As 2025 draws to a close, Israel’s volatile conflict with its arch enemy, Iran, is simmering ominously and threatening to boil over again in another war.
Six months after Operation Rising Lion, its 12-day war with Iran, Israel is increasingly concerned that the Iranian regime is expanding its stocks of ballistic missiles and rebuilding its nuclear program, both of which were heavily damaged by Israeli and U.S. air strikes during the last war in June.
On the eve of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s meeting with President Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on December 29, their sixth since last January, NBC News reported that the Israeli prime minister would present plans to the U.S. president for a renewed offensive against Iran.
It is unclear what Netanyahu told Trump and how he responded. But at a press conference in the wake of their talks, Trump echoed Netanyahu’s warnings. He said that Iran would face severe consequences from both Israel and the United States should it seek to replenish its arsenal of ballistic missiles or restart its nuclear program.
“I hope they are not trying to build up again, because if they are, we’re going to have no choice but very quickly to eradicate that build up,” said Trump, who had boasted that U.S. and Israel bombardments had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear facilities.
He added that he would “absolutely” support Israeli strikes on Iran’s arsenal of ballistic missiles and that he would “immediately” resume bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities if Iran rebuilt them. “We’ll knock them down,” he said. “We’ll knock the hell out of them.”
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian was quick to respond, writing on X that Iran’s reply would be harsh.
A few days earlier, he announced that Iran is at “total war” with the United States, Israel and Europe. “They want to bring our country to its knees,” he claimed, adding that Iran’s conflict with the West is worse than its war with Iraq, which lasted from 1980 to 1988.
Ali Shamkhani, an adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, wrote on X that “”any aggression will face an immediate response beyond its planners’ imagination.”
Amid the growing tension, there are concrete signs that Iran is attempting to restore its missile and nuclear capabilities. Certainly, Iran’s leadership has publicly acknowledged that Iran intends to rebuild or restore its nuclear sites.
On December 21, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi boldly claimed that Iran has rebuilt its “strategic facilities” damaged during the war. “In fact, we have reconstructed everything that was damaged in the previous aggression. If they want to repeat the same failed experience, they will not achieve a better result,” he said. He added that Iran is “fully prepared” for a fresh round of fighting.
On the same day, the commander of Israel’s armed forces, General Eyal Zamir, said that Israel is prepared to engage its enemies near and afar and hinted that Israel may need to strike Iran once more.
Singling out Iran as Israel’s deadliest foe, Zamir said, “Iran is the one that financed and armed the ring of strangulation around Israel and stood behind the plans for its destruction,” he said, referring to Iran’s Axis of Resistance. Consisting of Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis in Yemen and Shi’a militias in Iraq, it was seriously degraded by Israeli forces following the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip in 2023.
Last summer, Netanyahu hailed the outcome of the Israel-Iran war, the first of its kind, as “a historic victory that will stand for generations.” He said that Israel had succeeded in removing the threat posed by nuclear bombs and ballistic missiles. In short, he noted, Israel had dealt “crushing blows to the evil regime” in Iran.
According to the U.S.-based Institute for the Study of War, a number of conditions prompted Israel to strike Iran.
Diplomatic efforts by the United States and Iran to achieve an improved nuclear agreement had failed. Trump, in his first term, unilaterally pulled out of the 2015 nuclear agreement.
Alarming developments in the weaponization of Iran’s nuclear program raised concerns in Jerusalem and Washington that Tehran might shorten the time required to produce its first nuclear device.
Iran made rapid progress in refining its ballistic missiles.
In addition, Israel detected weakness following its destruction of Iran’s air defence systems, its rout of Hezbollah in the war in Lebanon, and the collapse of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria.
In the meantime, reports suggest, Iran has reconstituted its stockpile of long-range missiles, all of which can reach Israel. Israel believes that Iran currently possesses some 2,000 ballistic missiles, about the same number it had on the eve of the war
During the course of the war, Iranians missile barrages killed 32 people in Israel, wounded more than 3,000, and displaced some 13,000. Israeli air strikes killed a little more than 1,000 Iranians, including army commanders and nuclear scientists.
Iran’s rapid reconstitution of its missile stockpile indicates that Israel failed to destroy all of Iran’s planetary mixers, which are used to produce solid fuel for ballistic missiles, says the Institute for the Study of War.
The director of Israeli military intelligence, General Shlomi Bender, recently told the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Mike Waltz, that Israeli damage to Iran’s ballistic missile industry was “less severe” than initially thought, and that Iran has already restored its production capacity.
As for Iran’s nuclear program, the Institute for Science and International Security says that satellite imagery indicates that Iran’s uranium enrichment program remains “significantly set back. At present, Iran does not appear able to enrich uranium in any significant manner or make gas centrifuges in significant numbers. Iran’s key nuclear enrichment sites, its facility to produce uranium hexafluoride and its centrifuge manufacturing and research and development facilities remain severely damaged or destroyed.
“In addition, a nuclear weaponization site called Taleghan 2 … has undergone significant construction activity over the last year. It now appears near completion and … could be a high-explosive containment vessel suitable for nuclear weapons development activities.
“There are ongoing construction efforts at a mountainous area just south of the Natanz enrichment site known … as Pickaxe Mountain. This site was not visibly attacked in June and comprises two underground tunnel complexes … this site could also hold a centrifuge enrichment facility.”
Satellite imagery suggests that at key locations in Isfahan, Natanz and Karaj centrifuge work, fabrication, and construction consistent with rebuilding parts of the nuclear infrastructure already have begun.
The International Atomic Energy Agency contends that Iran has not yet resumed uranium enrichment at significant levels at the damaged sites, though some activity is present nearby and older stockpiles of enriched uranium remain.
Amid these developments, Iran is reshuffling its military leadership. The new appointments may well reflect the dissatisfaction of Iran’s leadership with the performance of the Iranian armed forces last June.
Since the end of the war, Iran has executed 11 people on charges of espionage. Earlier this month, Iran imposed the death penalty on a man convicted of spying for Israel, state media reported. Identified as Aghil Keshavarz, he established “close intelligence cooperation” with the Mossad and took photographs of Iranian military and security areas. He was arrested while allegedly taking pictures of a military building in the northwestern city of Urmia, some 600 kilometers northwest of Tehran.