Trump nears historic choice on Iran: Should U.S. join Israel in its attack?
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- President Trump called for Iran’s “unconditional surrender” over the future of its decades-old nuclear program.
WASHINGTON — President Trump is nearing a historic decision on whether to join Israel’s war against Iran, a choice that will reshape the Middle East while dividing his Cabinet and his party over America’s role in the world.
The fateful choice has presented itself, U.S. and Israeli officials told The Times, after Israeli forces cleared a runway for Washington’s involvement by hobbling Iranian air defenses and reducing the risks to U.S. aircraft. “We now have complete and total control of the skies over Iran,” Trump wrote on social media Tuesday, calling for Iran’s “unconditional surrender” over the future of its decades-old nuclear program.
Up until Friday, when Israel’s surprise attack began, the president had been skeptical of its prospects and had distanced himself from the operation. Israel’s air and intelligence forces have targeted Iran’s nuclear sites, scientific and military leadership, air defenses and ballistic missile networks, killing at least 224 people, according to Iranian authorities.
Germany’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, bluntly described the Israeli operation in a Tuesday interview. “This is the dirty work that Israel is doing for all of us,” he said.
President Trump vetoed a plan presented by Israel to kill Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, according to a U.S. official familiar with the matter.
But Israel’s initial success has presented Trump with an opportunity to proceed with singular strike capabilities that could, in theory, destroy Iran’s nuclear program for good. Bunker-busting bombs made only in America, flown and dropped by unique American planes, could entomb Iran’s most advanced nuclear equipment burrowed into a mountainside at Fordow.
An Israeli official, who requested anonymity to speak candidly, told The Times that the Trump administration has indicated the president shifted his posture in recent days toward more robust support.
“On our side, we asked for help and American involvement only in defense,” the official said. “That’s what we’ve been doing. And if they find it is in their interests because of developments, because of how well the war is going, to join the operation, then that is their decision.”
Fordow, which today stands as Iran’s second-largest uranium enrichment site, could still be targeted without U.S. assistance, the Israeli official added. Iran’s largest enrichment site at Natanz has been damaged by Israeli bombing, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, an assessment shared by U.S. officials and relayed to The Times.
“We started this operation assuming that it’s a ‘Blue and White’ operation — only Israel,” the official continued. “We have different contingencies with how to tackle Fordow. It’s not something only the United States could do — it’s not only dropping that bomb from the air. And we are eager to complete this mission.”
That mission is the latest chapter in a 20-year saga over Iran’s nuclear program that has driven U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East.
Friday’s attacks constituted a significant escalation between Israel and Iran — raising fears of a full-on regional conflict likely to embroil the U.S.
After briefly suspending its nuclear work in 2003, spooked by the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the Islamic Republic restarted uranium enrichment in the Persian city of Isfahan in 2005. Rounds of talks with Europe, followed by expanded talks with the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and Germany, led to complex diplomatic arrangements aimed at oversight of Iran’s nuclear work, including a 2015 deal brokered by the Obama administration and from which the U.S. withdrew in Trump’s first term.
Across the years, a through line remained: Tehran has always insisted on enriching uranium on its soil, at levels unseen anywhere else in the world for civilian use.
And the Iranian government, on a separate track, progressed its research and development on the miniaturization and weaponization of nuclear warheads — itself a challenging task — in order to fit a weapon inside the nose cone of a ballistic missile, according to U.S. intelligence officials. It is that threat, of not knowing what each missile has in store, that has driven Israeli fears over the program for decades.
Iran has retaliated since Friday by launching more than 370 missiles and hundreds of drones against Israel, so far killing 24 and injuring hundreds, according to Israeli officials.
In Iran, the nuclear program has become a source of pride to the people and, until now, was seen as an insurance policy for a deeply unpopular regime.
Explicit threats over the last 24 hours by Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Nentanyahu to kill Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, may have an unintended effect, reinforcing concerns in Tehran that attacks on its nuclear program are a smokescreen to upend the Islamic Republic.
The State Department did not deny that a change of government could ultimately become a goal of the Trump administration. “I’m certainly not going to remotely address that,” Tammy Haddad, a State Department spokesperson, said in a briefing Tuesday.
Departing the Group of 7 summit in Calgary, Canada, early on Monday night, and calling an emergency meeting of his National Security Council for the next morning, Trump expressed fatigue with the cycle of negotiations, telling reporters aboard Air Force One that he saw another way.
“An end. A real end,” he said, asked what could be better than a ceasefire. “Not a ceasefire. An end.”
A party divided
The president’s inching toward war has drawn fierce pushback from prominent members of his base, whose interpretation of his central campaign promise, “America first,” rejects direct U.S. military involvement in foreign wars.
“I’m a big supporter of Israel,” said Stephen K. Bannon, a former chief strategist for Trump, “and I’m telling people, hey, if we get sucked into this war — which, inexorably, looks like it’s gonna happen on the combat side — it’s gonna not just blow up the coalition. It’s also gonna thwart what we’re doing with the most important thing, which is the deportation of the illegal alien invaders that are here.”
Speaking with Tucker Carlson, a far-right podcaster also critical of a U.S. role in the war, Bannon added: “We have to stop it.”
Increasing signs of U.S. involvement on Tuesday prompted rare bipartisan alliances on Capitol Hill, with far-right lawmakers partnering with some of the most progressive members of the Democratic caucus in demanding that any U.S. operation take place only after Congress passes a war powers resolution.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican from Georgia, and GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina on Tuesday feuded over the possibility of U.S. military action, with Greene warning of a “fracture” in the MAGA movement should the president proceed.
But a U.S. official said that strikes by the United States against isolated targets in the Middle East have taken place before without drawing Washington into a protracted war. Trump is not debating whether to deploy U.S. troops on the ground, the official said.
Signs have also emerged of cracks within Trump’s inner circle over the potential strikes.
Writing on social media Tuesday, Vice President JD Vance said that “people are right to be worried about foreign entanglement after the last 25 years of idiotic foreign policy,” referring to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“But I believe the president has earned some trust on this issue,” Vance wrote. “He may decide he needs to take further action to end Iranian enrichment. That decision ultimately belongs to the president.”
In right-wing circles, an assessment from two months ago by Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, that Iran was not attempting to pursue construction of a nuclear weapon, provided proof of a parallel to the lead-up to the Iraq war. Israel has said its intelligence found Iran was days away from having the materials necessary to build a bomb before it began its campaign.
When flying home on Air Force One, Trump was asked about Gabbard’s assessment. The intelligence chief campaigned for years against “regime change wars” as a Democratic lawmaker in the House.
“I don’t care what she said,” Trump responded. “I think they were very close to having one.”
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