Israel’s June attack on Iran was years in the making but launched only after three developments aligned: US President Donald Trump’s re-election, the impasse on nuclear talks, and direct Iranian missile strikes on Israel, Euronews reported.
Four current and former Israeli intelligence officials, cited in the report, said the offensive had been a long-term contingency plan, but strategic timing was key.
“Israel has never hidden the fact that it wants to destroy the Iranian nuclear program, and it has never hidden the fact it was also willing to allow it to be resolved diplomatically, as long as the diplomatic solution prevents Iran not only from enriching uranium, but from ever getting the capacity to pose an existential threat to the state of Israel,” one intelligence source told Euronews.
On June 13, Israel launched land and air strikes targeting senior Iranian military leaders, nuclear scientists, and politicians, while damaging or destroying Iranian air defenses and nuclear facilities. Iran retaliated with missile and drone attacks on Israeli cities and military sites. On the ninth day of fighting, the United States bombed three Iranian nuclear sites. Iran then struck a US base in Qatar.
A US-brokered ceasefire was reached on June 24. Both sides claimed victory, with Israel and Washington saying they had significantly degraded Iran’s missile and nuclear programs -- claims Tehran denied. Independent assessments remain limited due to the secrecy surrounding Iran’s nuclear activities.
Trump’s re-election
The intelligence sources told Euronews that Trump’s second election win in 2024 was pivotal to Israel’s decision-making.
“The original plan was to attack in October 2024. That was after the second direct missile attack by Iran on Israel following Israel’s assassination of Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon in September,” the first intelligence source said. However, the strike was postponed until after the US elections.
“I think it was very important for Israel that Trump should win those elections. Once Trump was elected, he put the main emphasis on reaching a hostage deal,” said a second source, referring to the Hamas-Israel conflict.
Once the hostage deal was signed in March 2025, Israel again considered an attack on Iran, but US-Iran negotiations temporarily stalled those plans.
A 60-day ultimatum
Indirect talks between Washington and Tehran began in March 2025 but failed to produce an agreement, despite being described by counterparts as “constructive.”
“Trump gave 60 days to those negotiations. The day after, Israel attacked Iran. I think that obviously was coordinated with the US administration,” all four sources told Euronews.
Although the US has never publicly confirmed coordination, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on June 23 that the operation had been “planned for many years.”
“When we attacked, we were at the end of the 60-day period of negotiations. I think it was very clear to Trump at this stage that the Iranians were not willing to forego enrichment on Iranian soil, even though the negotiations did bring up some interesting solutions to that. For example, some sort of international enrichment agency that would allocate enriched uranium at civilian levels to all countries in the region interested in it,” the first intelligence source said.
“Trump realized Iran was engaging in negotiations merely to buy time, with no real intent to reach a resolution. The talks served as a decoy, giving Iran the impression it wouldn’t be attacked, especially amid widespread press reports that Israel was on the verge of striking,” the source added.
On the first day of conflict, Trump said in a post on Truth Social: “Two months ago I gave Iran a 60-day ultimatum to ‘make a deal.’ They should have done it! Today is day 61. I told them what to do, but they just couldn’t get there. Now they have, perhaps, a second chance!”
Iran’s missile attacks
The proxy conflict between Israel and Iran had been intensifying for years, but the intelligence officials said a turning point came in April 2024 when Iran launched missiles directly from its own territory at Israel.
“I think the pivotal moment was in April 2024, when Iran launched missiles directly from its own territory at Israel. Until then, Iran had primarily relied on proxies to attack Israel, while Israel carried out covert operations inside Iran with plausible deniability, aiming to prevent escalation into full-scale war,” the first source said.
The strike followed an Israeli attack on Iran’s consulate in Syria that killed Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Zahedi, at the time the highest-ranking Iranian military official killed since the 2020 US assassination of Revolutionary Guard’s Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani.
“I think Israel had to wait from April 2024. It needed time to gather all the intelligence and planning it needed in order to feel confident that, already in the first two or three days of the war, we would be in a position where we had complete control over the situation, minimal casualties at home, and complete control of Iranian airspace, with the ability to attack whenever and wherever we want to,” the source added.
A second intelligence source told Euronews that Israel intends to “destroy anything that even suggests that the Iranians are preparing to rebuild any of the capabilities that we have destroyed.”
