Darya Dolzikova comments on the Israeli strikes on Iran

Israel's targeting of Iran's main enrichment facility and a number of senior Iranian scientists suggests an intent to inflict serious damage on the programme and to roll back Iran's ability to push towards weaponisation, not just a signalling exercise or a way of generating additional leverage US-Iran negotiations.

It is too early to tell how successful Israel may have been this regard. Natanz is not Iran's only enrichment facility; its most hardened site - at Fordow - has not been affected, nor have a number of other key nuclear sites across the country.

Should Iran make a decision to produce a nuclear weapon, it would likely do that at hardened and potentially still secret sites. The concern, then, is whether these attacks finally convince Iran that it has no choice but to develop a nuclear weapon as the ultimate deterrent and whether Israel has done sufficient damage to prevent Iran from being able to act on such a decision.

These attacks have greatly exacerbated the risk that Iran follows through on previous threats and announces an intention to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Should they do that, Iran’s nuclear programme will become a much more challenging threat to deal with than it is now, with a withdrawal from the NPT likely leading to a full loss of IAEA visibility on the programme.