WASHINGTON — Top Trump administration officials do not yet have clear guidance on what President Donald Trump would hope to accomplish with military action in Iran as U.S. and Iranian officials plan to meet Friday to try to avoid a war, according to two U.S. officials.
While Trump has left open the possibility of pursuing regime change in Iran, the two U.S. officials said he has not yet settled on precisely what his objectives for any possible military action would be. They also said there is no clear road map or consensus within the administration over what role the U.S. would play after any such operation.
Asked Wednesday in an interview with NBC News whether Iran’s supreme leader should be worried, Trump said: “I would say he should be very worried, yeah. He should be.”
Trump told NBC News’ Tom Llamas that he learned Iran may be trying to reconstitute its nuclear program after the U.S. military “wiped out” three of its nuclear sites in June.
“They were thinking about starting a new site in a different part of the country,” Trump said. “We found out about it. I said, ‘You do that, we’re gonna do very bad things to you.’”
Trump has not publicly outlined his precise goal in Iran, including whether he is seeking to topple the clerical regime, weaken it or force it to accept restrictions on its nuclear and missile programs.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Wednesday that negotiations between U.S. and Iranian officials, which are due to take place Friday in Oman, must include curtailing not only Iran’s nuclear program but also the range of its ballistic missiles, as well as its support for proxies in the region and “the treatment of their own people.”
“I’m not sure you can reach a deal with these guys, but we’re going to try to find out,” Rubio told reporters. “We don’t see there’s any harm in trying to figure out there’s something that can be done. This is a president that always prefers a peaceful outcome to any conflict or any challenge the time for one.”
Asked about Trump’s pursuit of negotiations with Iran while he is still considering military options, White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said in a statement, “The commander-in-chief has ample options at his disposal to address these issues — and he wisely does not broadcast them to the fake news.”
Iran has consistently ruled out any negotiations beyond its nuclear program, which it has insisted is for peaceful purposes, and it has rejected the idea of restrictions on its ballistic missile arsenal or its support for ideological allies in the region.
Trump, who withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran in his first term, has shifted his rhetoric toward the country’s leadership in recent weeks. He threatened military action to back up his promise to help protesters in Iran who endured a bloody crackdown by the regime.
He then announced Iran had agreed to halt the crackdown, which killed more than 6,000 protesters, as well as planned executions of those who were arrested, so he would not be taking military action. And now he is pursuing negotiations with Iran. He is demanding that Iran agree to curtail its nuclear program or face military action, though he has said U.S. strikes in June “obliterated” three of its nuclear sites.
It is unclear what Trump seeks to negotiate with the Iranians that would be aimed at supporting the protesters.
Trump’s latest recalibration toward Iran has raised questions about what he would seek to achieve with military action if talks failed, such as targeting nuclear and missile sites or a higher-risk, larger-scale attack designed to topple the regime.
The U.S. military continues to flow aircraft and land-based air defense systems into the Middle East, while the Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier and its attending ships are getting closer to being within striking distance of Tehran, U.S. officials said. But for now, U.S. officials insist the influx of assets is in response to ongoing tensions in the region, not part of planning for a specific mission.
The U.S. military threat, including the possibility of removing Iran’s top political and military leadership, for now serves as leverage while Trump pursues diplomatic talks. Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff is expected to lead the U.S. meeting with Iranian officials Friday, according to three U.S. officials.
Friday’s diplomatic meeting was initially scheduled to take place in Istanbul and to include representatives from top Persian Gulf countries, including Qatar and Oman, as well as U.S. and Iranian officials.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi announced Wednesday on X, “Nuclear talks with the United States are scheduled to be held in Muscat at 10am Friday.” He made no mention of the other demands Rubio outlined: discussing Iran’s ballistic missile program, its support for proxies and its treatment of the Iranian people.
A U.S. official and an Omani official confirmed the meeting was set for Friday.
Trump said Tuesday he believes the Iranians are seeking to avoid a repeat of the 12-day war in June, when the Defense Department struck three Iranian nuclear enrichment sites in what it called “Operation Midnight Hammer.”
“I don’t think they want that happening again, but they would like to negotiate,” he told reporters in the Oval Office. “We are negotiating with them right now.”
NBC News reported in December that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was pushing the administration to support strikes on Iran’s ballistic missile sites.
As the Iranian regime’s crackdown on protesters turned deadly just weeks later, Trump said he would consider military action against the regime. Then he abruptly announced that he was satisfied the crackdown had subsided, leaving the question of whether he would take military action open.
Since then, Gulf states and even Israel have discouraged Trump from taking military action, NBC News reported last month.
Last week, a senior Gulf state official said that Saudi Arabia would not allow the U.S. to use its airspace or bases for an attack in Iran and that the U.S. had not yet shared objectives or plans with its Gulf allies.
Rubio indicated at a Senate hearing late last month that the administration was not necessarily aiming to overthrow Iran’s clerical regime, saying it was not clear what would follow if the current leadership were ousted and that it was a more complicated situation than in Venezuela.
“That’s an open question. I mean, no one knows who would take over,” Rubio told the panel when he was asked who might rule Iran if the regime fell.
Tensions between the U.S. and Iran have flared in the region ahead of the next expected round of negotiations.
American forces Tuesday shot down an Iranian drone that was flying “aggressively” toward the Abraham Lincoln, which recently arrived in the region as part of Trump’s assemblage of American military forces and weaponry ahead of possible military action in Iran, according to U.S. Central Command. A U.S. military official described the Shahed-139 drone as having “unclear intent” as it approached the carrier about 500 miles off Iran.
In a separate incident Tuesday in the Strait of Hormuz, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was said to have harassed a U.S.-flagged, U.S.-crewed merchant vessel described as lawfully navigating the area in international waters. Two boats belonging to the Revolutionary Guard Corps approached the tanker at high speed and threatened to board and seize it, according to the military official. A U.S. warship that was in the region traveled to the area, and the situation de-escalated, U.S. military officials said.
The Abraham Lincoln and its attending ships arrived in the region last week. They are still heading to a location from where they could be used to support strikes against the regime in Tehran, according to three U.S. officials. Those ships join what Trump described as an “armada” of military equipment that is already there, including about a dozen other ships, air squadrons and logistics aircraft and dozens of F-15 and F-35 stealth jet fighters, according to two U.S. officials.
The Pentagon also has more than 450 Tomahawk land attack missiles on ships in the region, weaponry poised to be used against the regime should Trump greenlight any operation, according to a U.S. official and open-source tracking.
“It is moving quickly, with great power, enthusiasm and purpose,” Trump said of the armada on social media last week.
While some U.S. officials, lawmakers and allies in the Middle East remain unclear about what Trump will ultimately decide, he has made it clear that he wants military action to be quick and decisive should he decide to pursue strikes, officials said.
