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US-Israel shadow war on Iran continues with the threat of snapback sanctions

There’s a lot the media isn’t telling us about US and Israeli relations with Iran. Carol Turner traces Trump’s approach, the controversial history of snapback sanctions, and demands an end to nuclear hypocrisy.

The fragile ceasefire that followed the US and Israel’s military assault on Iran is holding, for now at least, while Benjamin Netanyahu’s attention is focussed on his endgame for Gaza. The western media lens, which shifted away from Iran after the 12-day military campaign in June, recently returned with the announcement that Britain, France, and Germany (E3) are initiating snapback sanctions. 

During the 12-day attack, Trump and Netanyahu claimed their aim was preventing Iran’s imminent development of nuclear weapons. President Trump has repeatedly insisted Iran is a few weeks away from having a nuclear bomb. Throughout the 12 days, Rafael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) insisted there was no evidence Iran was developing nuclear weapons. He told the UN Security Council: “The IAEA can guarantee, through a watertight inspections system, that nuclear weapons will not be developed in Iran.”  

US and Israel’s strategic goals

Though militarily weakened by this and other recent attacks, and despite the economic strain caused by international sanctions, Iran is still a powerful obstacle to Trump’s strategic goal in the region. Trump’s goal being to normalise relations between Israel and its regional neighbours. Iran is also a chief obstacle in the way of Netanyahu’s attempts to quell Palestinian opposition and strengthen Israel’s grip on the Middle East. 

Israel is explicitly seeking regime change, quietly supported by the United States. On day one of the June attack, Netanyahu appealed to the people of Iran to rise up against the regime, and he continues to do so. 

The breadth of targets in June not only included nuclear research facilities, fuel enrichment plants, and nuclear power plants, but also Iran’s air defences, and other military and civilian facilities. Israel’s Defence Force (IDF) assassinated Iranian nuclear scientists, politicians, and military leaders. Images broadcast by Iranian state media have exposed Israel’s covert operations inside Iran before the attacks – showing the deployment of Israeli agents and extensive use of small drones in the opening hours of the June offensive. 

The Israel-Iran ceasefire may be holding, but the shadow war with Iran continues. In a StW-CND webinar during the military bombardment, General Secretary of the TSSA rail union Maryam Eslamdoust, speaking in a personal capacity, explained what this means. The bombardment, she said, was not only a military campaign but also a psychological and propaganda campaign. 

Trump’s objectives

Trump’s so-called nuclear talks go deeper than Iran’s potential for a nuclear weapons programme. They seek to further limit the development of a civil nuclear power programme (which all nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty signatories are entitled to pursue), end Iran expanding drone and ballistic missile capabilities, and its support for a network of regional proxies. Within weeks of taking office in January this year, Trump  signed National Security Presidential Memorandum 2 (NSPM2) which turned those objectives into a directive to all offices of state. 

Trump also announced a campaign of ‘secondary sanctions’ aimed at countries buying oil and gas from Iran, suggesting US businesses will not be allowed to trade with these countries. This campaign is mainly aimed – with little success – at China which accounts for around 90% of Iran’s oil exports. In April Trump also imposed secondary sanctions on countries importing oil from Venezuela, again aimed at China. 

Trump’s approach to Iran’s nuclear weapons potential contrasts with that of President Obama, which resulted in the Iran nuclear deal – the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPoA), widely regarded as a successful arms limitation agreement. It lifted nuclear-related sanctions on Iran in return for a commitment by Iran to restrict its civil nuclear programme and permit rigorous International Atomic Energy Association (IAEL) inspections. Germany and the five permanent members (P5) of the UN Security Council – US, UK, China, Russia, and France – as well as Iran were signatories to the JCPoA. 

The agreement was codified in UNSC Resolution 2231 of 2015.  However, Trump effectively killed the JCPoA in his first presidential term by withdrawing the US from the JCPoA in 2018 and de-certifying UNSC 2231, claiming Iran was developing nuclear weapons. 

Snapback sanctions

Multiple IAEA inspection reports at that time confirmed Iran was adhering to the terms of the agreement. These reports were universally accepted, including by US authorities. In 2020, however, even though the US was no longer party to the JCPoA, Trump invoked a ‘snapback’ mechanism in UNSC 2231, claiming Iran was failing to honour the agreement and calling for the UN to reimpose sanctions. 

