Public opinion on Iran's alleged capture of Israeli nuclear secrets is deeply polarized. There is a notable division between those who support Iran, seeing its actions as a justified geopolitical maneuver against an oppressive Israeli regime, and those who are skeptical, viewing the claims as propaganda without evidence. Critics highlight concerns over historical and ongoing geopolitical tensions in the region, emphasizing double standards in international oversight, particularly regarding nuclear capabilities. While many express solidarity with Iran and call for equal rights and freedom for Palestine, others stress the need for evidence and criticize both countries for escalating conflicts and potential misinformation.

Iran

Israel

United States

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)

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EVERYONE TO THE NUCLEAR SHELTERS! Or at least everyone who is not tired of this theater by this point.

feujchtnaverjott

The revolutionary iranian leader Benjamin Iranyahu gonna blow up one of those and say it was under Iran's government orders

MarkLarrz

US gave Israel the nuke. US forbids Iran from going nuclear. Iran steals nuclear data from Israel

Perfect circle 

Uellerstone

Israel has historically used a number of tactics in their conflict with Iran and much of this was aimed at retarding Iran’s nuclear program.  These include:

Naval blockade/embargo.  Israel intercepts shipping both to and from Iran in support of international embargoes. Much of this interdicts conventional weapons bound for Palestine but it does also catch shipping to Iran with materials useful for their nuclear program. 

Air strikes.  Israel uses both manned aircraft as well as drones to strike Iran’s nuclear capabilities.  Not all of this happens within the borders of Iran and much of it is aimed against Iran’s allies and proxies (Syria, Hezbollah).  For example, in 2007, the Israeli Air Force destroyed a suspected nuclear enrichment site/reactor (Al Kibar) in Syria that had both Iranians and North Koreans operating in it. 

Direct Action.  Both the SF units of the IDF and the Mossad conduct direct action strikes against the Iranians nuclear program.  Some of these attacks are against infrastructure but also include targeted assassinations against Iranian nuclear leaders and scientists.  Attacks include the 2010 killings of scientists Masoud Alimohammadi, Majid Shahriar, and Fereydoon Abbasi from car bombs, the 2011 shooting of Darioush Rezaenijad, and another car bomb in 2012 that killed Mostafa Roshan.  The Wikileaks documents also point to a joint operation in 2012 between the Israelis and the Kurds that targeted underground nuclear sites.  In 2018, the Mossad pulled off a coup when they stole a trove of Iranian nuclear documents and plans from a secure facility in Tehran.  In 2020, the head of Iran’s nuclear program was assassinated near Tehran; widely believed to be the work of the Mossad again. 

Cyber.  Israel conducts a broad and effective cyber warfare program against the Iranian nuclear program.  The most famous of these is the Stuxnet virus that targeted Iranian nuclear centrifuges at the Natanz enrichment plant. 

Much of this is not done by Israel alone and instead, is executed in close cooperation with allies; especially the U.S.

Semi-Chubbs_Peterson

Take a look at the 2007 bombing of the Al Kibar nuclear site. Israeli fighters were able to fly into Syria and drop bombs while apparently being completely undetected. Whether the Israelis used electronic warfare or cyber-warfare is debated, but the effect is undeniable.

If I were a planner, I would assume that Israel has the capability of pulling off a similar style of attack on Iran, modulo the distance factor.

EZ-PEAS

[deleted]

nanoatzin

That’s pretty clever. Surprising that it works on Israelis who are aware they are surrounded by mortal enemies

Unlikely_Arugula190

Iran is walking towards complete and utter devastation of their people. It’s not if, it’s when.

Adventurous-Pop-7995

This is stupidity and will never work: Israel can just have their own double agents flood them with semi truthful, dubious, or straight-up misinformation. You cannot speed hire espionage agents without full vetting.

pqratusa

They basically paid to simple men for doing simple tasks such as spreading propaganda, taking photos of certain places. People did it from financial perspective (IMO). If this job didn’t include a knock on my door from the shin bet, I would do it too. Easiest side hustle ever!

Thebananabender

This works because it’s social engineering. Those who create the phishing messages can make it appear that they’re coming from legitimate sources inside Israel, and if there’s money involved, someone is bound to take the bait. Israel needs to implement training so ordinary citizens know what to look for. A little bit of prevention through education goes a long way.

USMellM

Iran being a major adversary of Israel helps it build soft power in the Muslim world. In addition anti Zionism seems to be a key ideology among Iran’s allies.  

ThreeCranes

Namely:

1\) Iran, like many of the nations in the region, need to deal with a lot of radical religious conservatives at home. As a result, you will never see an Arab leader come out in explicit support of Israel, including those countries which now have more\-or\-less peaceful relations with Israel. A willingness to form peaceful relations with Israel was one of a number of reasons that lead to Sadat's assassination in 1981. Even during the Iran\-Iraq war, when Israel and Iran were loosely allied, Iran was still publicly denouncing Israel.

