Washington: Just hours before Israel launched strikes on Iran early Friday, President Donald Trump was still holding onto tattered threads of hope that a long-simmering dispute over Tehran’s nuclear programme could be resolved without military action.
But with the Israeli military operation underway — something Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says will go on for “as many days as it takes” — Trump will be tested anew on his ability to make good on a campaign promise to disentangle the US from foreign conflicts.
“I gave Iran chance after chance to make a deal,” Trump said in a social media post. “I told them, in the strongest of words, to just do it,’ but no matter how hard they tried, no matter how close they got, they just couldn’t get it done.”
The Republican administration’s first reaction to the Israeli assault came not from Trump but from Secretary of State Marco Rubio. He sought to make clear the US was “not involved” and the administration’s central concern was protecting US forces in the region.
The US is now shifting military resources, including ships, in the Middle East as it looks to guard against possible retaliatory attack by Tehran, according to two US officials speaking on the condition of anonymity.
The Navy has directed the destroyer USS Thomas Hudner to begin sailing toward the Eastern Mediterranean and has directed a second destroyer to begin moving forward, so it can be available if requested by the White House.
As Israel stepped up planning for strikes in recent weeks, however, Iran, had signalled that the United States would be held responsible in the event of an Israeli attack.
The warning was issued by Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi even as he engaged in talks with Trump special envoy Steve Witkoff over Tehran’s rapidly advancing nuclear programme.
On Thursday, just hours before the strikes, Trump made the case that there was still time for diplomacy — but it was running out. The White House had even planned to dispatch Witkoff to Oman on Sunday for the next round of talks with Araghchi.
Witkoff still plans to go to Oman this weekend for talks on Tehran’s nuclear programme, but it’s unclear if the Iranians would participate, according to US officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private diplomatic discussions.
But Trump on Friday suggested Israeli attacks should be a clarifying moment that offered Iran “perhaps, a second chance”.
The president also made a series of phone calls to US television news anchors to renew his call on Iran to curb its nuclear programme.
CNN’s Dana Bash said Trump told her the Iranians “should now come to the table” and get a deal done.
“It will be too late for them. You know the people I was dealing with are dead, the hardliners,” Trump added, according to Bash, without specifying which Iranian officials he was referring to.
Trump told The Wall Street Journal that the White House was told by the Israelis ahead of the operation that the large-scale strikes were coming.
Trump is set to meet with his National Security Council in the Situation Room on Friday to discuss the tricky path ahead. Meanwhile, French President Emmanuel Macron said he had spoken with Trump about the evolving situation.
Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., offered rare words of Democratic praise for the Trump administration after the attack “for prioritizing diplomacy” and “refraining from participating” in the military strikes. But he also expressed deep concern about what the Israeli strikes could mean for US personnel in the region.
Iranian officials made clear that they intended to retaliate with decisive action after the Israeli strikes targeted Iran’s main enrichment facility in Natanz and the country’s ballistic missile programme, as well as top nuclear scientists and officials.
In response, Iran fired more than 100 drones at Israel, with both Iraq and Jordan confirming they had flown over their airspace. Israel said the drones were being intercepted outside its airspace, and it was unclear whether any got through.
Trump in the hours before the attack still appeared hopeful that there would be more time for diplomacy.
The president, in an exchange with reporters, again urged Iran to negotiate a deal. He warned that a “massive conflict” could occur in the Middle East without it.
He later took to social media to emphasize that his “entire Administration has been directed to negotiate with Iran”.
But it was clear to the administration that Israel was edging toward taking military action against Iran. The State Department and US military on Wednesday directed a voluntary evacuation of nonessential personnel and their loved ones from some US diplomatic outposts in the Middle East.
Before Israel launched the strikes, some of Trump’s strongest supporters were raising concerns about what another expansive conflict in the Mideast could mean for the Republican president, who ran on a promise to quickly end the brutal wars in Gaza and Ukraine.
Trump has struggled to find an endgame to either of those conflicts and to make good on two of his biggest foreign policy campaign promises.
And after criticising President Joe Biden during last year’s campaign for preventing Israel from carrying out strikes on Iranian nuclear sites, Trump found himself making the case to the Israelis to give diplomacy a chance.
The push by the Trump administration to persuade Tehran to give up its nuclear program came after the US and other world powers in 2015 reached a long-term, comprehensive nuclear agreement that limited Tehran’s enrichment of uranium in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions.
But Trump unilaterally withdrew the US from the Obama-administration brokered agreement in 2018, calling it the “worst deal ever”.
The way forward is even more clouded now.
“No issue currently divides the right as much as foreign policy,” Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA and an ally of the Trump White House, posted on X on Thursday. “I’m very concerned based on (everything) I’ve seen in the grassroots the last few months that this will cause a massive schism in MAGA and potentially disrupt our momentum and our insanely successful Presidency.”
Jack Posobiec, another prominent Trump supporter, warned a “direct strike on Iran right now would disastrously split the Trump coalition”.
Rosemary Kelanic, director of the Middle East programme at Defence Priorities, said the job ahead for Trump and his team is to protect US forces who are highly vulnerable to Iranian retaliation.
“Israel’s strike on Iran must not become the United States’ war,” Kelanic said. “The US public overwhelmingly opposes another military engagement in the Middle East for good reason — an open-ended military campaign in Iran would risk repeating the catastrophic mistakes of the 2003 war in Iraq, which inadvertently strengthened Tehran’s influence there.”
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