As U.S.-Iran nuclear talks flounder, Israel is growing increasingly likely to strike Iran's nuclear program, which would likely lead Iran to target Israeli and potentially U.S. assets in the region, as well as weaken Iran's reformist-moderate presidency and empower its hard-liners. The United States' self-imposed 60-day deadline for negotiating a nuclear deal with Iran ended on June 12 without a deal, and the next round of indirect negotiations, currently scheduled for June 15 in Oman, are reportedly in jeopardy. The State Department announced on June 11 that it ordered all nonessential personnel to depart Iraq, and U.S. Central Command said the U.S. defense secretary had "authorized the voluntary departure of military dependents from locations" in the Middle East. The drawdown in the U.S. presence is due to growing U.S. intelligence that Israel may soon strike Iran's nuclear program with or without U.S. approval. Meanwhile, Iran's foreign ministry and atomic energy organization announced on June 12 that Iran would build a new uranium enrichment facility at an unspecified "secure" location and replace older IR-1 centrifuges with more advanced IR-6 centrifuges, which are far more efficient at enriching uranium, at its Fordow facility. This announcement will further increase regional tensions and suspicion over Iran's nuclear program. Tehran's announcement came after a June 12 vote by the International Atomic Energy Agency's board of directors approving a resolution declaring Iran in noncompliance with its commitment to international nuclear safeguards. 

• Rising concerns about a resumption of direct hostilities between Iran and Israel caused oil prices to spike on June 11, with Brent briefly breaching $70 per barrel for the first time since the United States launched its sweeping trade war in early April. 
• On June 11, the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations — the country's maritime security agency — advised that rising tensions in the Middle East could impact mariners in the region. The agency urged vessels to use caution when passing through the Gulf of Oman, the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz. 
• Over the last 48 hours, a number of Iranian-backed regional militias, including Yemen's Houthi movement and Iraq's Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada, have issued threats to Israel and the United States over potential Israeli strikes on Iran. 

Last-ditch efforts to salvage nuclear talks between Iran and the United States are likely to face severe challenges, as neither side appears willing to offer any more substantial concessions, making an Israeli overt or covert strike on Iran's nuclear facilities likely in the coming weeks and months. The five rounds of U.S.-Iran nuclear negotiations held since April 12 have struggled to close the gap between the U.S. demand for Iran to give up its right to uranium enrichment and Iran's insistence that any deal must preserve its right to enrich uranium. Both sides have suggested some levels of compromise, with the United States proposing that Iran buy uranium from a regional enrichment consortium involving Iran, while Iran suggested it could temporarily reduce enrichment to zero. However, neither compromise proposal appears to be gaining traction. If the June 15 talks occur, Iran is expected to formally respond with a counterproposal to the latest U.S. proposal. Though the full details of that counterproposal have not yet been released, Iran remains unlikely to give up its right to enrichment, as Tehran's distrust of Israel and the United States gives it a national security justification to keep its enrichment program alive in case Iranian leaders decide to develop a nuclear weapon in the future. While the Trump administration initially opened the door to potentially allowing Iran to enrich some uranium and reverting to the constraints on Iran that existed under the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (which U.S. President Donald Trump exited in his first term), Washington's position has become more hard-line in recent weeks following backlash from Republican Iran hawks in the Trump administration and Congress. The U.S.-Iran stalemate and general opposition to the talks are leading Israel to prepare strike plans in case nuclear talks fail. Trump rejected in April an Israeli plan, which would have required U.S. participation, to strike Iranian nuclear sites in May, but Trump may not discourage Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from striking Iran now that diplomatic efforts appear to have failed. 

• Trump campaigned on disentangling the United States from military matters in the region, and many figures in his administration, including Vice President J.D. Vance, are skeptical of direct strikes on Iran. Therefore, Trump may press Netanyahu to hold off on a direct attack on Iran over concerns about regional escalation. However, Trump has publicly expressed growing doubt over the diplomatic process with Iran in recent days. Even if the United States pushes Israel to refrain from or limit the scale of overt military action against Iran's nuclear program, the Israeli government will likely continue pursuing significant covert activity designed to disrupt the program. 
• Iran is reportedly preparing to offer a limited deal to buy more time for negotiations in the next round of talks, if they occur. For its own reasons, Israel may decide to preempt such an offer by striking or threatening to strike Iran, as Netanyahu and his government will oppose any extended negotiation process, arguing that Iran would use that time to expand its nuclear program and weapons research. Nevertheless, the White House may take the deal or remain in talks to diffuse regional tension.
• Israel's October 2024 strikes took out most of Iran's S-300 air defense capabilities, giving Israel a temporary window of opportunity to directly target parts of Iran's nuclear program without needing to account for air defense.
• Over the last year, many Iranian proxies on Israel's doorstep have fallen or been decimated, namely the Assad regime in Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. These developments have emboldened Israel's regional military adventurism.