2\) Those countries which Israel HAS formed alliances with are on the other side of the Sunni\-Shia divide, and carry the same problem as those mentioned in item 1.

8andahalfby11

&gt;Israel's support

Actually during the Iran-Iraq War, any support Israel provided to Iran (as part of the Iran Contra deal really) was intended only to further drag out the war and Israel offered support to Iraq too -- however Tariq Aziz absolutely refused to communicate the offer to Saddam. This was confirmed by the Teicher Affidavit

https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq61.pdf




The idea that Iran is implacably opposed to Israel is not supported by the actual evidence and scholarship.

Iran offered to sign onto the Arab Peace Initiative of 2003 and was spurned.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/17/AR2006061700727.html


It was actually the Likud in Israel that turned Iran into an enemy, because they considered the chance of improved US-Iran relations as a strategic threat to them in a post-Cold War world 
https://www.amazon.com/Treacherous-Alliance-Secret-Dealings-Israel/dp/0300143117/




&gt;Israel's main focus is security, not regional dominance. 

This is an assertion without support. And highly debatable.


&gt; As recent events shown, Israel is perfectly capable of putting aside long standing animosities

Actualy as the Israeli "New Historians" have documented, since its inception, Israel has repeatedly disregarded Arab peace offers in favor of the status-quo of continual settlement expansion

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/16/the-real-reason-the-israel-palestine-peace-process-always-fails

&gt;In another pioneering book, *Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict*, published in 2001, Morris challenged Israel’s deeply embedded and idealized patriotic narrative on a broader scale. This big book challenged the mainstream Zionist view that Israel has always been a peace-loving victim of the Arabs. It made a persuasive case that Israel must share blame with the Arabs for the failure to make peace, **having rejected various opportunities for compromise over the years.**
https://www.mepc.org/birth-palestinian-refugee-problem-revisited

And...

&gt; if a country recognizes its right for existence.

Which is code for not recognising the right of the Palestinians to exist. After all, who is living in refugee camps and who in settlements?

Lets also remember it wasnt a Palestinain who murdered Rabin but an Israeli. 

Oh and Iran's expansion of influence is not attributable to the Arab Spring but to the mess created in Iraq; this talking point that it has something to do with the Arab Spring is widely asserted by people trying to distract from the mess they created by cheerleading the Iraq invasion. In fact the US supported the Arab spring and at the time the belief was that it would lead to toppling the regime in Iran too. But this scared the be-jesus out of the very same regimes you're citing having made peace with Israel, most of which are also oppressive dictatorships ruled by illegitimate nonegenarian kleptocrats and "Presidents for Life". 


This is what US Sec of State Rice said in Egypt:

&gt; For 60 years, my country, the United States, pursued stability at the expense of democracy in this region here in the Middle East -- and we achieved neither. Now, we are taking a different course. We are supporting the democratic aspirations of all people.
https://2001-2009.state.gov/secretary/rm/2005/48328.htm
 

Later, the US backed Sisi in Egypt as be committed the biggest mass killing of peaceful demonstrators in a single day: The Rabaa Massacre

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/08/arab-spring-rabaa-massacre/536847/

thelasian

I want to start with the Arabs. The 'struggle' against Israel was first of all a powerful symbol for Arab countries and people. However over time it turned into a more dominant Islamic rally point. The Arab countries had a reason to maintain the Palestinian\-Israel conflict for domestic reasons. They had no intention to solve it. But simply use it to make their own authoritarian regimes more popular in an ongoing power struggle of Western 'invaders' in the Middle East symbolized by Israel. Recently $but probably already for a longer time$ they realized their main foe would not be Israel, who had no intention to really hurt them, but Iran $or actually a sectarian Shi'ite\-Sunni conflict$. Arab countries aligned more and more with the West and especially America. With the dangers of the Arab spring in mind, the realization of needing strong allies when facing both internal and external troubles, it made more sense in allying up with the West, improving those relations, absorbing more of the Western culture, growing closer to Israel, solving the conflict, and focus increased attention on Iran which is also for their own people an even more intense conflict.  


Now your original question. What prevents Iran from normalizing relations with Israel, simply because Iran over time has gone on a complete different direction than the Arab countries, the whole Islamic revolution and subsequent conflicts were build on an ongoing struggle against 'Western' and 'Colonial' powers interfering in Islamic countries of the Middle East. Where the Arab countries eventually grew closer to the West, even became allies with them, Iran did not and the regime maintained its historic discourse of fighting this colonial conflict. While Israel also was for Iran an almost perfect symbol of 'Western power' in the Middle East certainly in times when also the Iranian regime is questioned within its own borders. It remained to be a strong rallying point for many Muslims throughout the whole region. Both Sunni and Shiite giving Iran a lot of leverage over that conflict.  


