Name: Why did US and Israel attack Iran? | BBC News
Uploaded: 2026-03-02T21:31:21.000Z
Duration: 4 min 41 s
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we are following the rapidly developing news coming out of the Middle east with the US Israeli war with Iran.

As the conflict widens, people are turning to the Internet to search for the answers to many, many questions.

And we've been looking at today's trending questions on Iran.

So joining me now in the studio to answer some of those questions is our security correspondent, Frank Gardner.

We're also hoping to be joined very shortly by our chief international correspondent, Lis Doucet.

Frank, lots of questions, as I was saying, to get through.

So let's try and make a start with this broad one.

Lots of people will be aware that there was a talks process ongoing.

Well, it's hugely controversial because the legality of this war that they have started is questionable.

There wasn't congressional approval for it.

You know, President Trump did not go to Congress.

This was something that Israel and the United States had cooked up already in advance in case talks didn't go the way they wanted.

Now, the talks in Geneva were making progress on the nuclear file.

Dr. Badr Sadi, who is the Omani foreign minister, said, look, we've got a breakthrough.

You know, we can, we can solve this on the nuclear side.

But there were two other issues which Israel was pressing the United States to press the Iranians for, and

That was curbing Iran's ballistic missile program.

And we've seen from all these missiles that are flying around the Gulf at the moment, they've got a lot of these ballistic missiles.

And the other was their Iran's support for its proxy militias around the region.

So Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, Hamas in Gaza and a number of militias in Iraq.

And that's why back on Thursday evening, Thursday night, Donald Trump said, I'm not happy with the way these talks are going.

And it was interesting just to interject that, Frank, when we heard from Pete Agseth, the US Defense secretary war secretary earlier, he was saying that Iran wasn't negotiating.

They were stalling, to quote that statement from him earlier.

I mean, even on the nucleophile, I mean, the Iranians are, they are famous for giving just enough to kind of let themselves off the hook.

the 2015, what's called the JCPOA, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

The previous nuclear deal was really hard fought by and, you know, European countries sitting down with the Iranians and they eventually got a deal which would have curbed Iran's nuclear program, but

I mentioned the missiles and that's why Donald Trump pulled the US out of it, saying it's the worst deal in the world.

One of the questions we have, Frank, here is, will Iran attack the uk?

Now, we have seen Iran launch missiles, launch drones at a number of countries, haven't we?

I mean, so Iran has attacked four countries in particular.

Israel, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, which includes Abu Dhabi and Dubai, where a lot of tourists are currently stranded.

There has been a drone attack on the RAF base in Akrotiri in the sovereign base area of Cyprus.

I've spoken to officials in Whitehall this morning to say, are you on a kind of heightened alert for any kind of acts of subversion or sabotage or anything like that by a kind of Iranian fifth column?

And they've said, yes, their exact words were, there is a heightened tempo of threat from Iranian regime supporters in this country.

And the last public statement we had from the head of MI5 was October, so what, four, four, five months ago, in which he said that in the previous 12 months there have been 20 cases of attempted kidnap and murder by agents working on behalf of the Iranian regime in the UK to go after opposition activists.

I think Jewish community is probably a potential target for them.

So there's usually a kind of lack, a tail of a delay between events happening overseas and them having a knock on effect over here, but