Any overt strike on Iran would likely lead Iran and its remaining proxies to ramp up military action against Israel and potentially the United States. Iran refrained from directly retaliating against Israel's Oct. 26, 2024, strikes on Iran that reportedly involved more than 100 Israeli aircraft. However, another Israeli attack, particularly one that targets Iran's nuclear program, which the October strikes largely left untouched over escalation concerns, would almost certainly trigger some level of Iranian response on the scale of its April and October 2024 strikes on Israel. Already, Iranian military and government officials have reportedly discussed a response to a potential Israeli strike. Most likely, Iran would seek to respond in a way that preserves an escalation offramp, such as by giving the United States and regional countries advanced warning about its plans. However, Israeli strikes on Iran's nuclear program, which Tehran officially deems a civilian — not military — program, would open the door to potential Iranian missile and drone strikes targeting civilian-operated critical infrastructure in Israel. Iranian-backed militias in Iraq would also likely carry out a handful of attacks targeting the U.S. military presence in Jordan, Syria and Iraq, while the Houthis in Yemen would likely launch strikes on Israel and potentially the remaining U.S. military presence in the Red Sea. If the United States is involved in the strike on Iran, such as by providing aerial refueling, Iran and its proxies may directly target the U.S. military presence in Gulf countries and regional oil and gas infrastructure and shipping in the Gulf region, including by attacking ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz. This, however, is less likely, as the United States would likely refrain from direct involvement and because Iran wants to avoid escalation; direct Iranian strikes on U.S. interests could provoke direct U.S. military strikes on Iran or Iranian officials, similar to the U.S. assassination of Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force leader Qassem Soleimani in January 2020. Similarly, Iranian strikes on Gulf Arab countries, though on the table, would halt the growing diplomatic relationship between the Gulf countries that Iran has worked to cultivate in recent years. 

• It remains unclear to what extent Israel could carry out a complex strike on Iran's nuclear facilities, which are sprawling over many different sites across the country, without U.S. support, such as aerial refueling. A limited strike targeting only a handful of facilities is within Israel's capabilities, but that may not set back Iran's nuclear program sufficiently for Israel to approve the strike, given the risk of Iranian retaliation and escalation with its nuclear program.

An Israeli strike would also likely lead Iran to follow through on threats to leave the international Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and significantly weaken — if not end — reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian's presidency. Iranian officials have long warned that they would withdraw from the nonproliferation treaty in response to any military attacks on Iran's nuclear program, arguing that such strikes would expose how the West overlooks Israel's nuclear program and uses the treaty to tie the hands of Iran and other non-Western countries. Iran's exit from the nonproliferation treaty would likely be accompanied by the full dismantling of the IAEA's oversight of Iran's nuclear program, leaving the program without any international inspections and reinforcing Israeli and Western concerns about Iran's intentions for its nuclear program. This is significant because a strike on Iran's nuclear program would almost certainly fail to destroy the program and, at best, likely only delay it by a year or two. In a worst-case scenario, Israel's strike would fail to do even that, giving Iran's leadership the option to potentially develop a crude nuclear device as soon as possible in an effort to establish some level of deterrence against future Israeli strikes. Politically, the failure of nuclear talks, coupled with any strikes on Iran's nuclear program, would effectively destroy Iranian President Pezeshkian's remaining influence, as he campaigned on the promise of negotiating sanctions relief with the West to boost the Iranian economy. In such a case, Iran's hard-liner-dominated unelected institutions (such as the judiciary and the IRGC), as well as its conservative-dominated institutions (such as the parliament), would effectively sideline or outright impeach Pezeshkian. Iran's next president would almost certainly be a hard-liner, reminiscent of the sidelining of former President Hassan Rouhani after the United States left the JCPOA in 2018, leading hard-line future President Ebrahim Raisi (who died in a helicopter crash in 2024) to take over. A hard-liner president would pursue a more hawkish strategy against the West and Israel, as well as likely increase crackdowns on dissent as economic conditions continue to deteriorate.