The UNSC president at that time blocked Trump’s attempt to activate snapback, citing a lack of consensus in the Security Council, after which Trump imposed US sanctions on Iran. A year later the E5 followed suit. Unlike the US, however, they remained parties to the JCPoA and UNSC 2231. Despite objections by other P5 Security Council members, a year later Britain, France, and Germany followed suit and reimposed sanctions. 

The above events, in outline, are the basis for continuing claims by Russia and China that sanctions on Iran are illegal – a position they reiterated as recently as March this year. A joint statement by China, Russia, and Iran, called for restraint not escalation – emphasising their support for UNSC 2331 and the need to uphold the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and Iran’s right to civil nuclear power as a signatory, and calling for the removal of unlawful sanctions on Iran. 

Iran responded to the US and E3 sanctions imposed during Trump’s first term by exceeding the agreed limits on its stockpile of low-enriched uranium and enriching uranium in higher concentrations. It must be noted that these higher levels of uranium enrichment were not high enough for their use in a nuclear bomb, as the IAEA and other experts have pointed out. Nonetheless, increasing uranium enrichment has become the basis of current claims by the US and its allies that Iran is in breach of the JCPoA and on the verge of possessing nuclear weapons. 

Under the terms of UNSC 2231, the JCPoA terminates on 18 October this year, at which point all nuclear related sanctions against Iran are due to end. However, on 28 August this year, the E3 notified the UNSC they were initiating snapback sanctions on the grounds of Iran’s ‘significant non-compliance’ with the terms of the JCPoA, These are due to kick in 30 days after notification of snapback, unless the UNSC adopts a resolution against snapback. 

In a statement to the IAEA’s Board of Governors on 8 October, Grossi confirmed he had “continuously and systematically” reached out to restore the “indispensable cooperation” with Iran, and that “progress has been made” during ongoing discussions. It remains to be seen if this is likely to influence the imposition of snapback.

Iran’s response

Throughout Trump’s election campaign and his second term in office, Iran has repeatedly called for nuclear negotiations with the US to be resumed and, until the military attack in June, continued to permit IAEA inspections. The latter were the basis on which the IAEA Director General confirmed to the UNSC that there were no credible indications that Iran has a nuclear weapons programme.

After the June attack, Iran halted IAEA inspections and threatened withdrawal from the NPT – a clear hint that a nuclear weapons programme might be pursued. This was widely reported in the western media. Since then, and noticeably less reported in the west, Iran has opened talks with the IAEA and remains a member of the NPT. 

Limited military exchanges between Israel and Iran had already taken place in April 2024, and more extensive exchanges in September-October after an Israeli airstrike killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and others. Leaked US classified documents suggest CIA involvement. The Fars News Agency, controlled by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) released footage suggesting Israel was targeting Iran’s air defences in preparation for future attacks.

Against this background, talks between Iran and the Trump administration, which began in early March hosted by Qatar on behalf of the Gulf States, have floundered. Netanyahu’s relentless  onslaught against Palestinians across the Occupied Territories have so far proved insurmountable in Trump’s attempts to gain Gulf state support for his campaign to lever Iran into an agreement which goes beyond nuclear weapons. On the contrary, there has been limited signs that the actions of Trump and Netanyahu have resulted in a partial thaw in relations between Iran and the Gulf states.

The military attacks of 2024-25 have by and large seen the Iranian opposition retreat from the streets. As with Iraq in 1991 and 2003, and many other examples across the world, the Iranian people have united for now against their foreign invaders.

End the nuclear hypocrisy

The mendacity of Israel, the US, and the E3 is clear from the events described above, and by and large, the abject failure of western media to report the full story surrounding Iran nuclear negotiations. It should come as no surprise that the events of 2024-25 have strengthened the voice of Iranian hawks calling for withdrawal from the NPT and the development of  a nuclear weapons programme. 

Most breathtaking of all perhaps, is the hypocrisy of the United States and Europe in failing to acknowledge that Isreal has possessed nuclear weapons since the 1960s. Israel has never acknowledged it has nuclear weapons, and has never signed the NPT. 

Isreal’s nuclear weapons were disclosed by Mordecai Vanunu, an heroic Israeli whistle-blower at the Dimona nuclear plant. Vanunu spent 18 years in Israeli jails, mostly in solitary confinement, for his disclosure. He was released in 2004, but his movements are still severely restricted.

Israel’s nuclear weapons are unacknowledged by the US and its allies, and rarely mentioned by a compliant western media. 

