The coordinated US-Israel military strikes on Iran began 48 hours after the conclusion of a third round of US-Iran indirect nuclear negotiations in Geneva, mediated by Oman, that had produced what multiple parties described as an unprecedented breakthrough. Omani Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi told CBS News the day before the strikes began that Iran had agreed to zero stockpiling of enriched uranium, with existing stockpiles to be down-blended to the lowest possible level and converted into reactor fuel under full International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) verification. "The single most important achievement, I believe, is the agreement that Iran will never, ever have a nuclear material that will create a bomb," Albusaidi said, describing the understanding as stronger than the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) negotiated under Obama.

A new set of measures approved by Israel’s security cabinet consolidating control over the occupied West Bank are being openly celebrated as a step toward annexation. Energy Minister Eli Cohen said the move would establish “de facto sovereignty” and “actually establish a fact on the ground that there will not be a Palestinian state.” Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who lives in a West Bank settlement, said the move would make it easier for Jewish settlers to force Palestinians off their land and to “continue to bury the idea of a Palestinian state.”

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk urged the Israeli government to abandon proposed legislation that would mandate death sentences exclusively for Palestinians in specific cases—for crimes committed both in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Türk stated that the legislation is "inconsistent with Israel's obligations'" under the International Covenant on Civil & Political Rights. He also raised concerns over the "introduction of mandatory death sentences, which leave no discretion to the courts, and violate the right to life." The rights chief asserted that Israel has frequently violated the fair trial protections enshrined in the Fourth Geneva Convention for Palestinians in the West Bank or Gaza, adding that this "amounts to a war crime."