For Iran giving up on tense relations with Israel would mean giving up on a powerful rally point for its own followers \[though many Iranians are not against Israel as Sunnis funny enough\], Shiite groups throughout the region, and basically other Muslims and anti\-Western groups. It would mean giving up on a tool that would justify its own corrupt and authoritarian regime on many levels making it also for the Iran regime more difficult to distract its own people from the difficulties they experience in their daily lives. With the Arabs they also have a very strong alternative which they do use but within their worldview, and their distance from Western powers, giving up on Israel would mean giving up on their worldview to large extent without a strong alternative since they cannot replace the Arab countries in those alliances, meaning the Sunnis would rule the Middle East, and putting more pressure on the Iranian regime at home which is already more fragile than people realize if we correctly look at whats happening in the country as such.

SlaroTheMan

1) Iran is an enemy of the US and sees Israel as a US proxy.

2) Iran uses hatred of Israel to win allies in the Arab world which it is trying to conquer.

So we have one person who is from r/Iran obfuscating and compromising about a 1/3 of the comments here and little discussion about the actual question because of that.  Kind of a shame this happens all the time here and really makes it hard to actually talk about the issue at hand. 

WirelessZombie

Iranian leaders are much more concerned about what their populace thinks than Saudis or Egyptians

If Israeli relations were dictated by popular vote in those countries, there would be open war once a decdade

And the obvious that running an ethno centric settler colonial state is clearly immoral and anyone supporting them immediately has the lower moral ground in most of the world's perspective. 

BelligerentBenny

I'd argue regional dominance IS Security for Israel.

Whenever a region is dangerous, throughout History,Empires have tried to conquer that region and bring it under control. 

(I'm NOT advocating for this,  but this would be theoretically speaking rational defence policy. So I thought it was worth mentioning as your comment contained an error)

Your source claimes

&gt; the Alawites are considered to be an off-shoot of the Shia sect of Islam

Actually Alawites can barely be considered Muslim

&gt;In fact, the claim that the Damascus-Teheran alliance is a product of a shared religious tradition connecting the Shia and Alawis has it backwards: political alliances were not made for religious reasons, religious alliances were made for political reasons.  Shia and Sunnis had both denounced Alawis prior to the 20th century https://www.juancole.com/2015/08/secular-alawites-crescent.html

The idea that Iran only has alliances with Shia and is out to promote Shiism and create a "Shia Crescent" is really simplistic and Saudi sectarian fearmongering

"Israel's main focus is security, not regional dominance" -- *Citation needed

You would have to ignore decades of history and the entire documentary record to actually take the Israeli government propaganda line at face value and believe this is true. This is as naive and ill-informed a statement as you can make.  It is equivalent to saying that King Leopold's true motive in colonizing the Congo was to altruistically bring the benefits of modernism rather than exploit the Congolese population for slave labor to harvest rubber and ivory.

Sonny_Crockett123

What’s interesting to see is what Israel will do with Russia.  Even though the trump administration is looking to tighten their bonds with bibi that doesn’t necessarily mean that he can’t also try and drive a wedge between Putin and Iran.

cvg596

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These are the same guys who claimed to have built a "quantum computer" which turned out to be a [ARM processor development board](https://www.tomshardware.com/news/iran-quantum-computer-arm-dev-board).

CIS-E_4ME

Coming soon!

Those plans then exploded eliminating most of Iran’s top intelligence officers.

Commercial-East4069

Secret Israeli plans, as told by Iran - "They want to poison our water supply, burn our crops and deliver a plague unto our houses!"


World - "They do?"


Iran - "No, but are we just going to wait around until they do?!"

Brobeast

The by-line itself is hilarious:  "Report by state broadcaster claims nuclear and defense documents were secured in mission 'a while ago.'"


You can't call them though, they don't have a phone.

Slave35

DrunkenGenXer

The headline is misleading.  Iran's state TV says this happened, but there is no proof.

The-M0untain

Were they on a WhatsApp chat room ? 

(asking for a friend)

Thesorus

Hegseth, put down the bags, the bottles and stop touching Israel’s war plans.

Abrubt-Change-8040

Does it matter if they have secret plans or not? It seems like they are incapable of stopping whatever they are doing.

ITSHOBBSMA

Reasonable-Gas-9771

$20 says it’s just disinformation mossad dropped in their laps.

DefiantZealot

"If them Iranians keep it up, beat 'em 'til the white skin shows" is hardly a secret military plan.

anynamesleft

TheEschatonSucks

I wonder what Pete Hegseth named that Signal group chat?

J-the-Kidder

They should chuck them all on 4chan for a laugh

CptCaramack

Iran has claimed access to a large cache of sensitive Israeli nuclear documents, potentially representing a significant intelligence coup. Iranian Intelligence Minister Esmail Khatib described the materials as a 'treasure trove' of thousands of files related to Israel's nuclear facilities, relationships with global powers, and defense capabilities.

Iran's Alleged Capture of Israeli Nuclear Secrets

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What the people want