PM, Trump said to discuss US support for potential Israeli strike on Iran nuclear sites
WaPo claims Jerusalem wants to ‘seize the moment,’ seeks DC’s backing but willing to attack alone; says Israel already has US bunker busters to penetrate underground facilities
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump have discussed a variety of ways in which the US could support Israel in a potential attack on Iran’s nuclear program, the Washington Post reported Friday, amid a series of indications that Jerusalem could be planning a strike in the coming months in a bid to take down Tehran’s regime.
Citing Israeli and US officials, senior Washington Post columnist David Ignatius asserted that unless diplomatic pressure forces Iran to abandon its nuclear facilities, Israel is prepared to destroy them “with or without US support.”
“Israel wants to seize the moment,” Ignatius wrote, citing American and Israeli officials: “If Iran won’t agree to a Libya-style abandonment of its nuclear facilities, Israel is prepared to bomb those facilities — with or without US support, the officials said.”
Accordingly, the Post reported that Netanyahu and Trump discussed several options for US backing of a potential Israeli strike, ranging from military intelligence and refueling to political support, during their meetings in Washington last week.
The analyst asserted that the US has already provided Israel with the bunker-busting munitions it would need to penetrate Iran’s underground nuclear facilities and damage centrifuges built deep in mountainous terrain in Fordow, near Qom.
In contrast, CNN on Thursday cited Pentagon reports noting Israel would still need American assistance to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities, including mid-air refueling and the ordinances required to penetrate deep underground. The report said Israel was thought to be pursuing a “broader goal” of regime change in Tehran.
It’s known that Israel has bunker-busting munitions but it is unclear if they would be sufficient to severely damage or destroy Iran’s underground nuclear sites.
Trump said last week that he would prefer to make a deal with Iran rather than “bombing the hell out of it,” adding that Israel would not carry out a strike if there were an agreement with Iran.
“Everyone thinks Israel, with our help or our approval, will go in and bomb the hell out of them. I would prefer that not happen. I’d much rather see a deal with Iran where we can do a deal — supervise, check it, inspect it and then blow it up or just make sure that there is no more nuclear,” he told Fox News.
Amid the war in Gaza, sparked by the Hamas terror group’s October 7, 2023 massacre, Iran has twice fired massive missile and drone barrages at Israel, which were largely thwarted by air defenses, in cooperation with the US and its regional allies.
Israel responded with two rounds of strikes on Iran, the second of which, in October, destroyed much of the Islamic Republic’s air defense systems as well as some key military facilities while demonstrating Israel’s ability to operate uninhibited over Iranian airspace. It has been widely reported that at the time, then-US president Joe Biden urged Israel against hitting nuclear sites.
The Thursday CNN report quoted a former senior Biden official as saying that Israel had wanted to go further, with officials on multiple occasions trying to convince the US to carry out additional strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities to take advantage of the momentum.
While the Biden administration was said to have been open to the idea, the discussions reportedly came to a halt when Trump won the US presidential elections in November.
Sources quoted by CNN said that a decision was made not to carry out preemptive military strikes during the transition period, though US and Israeli officials agreed that they would respond if Iran moved to advance its nuclear weapons program.
At the same time, it has been previously reported that Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer left a November meeting with then-president-elect Trump believing he would either support an Israeli military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities or direct a US strike on those sites himself.
Iran, which is sworn to Israel’s destruction, insists its nuclear program is solely for peaceful purposes. However, the UN nuclear watchdog IAEA has said that Iran is currently enriching uranium to levels that have no civilian use, and the country has obstructed international inspectors seeking to visit its facilities.
In addition, The New York Times reported earlier this month that American intelligence indicates a covert team of Iranian scientists was exploring ways to quickly develop a nuclear weapon if the country’s leadership decided to pursue one.
The US intelligence assessments that Israel is considering strikes on Iran’s nuclear program this year were first reported by The Wall Street Journal earlier this week.
Some Israeli officials have indicated a desire to hit Iran, seeing a ripe opportunity given the damage Israel has inflicted on Iran and its proxies since the start of the Gaza war in October 2023, when the Palestinian terror group Hamas led a devastating invasion of southern Israel that left 1,200 people dead and 251 kidnapped, mostly civilians.
The next day, Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon began attacking across Israel’s northern border. As Israel battled Hamas in Gaza and responded to Hezbollah’s rocket fire, Iran-backed Houthis rebels also began firing drones and ballistic missiles at Israel.
In September, Israel launched a major campaign against Hezbollah, decimating the terror group’s leadership and depleting its fighting abilities. A ceasefire was reached at the end of November. Hezbollah was long seen as a deterrent to an Israeli strike on Iran due to the threat of its massive missile arsenal, but the war left it with greatly diminished capabilities.
Meanwhile, Israel bombed the Houthi rebels in Yemen — demonstrating its ability to strike even further than Iran — and in Syria, the Iran-aligned Assad regime was ousted by rebels who have since courted the West.
A three-phase hostage-ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas came into effect last month and is currently in its initial stage, with at least three of the remaining 73 abductees held in Gaza due to be released on Saturday.
