Donald Trump has approved attack plans for Iran but is holding off giving the final go-ahead to see if Tehran will agree to dismantle its nuclear program.
Standing on the South Lawn, showing off the new, 50-foot flag poles he has gifted the White House, the president said, “The next week is going to be big." Claiming Iran is eager to negotiate, Trump says he told the Iranians, “It’s very late to be talking.”
“I have ideas on what to do, but I haven’t made a final — I like to make the final decision one second before it’s due,” he told reporters.
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Trump is hoping that by threatening to join Israel in striking Iran, he will compel the Iranians to meet his demands. It's a tactic that's not likely to work. Very few national leaders would buckle under such explicit military threats.
Trump almost certainly knows this, which makes the question of whether the United States will join the fight with Israel a matter of whether Trump wants to start a war in the Middle East.
It's almost certain that any U.S. involvement in Israel's war with Iran would not be a "one-off" bombing of the Fordow nuclear site. There are dozens of underground targets, including ballistic missile labs and technology. If we're going to take out Iran's nuclear capability, we may as well destroy its ability to deliver long-range ordnance.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Gen. Dan Caine attended a meeting at the White House this afternoon after testifying on Capitol Hill this morning, according to a defense official.
While planning for a potential strike has progressed, Trump might prefer to resolve the crisis diplomatically, people familiar with his thinking said.
“I may do it, I may not do it,” he also told reporters Wednesday, repeating his demand for Iran’s unconditional surrender: “The next week is going to be very big, maybe less than a week.”
Iran’s government said it wouldn’t negotiate under military threat and would retaliate if attacked.
“Iran does NOT negotiate under duress, shall NOT accept peace under duress, and certainly NOT with a has-been warmonger clinging to relevance,” it said in a statement issued by Iran’s United Nations Mission, apparently referring to Trump.
Meanwhile, the U.S. is beefing up its defenses in the Middle East in anticipation of an Iranian response to any U.S. attack. Naval forces, refueling tankers, and advanced F-22 fighter aircraft are being moved into position in Europe and the Middle East.
Some foreign diplomats said they were still holding out hope for a diplomatic solution. Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide met Wednesday in Washington with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and said afterward that he believed the Trump administration had not locked itself into joining the attack.
“I welcome the fact that President Trump has been publicly saying he would like such a deal” to restrict Iran from building a nuclear weapon, Barth Eide said in an interview. “That is probably a more durable outcome. If the Iranian regime continues and you have bombed many facilities, you clearly set them back, but they can rebuild … maybe deeper down, maybe in hiding.”
Trump told reporters that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been “treated very unfairly,” and the president said that his own patience with Iran had “already run out.”
There is no "diplomatic solution." If Trump climbs down now, he will lose credibility. After such a massive build-up to war, to switch gears and accept Iranian negotiations would be a blow to the president's prestige and the prestige of the United States (think Obama's "red line" on chemical weapons in Syria).
Trump will pull the trigger on an attack. He may try to limit U.S. involvement, but once we go in, war follows its own logic.