The double standards applied to the treatment of Iran by Israel, the US, Britain, and Europe compared to the disregard of Israel’s nuclear armoury should be challenged as fiercely and as frequently by the anti-war movements across Europe and North America, as Netanyahu’s actions against Gaza have been. 

Removing Israel’s nuclear weapons is every bit as important as preventing Iran from acquiring them, and indispensable to the long-term stability of the Middle East.

  • Read Maryam Eslamdoust’s description of the shadow war in an earlier Labour CND post here.

* This article was first published on Stop the War Coalition website, 10 September 2025

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US-Israel: ‘Not just a military strategy, a strategy to paralyse Iran’

We reproduce below a speech by Maryam Eslamdoust, General Secretary of the TSSA transport union. Speaking in a personal capacity, she describes the impact of the US-Israel ‘shadow war’ on her father and the Iranian people. An update on the situation in Iran is available on our website here.

Hello everyone and thank you so much for being here today to discuss Israel’s attack on Iran. I am the General Secretary of TSSA. But today I’m not here in my official capacity. I’m speaking as a British Iranian woman and a daughter.

I haven’t heard from my father who’s in Iran for over 48 hours. The last time we spoke, he told me the roads out of Tehran were gridlocked. Millions of  people were trying to flee the city. Petrol was gone; he couldn’t fill his car to leave the city. Millions were trying to escape Tehran. It was near midnight and I haven’t been able to get hold of him since.

That’s because Iran’s telecommunications infrastructure have been attacked by Israel. People can’t make phone calls. They can’t connect to the internet. They’re being cut off from the world. All the while missiles continue to fall, cars are being blown up in daylight and civilian neighbourhoods are attacked.

I’m hearing now that the Iranian banking system has been hacked. So overnight people’s savings have disappeared.

This is not just a military strategy by Israel or Donald Trump. It’s a strategy of collapse – to paralyse Iran, its infrastructure, and the morale of its people. And it’s not just physical, it’s psychological.

Yesterday Iran state TV was hacked live on air. Viewers across the country saw their screens cut to unfamiliar visuals and messages delivered in Farsi encouraging Iranians to rise up to revolt, misusing ‘women, live, freedom’ slogans. The day before that, at the state TV News building in Tehran, the same network was bombed while a woman presenter was live on air.

This is not just an air strike, it’s a message ‘we can get inside your buildings, your screens, your minds’. It’s an attempt to intimidate and destabilise – not just with force, but with fear. 

Israel’s illegal attack on Iran is not about self-defence or security. This is about making Iran collapse as a state politically, economically, and socially. We have seen this before in Iraq, Libya, Syria. It’s the same script: isolate, destabilise, dehumanise, destroy.

And what is more alarming, it is unfolding on today’s media without any challenge. Twenty years ago, some journalists and some editors still had the courage to question war narratives. Today, far too many are simply repeating the government’s briefings and anonymous intelligence sources. This is no critical interrogation of the story. Sadly, the press is not holding power to account, it is echoing it.

There is a propaganda war, an information war. In recent days, I’ve seen social media flooded with posts in Farsi from IDF accounts using the Iranian language and the language of Iranian protest movements from two years ago, especially the slogan ‘woman, life, freedom’ to call for regime change. Those slogans were never meant to justify bombs. They were meant to highlight the suffering of civilians, Iranian women. Those who shouted them wanted dignity and justice, not war.

What I’ve seen from Iranians – both inside the country, and the diaspora – is a remarkable unity. This isn’t political unity, there are still very real debates about Iran’s future, its leadership, its systems. But right now, across the political spectrum, Iranians are united on one fundamental idea: foreign bombs won’t liberate us. Iranians don’t want their futures dictated by missiles, invasions, or destabilisation campaigns disguised as solidarity.

Let me speak about the issue that’s constantly weaponised by the western media, Iran’s nuclear programme. We’re being told once again that Iran is on the verge of developing a nuclear weapons programme, but the International Atomic Energy Agency, the IAEA,  has been clear there are no credible indications that Iran has a nuclear weapons program. That was their official assessment before these escalations even began.

What has Iran done in response? It’s reduced, not stopped, voluntary cooperation with the IAEA. That was originally agreed as part of the JCPoA, the nuclear deal that Donald Trump tore up in 2018. For years after that, Iran continued to comply with the deal’s core provisions. But eventually Iran said if the deal’s dead, then why should we keep making concessions? Even so, Iran remains signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the IAEA still monitors its nuclear sites. There is no legal evidence of weaponisation.

