Did you know the US and Israel helped create Iran’s nuclear project? Here’s the story

From research reactors and Western contracts to blockades and threats of war, Iran’s nuclear history is also a history of Western reversal What’s 3,000 people killed in Iran, 2,020 killed in Lebanon, 23 in Israel, and more than a dozen in Gulf states after the US launched its war against Iran? “A little Middle East work” that’s going “very well,” US President Donald Trump said at the White House last week during a state dinner for King Charles. Trump’s ‘little work’, which involved significant casualties in the region without a clearly defined objective at the outset, was later framed as serving the purpose of ensuring that “Americans and their children would not be threatened by a nuclear-armed Iran.” “We have militarily defeated that particular opponent, and we’re never going to let that opponent ever – Charles agrees with me even more than I do – we’re never going to let that opponent have a nuclear weapon.” Will Charles help Donald make sure there’s nothing – and no one – to allow Iran to work on its nuclear project? It seems like the US will try to level Iran to the ground anyway. According to The Atlantic, the Trump administration began considering strikes aimed not simply at Iran’s military capacity, but at the faction inside the regime that Washington believed was preventing a deal. Trump even reposted a video by Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen calling for an air campaign along those lines. According to Axios, the military prepared options for a “short and powerful” wave of strikes, which General Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, briefed the president on. The timing is politically delicate. Trump has a state visit to China scheduled for mid-May, a trip that has already been postponed once. If strikes are ordered, they could come before the trip, allowing the president to travel after demonstrating strength.

Or they could come immediately afterward, once the diplomatic optics are out of the way. While Trump supplied the performance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio supplied the doctrine. When Trump spoke of military victory, royal agreement, and Iran never being allowed to possess a nuclear weapon, Rubio framed the same position as strategic necessity: Iran’s government cannot be trusted, its future intentions are already known, and any deal that fails to address the nuclear question is unacceptable. US President Donald Trump speaks to reporters as he and Secretary of State Marco Rubio (L) depart the White House on their way to Florida on March 20, 2026 in Washington, DC © Getty Images / Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images The nuclear question, he said, is “the reason why we’re in this in the first place.” He insisted that if Iran’s “radical clerical regime” remained in power, it would eventually decide to pursue a nuclear weapon. Therefore, in his view, the issue has to be confronted immediately. But there is something deeply ironic in this entire spectacle. Listening to Trump and Rubio, one might think Iran’s nuclear program appeared out of nowhere – a dark project born entirely from anti-Western ideology and clerical ambition. This is far from the case. Read more War without end? How Israel became trapped in its own security doctrine Iran’s nuclear program did not begin with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. It did not begin with the Islamic Republic. It did not begin as an anti-American project. It began under the Shah, when Iran was a close US ally. And it began with direct American assistance. When Iran’s nuclear dream was a Western project The origins of Iran’s nuclear program were actually a pro-Western modernization project of the Shah’s era, and it was the Western countries that acted as the