Why peace may not be the solution in the Middle East

Britain, France, Germany and the European Union are all rushing their foreign ministers to Geneva for talks with Iran in a desperate attempt to give peace a chance. But it is not clear that peace now is the best option.

- SAM KILEY WORLD AFFAIRS EDITOR IN TEL AVIV

A week into Israel's bombardment of Iran, and its assassination of the country's top nuclear scientists and securocrats, the Islamic state has tightened its grip - and the nuclear facility half a mile underground in Fordow remains intact.

If Iran is brought back to the negotiating table at Geneva, whatever it says, the past week has shown that the only hope for the survival of the current rulers of Tehran is for them to build a nuclear weapon.

From the Israeli and American perspective, the feeling may be that the only way to ensure this doesn't happen is to double down on the targeting of Iran and change the regime.

On top of that, Russia, a close ally of Tehran and part of a Fearsome Foursome that also includes North Korea and China, will see diplomacy now as an opportunity to stop regime change and reinforce its waning influence in the Middle East.

Before the planned Geneva meeting, David Lammy said: "We are determined that Iran must never have a nuclear weapon." Trying to slow the sense of global war being imminent, Donald Trump has said that he's pausing any decision on backing Israel for a couple of weeks because he wants to give diplomacy a chance.

In terms of strikes, the US has the only weapon that could, conceivably, destroy the Fordow nuclear facility, which is located 18 miles north of the central Iranian city of Qom and half a mile underground: the GBU-57/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP), a precision-guided "bunker-busting" bomb.