There is one country in the Middle East known to have a nuclear arsenal, and that’s Israel. It has hundreds of warheads. It has never joined the NPT. It allows no international inspection and yet it is presented in the west as a responsible actor. That is double standards of the highest order.

The demands being made of Iran right now are surrender to compliance, to regime change. These are unrealistic and dangerous. There is no military solution to this crisis. Iran will not, and cannot, surrender to conditions it knows will only bring more pain.

So what’s the path forward? Diplomacy, but real diplomacy. Iran has repeatedly said it’s willing to accept limits on its uranium enrichment programme, allow extensive international monitoring, engage in regional security talks. That has to be mutual. It means an end to the sanctions the US has imposed that are strangling the economy and civilian living standards. and restoring Iran’s full participation in global, political, and economic life – ending the policy of permanent isolation.  

If the West is serious about peace in the region, it must also hold all states accountable, including its allies, and that means finally addressing Israel’s illegal wars, its undeclared nuclear weapons, and its current actions in Gaza which the UN’s own experts have said may amount to genocide.

So what do we do now. We keep speaking up. We’re not just neutral, if we stay silent we are complicit. I’m asking you – whether you’re trade unionists, policy makers, academics, journalists, or just someone who believes in justice, please do three things.

Speak up. Say clearly that bombing Iran into collapse is not a path to peace.

Demand diplomacy. Press your government to stop fuelling war and start pursuing a deal, and challenge the narrative. Don’t let our slogans be co-opted; don’t let another war be justified on false pretences.

The Iranian people want peace, they want dignity, and they want the right to shape their own future. Free from bombs, free from fear, and free from foreign coercion. Thank you.

* CND’s webinar, No War on Iran, is available in full here
* Maryam’s speech was first reproduced on London CND website

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Trump’s nuclear hypocrisy

When President Trump signed the order to pull the US out, the Iran nuclear deal was dead in the water. CAROL TURNER, Vice Chair, Labour CND, asks why Trump withdrew from a landmark arms control agreement that everyone, including official US sources, said was working.

All parties agree that Iran was meeting its obligations under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors have repeatedly confirmed this. Iran does not possess nuclear weapons.

Continue reading “Trump’s nuclear hypocrisy”

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Trump and Iran nuclear deal

The Iran nuclear agreement agreed some verifiable limits on Iranian nuclear development in return for lifting some economic sanctions. That’s exactly how deals between parties who don’t trust each other are negotiated. Hasn’t Trump’s withdrawal just proved Iran right to be suspicious of the US?
– Carol Turner, Vice Chair
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Stop Western intervention in Middle East, by Walter Wolfgang

The Washington Post has published an advertisement signed by many retired American generals opposing war with Iran. Their position is right.

The development of nuclear power by any country, whether Britain, France or the USA is regrettable – powerful fissile material can be used for the production of nuclear weapons. But it is equally clear that Iran has not broken any international agreement.

The right way to stop any possible development of nuclear weapons by Iran – which it has not yet got – is to ensure the UN holds a discussion on a nuclear weapon free zone in the Middle East, and oblige Israel – which has got nuclear weapons – to attend it.

There is no case for intervention against Iran by Israel or by the United States. Western intervention in Libya has plunged the country into civil war. Fortunately the Chinese and Russian veto at the UN of a NATO-Arab League resolution in Syria may possibly result in a negotiated solution of the Syria impasse.

There is resistance to Assad in Syria but there is also significant support. Syrians are intensely nationalistic and rightly suspicious of Western nations. The United States and NATO have had to present their interference in the Middle East as bending the ‘Arab Spring’ in their direction. Meanwhile, some of the Syrian representatives are in China trying to broker a ceasefire.

The Syrian National Council itself is divided. A section of it does not want the West to arm them – a policy promoted by those great champions of social liberties Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Even the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, while angry about the Russian and Chinese veto, states that Western intervention is unlikely and would pledge unity not civil war.

The danger is a proxy war fought out in Syria between those linked to Iran and the pro-western section of the Syrian rebels back by NATO, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States.

Ed Miliband made the mistake of backing NATO over Libya. Labour should now make it clear that it will lead the resistance to any intervention – whether overt or covert – in Syria and Iran.