear proliferation.
Shemuel Meir is an independent Israeli strategic analyst. Graduate of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and a former IDF and Tel Aviv University researcher.
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