NEW YORK, July 1. /TASS/. The US and Israeli strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities may compel Tehran to build a nuclear weapon, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) wrote.

The media outlet cites Alan Eyre, a former State Department official and member of the US negotiating team under the Obama administration that worked on the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, as saying that "paradoxically, we might have strengthened their resolve to seek a nuclear weapon now."

"They’re going to be figuring out how to reconstitute some sort of defensive strategy, or at least create a new one, because the one they had doesn’t work anymore," he said.

The newspaper insists that a number of officials in the Iranian leadership are convinced that possessing a nuclear weapon is the only way to deter Israel and the US from new attempts to attack the Islamic republic.

Experts polled by the WSJ note that Iran still has capabilities to continue enriching uranium but the exact timeline of it developing a nuclear weapon is hard to establish.

In 2003, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, issued a fatwa prohibiting the production of a nuclear weapon, because it contradicts the principles of Islam. The Iranian Foreign Ministry said on many occasions that Tehran is committed to non-proliferation.

Earlier, US President Donald Trump claimed that Iranian nuclear facilities in Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan had been obliterated. The White House assured that Iran did not manage to take out nuclear materials from these sites ahead of the strikes. In turn, Khamenei said the US was overstating the success of its attacks.

In the early morning hours of June 13, Israel launched a military operation against Iran. Less than 24 hours later, Iran retaliated. Nine days later, on the morning of June 22, US jets attacked three Iranian nuclear facilities, entering the conflict. The following evening, Tehran launched a missile strike on Al Udeid, the largest US military airbase in the region, located in Qatar. According to the US authorities, there were no casualties or significant damage.

On June 24, Trump announced that Israel and Iran had agreed to a complete ceasefire. The Israeli authorities confirmed that they had accepted the US proposal and announced that they had completed all objectives in their operation against Iran. In turn, Tehran said that it had achieved a victory over Tel Aviv by forcing it to unilaterally halt its aggression.