Within hours of the United States and Israel having launched a joint strike on Iran on the morning of February 28th, the BBC’s international editor Jeremy Bowen had an article published on the BBC News website under the headline “Bowen: A dangerous moment, but US and Israel see opportunity not to be missed.”
That article promotes several notable – but misleading and unhelpful – talking points, the first of which is presented as follows: [emphasis added]
“Israel used the word ‘pre-emptive’ to justify its attack – the largest in the Israeli Air Force’s history, according to the Israel Defense Forces.
The evidence is that this is not a response to an imminent threat, which the word pre-emption implies. Instead, it is a war of choice.”
Bowen’s claim that the actions of the US and Israel were not pre-emptive of course totally ignores the weeks of escalating tensions and threats of approaching conflict. While Bowen claims to have “evidence,” he refrains from informing BBC audiences what that evidence actually is or what it supposedly shows.
Bowen then goes on to tell readers that: [emphasis added]
“Israel and the United States have calculated that the Islamic regime in Iran is vulnerable – dealing with a severe economic crisis, the fallout from the brutal crackdown on protesters at the start of the year and with defences still badly damaged by last summer’s war. Their conclusion seems to have been that this was an opportunity that should not be squandered.
It is also another blow to the tottering system of international law.”
Exactly what part of “international law” Bowen thinks has received “another blow” is not clarified. He fails to acknowledge that Israel is involved in ongoing armed conflict with Iran – and has been for years – or that Iran openly seeks the annihilation of the State of Israel, as is repeatedly stated by its leaders and officials.
Bowen then invents a supposed legal argument: [emphasis added]
“In their statements, both Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Iran was a danger to their countries – Trump said it was a global danger. The Islamic regime is certainly their bitter enemy. But it is hard to see how the legal justification of self-defence applies given the huge disparity of power between the US and Israel on one side and Iran on the other.”
After suggesting that Israel’s actions are part of its current prime minister’s election campaign (a claim that BBC audiences have seen before , including from Bowen, in relation to different conflicts) Bowen moves on to the issue of the Iranian nuclear program.
“While the US was deploying two carrier strike groups to the region, as well as considerable land-based firepower, Trump talked a lot about the dangers of Iran’s nuclear ambitions, even though after last summer’s war, Trump declared that the Iranian nuclear programme had been “obliterated”.
The Iranian regime has always denied that it wants a nuclear weapon, but it has enriched uranium to a level that has no civilian use in a nuclear power programme. At the very least, it seems to want the option of building a bomb. So far Israel and the US have published no evidence that it was about to happen.”
Israel’s MFA published a document last year concerning the legal aspects of the June 2025 war between Israel and Iran which includes the following:
“In recent months, in parallel to its increased uranium enrichment activities, the Iranian regime also accelerated clandestine efforts towards developing all other technological components necessary to assemble a nuclear weapon. Iran also worked on neutron initiators, which trigger the chain reaction of a nuclear weapon, as well as on multi-point detonation systems, operation of the nuclear explosive device. Iran had also conducted nuclear-related computer modeling, operated high-explosive testing workshops, and developed underground infrastructure to conceal critical assets. Additional efforts included the implementation of passive defense doctrines such as camouflage, and hardened launch capabilities that reduce detectability and enhance survivability.
The simultaneous and rapid progress of these efforts meant that once completed, it would have been possible to quickly and easily assemble a nuclear weapon, which would impede the ability to effectively stop the regime from operationalizing nuclear weapons. As a result, the Iranian regime had reached the point where it could produce a number of nuclear weapons within a very short timeframe and was on the verge of rendering the process of nuclear weapon operationalization unstoppable.
Intelligence obtained by Israel indicates that the Iranian regime had also dispersed the different components in the nuclear weapons program and decentralized the production process. Infrastructure, materials, processes, and personnel were spread across, inter-alia, different military installations, fortified underground complexes, and within built-up civilian areas, in a clandestine manner. Decentralization and clandestine activity undermine intelligence and operational capabilities in identifying completion of each component and the precise moment of breakout, and then the ability to precisely, effectively, and thoroughly disrupt the program once assembly of all the components begins.
These developments, and Israel’s conclusion that immediate action was required, occurred within the context of the Iranian regime’s official policy to bring about the physical eradication of Israel, a policy which has been translated into concrete operative plans involving its proxies around Israel and the production of a vast arsenal of ballistic missiles in addition to the nuclear weapons program, and which has received expression in the persistent public statements of the regime’s leadership over the years.”
On June 12, 2025 the BBC itself had reported that “[t]he global nuclear watchdog’s board of governors has formally declared Iran in breach of its non-proliferation obligations…” Weeks later, after the June 2025 war, the BBC reported that “Iran has the capacity to start enriching uranium again in ‘a matter of months’, the head of the UN’s nuclear watchdog has said.”
On February 27, 2026, it was reported that the IAEA had stated that it “cannot verify whether Iran has suspended all enrichment-related activities,” or the “size of Iran’s uranium stockpile at the affected nuclear facilities.”
“The report also said some of Iran’s most highly enriched uranium, close to weapons grade, was stored in an underground area of its nuclear site in Isfahan. It was the first time the IAEA has reported where uranium enriched to up to 60% purity, close to the 90% of weapons grade, has been stored.”
Without making any mention of either Hamas’ October 7, 2023 invasion of Israel, massacres and hostage-taking or Hezbollah’s unprovoked attacks on Israel that commenced the next day, Bowen tells BBC audiences that: [emphasis added]
“It is now clear that the US and Israel wanted to kill the supreme leader. Israel believes in the power of assassination as a strategy. In the last two years it killed the leaders of Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, and many of their lieutenants.”
Had Bowen really wished to augment BBC audience understanding of the imminent threat posed to Israel by Iran, he would of course have mentioned the Iranian regime’s financing and arming of proxies that have attacked Israel – including Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis – as well as its recently accelerated ballistic missiles program and the attacks on Israel in 2024.
This is by no means the first time that Jeremy Bowen has tried to persuade BBC audiences that Israeli actions are the main factor behind the escalation of conflicts in the Middle East. However, as has been evident for many years, Bowen’s analyses often do anything but make a story more comprehensible to the corporation’s funding public due to his preference for advancing politically motivated and misleading talking points, such as the ones in this article concerning “international law” and “the legal justification of self-defence.”
This post originally appeared at CAMERA UK.