US president triggers speculation about American military involvement after five days of Israeli bombing and retaliatory Iranian missile strikes<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Israel\u2019s war on Iran appeared to be approaching a pivotal moment on Tuesday night after five days of bombing and retaliatory Iranian missile strikes, as Donald Trump<\/a> demanded \u201cunconditional surrender\u201d from Tehran and weighed his military options.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Trump convened a meeting of his national security team in the White House situation room after a day of febrile rhetoric in which the president gave sharply conflicting signals over whether US forces would participate directly in Israel\u2019s bombing campaign over Iran.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He told journalists in the morning that he expected the Iranian nuclear programme to be \u201cwiped out\u201d long before US intervention would be necessary. Later he took to his own social media platform, Truth Social, to suggest that the US had Iran\u2019s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in its bomb-sights, and could make an imminent decision to take offensive action.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe know exactly where the so-called \u2018Supreme Leader\u2019 is hiding. He is an easy target, but is safe there \u2013 We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now,\u201d Trump said. \u201cBut we don\u2019t want missiles shot at civilians, or American soldiers. Our patience is wearing thin.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In a post a few minutes later, Trump bluntly demanded \u201cUNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was not just Trump\u2019s all-caps threats that triggered speculation that the US might join offensive operations. They were accompanied by the sudden forward deployment of US military aircraft to Europe and the Middle East, amid a general consensus that Iran\u2019s deeply buried uranium enrichment facilities could prove impregnable without huge bunker-busting bombs that only the US air force possesses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIf Iran does not back down, complete destruction of Iranian nuclear programme is on the agenda, which Israel cannot achieve alone,\u201d German chancellor Friedrich Merz told ZDF television a day after meeting Trump at the G7 summit in Canada.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But France\u2019s president, Emmanuel Macron, urged restraint, saying: \u201cWe recognize Israel\u2019s right to self-defense, but we do not support actions that threaten stability in the region. The biggest mistake that can be made today is to try to change the regime in Iran by military means \u2013 because that would lead to chaos.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Despite the US military deployments and Trump\u2019s menacing comments, the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, who was also at the G7 meeting, insisted the US was not about to join the Israeli bombing campaign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThere\u2019s nothing the president said that suggests that he\u2019s about to get involved in this conflict,\u201d Starmer said. \u201cOn the contrary, the G7 statement was about de-escalation … I was sitting right next to President Trump [at the dinner], so I\u2019ve no doubt, in my mind, the level of agreement.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Trump left the Canadian summit a day early<\/a> and flew back to Washington around midnight on Monday. On the way, he told journalists he was not seeking a ceasefire in Israel\u2019s war on Iran but instead wanted to see<\/a> a \u201ccomplete give-up\u201d by Iran, as well as \u201ca real end\u201d to Iran\u2019s nuclear programme, with Tehran abandoning its uranium enrichment \u201centirely\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The vice president, JD Vance, also took to social media to discuss Trump\u2019s options.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHe may decide he needs to take further action to end Iranian enrichment. That decision ultimately belongs to the president,\u201d Vance wrote, before adding that \u201cpeople are right to be worried about foreign entanglement after the last 25 years of idiotic foreign policy\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The US president predicted Israel would not let up in its bombing campaign and suggested a decisive moment in that campaign was imminent, though he made clear he expected Israel to destroy Iran\u2019s nuclear facilities without US help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou\u2019re going to find out over the next two days \u2026 Nobody\u2019s slowed up so far,\u201d he told CBS News on the flight back to Washington, saying he was returning to the White House to focus on the conflict.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Israel\u2019s justification for its shock attack on Iran was called into question on Tuesday when CNN cited US intelligence assessments<\/a> as saying that when Iran was attacked, it had been \u201cup to three years away from being able to produce and deliver [a nuclear bomb] to a target of its choosing\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The report echoed a public assessment in March by Trump\u2019s own director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, who told Congress \u201cIran is not building a nuclear weapon\u201d and the supreme leader \u201chas not authorised the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On Tuesday, Trump shrugged off that assessment, siding instead with Israel\u2019s claims that Tehran was on the brink of making a warhead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI don\u2019t care what she said,\u201d Trump said. \u201cI think they were very close to having it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In freewheeling remarks to reporters on Air Force One, Trump also stressed that any Iranian attack on Americans or US bases, which Iran has threatened, would be met with overwhelming force, saying: \u201cWe\u2019ll come down so hard, it\u2019d be gloves off.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Iran\u2019s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said Iran was open to resuming talks with the US. \u201cIf President Trump is genuine about diplomacy and interested in stopping this war, next steps are consequential,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Benjamin Netanyahu was also dismissive of the idea of diplomacy. \u201cOf course they want to stop. They want to stop, and to keep producing the tools of death. We gave that a chance,\u201d the Israeli prime minister said, laying out a new, expanded set of war aims.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe want three central results: eliminating the nuclear programme, eliminating the ability to produce ballistic missiles and eliminating the axis of terror.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n He left vague what the third war aim would entail. Later on Tuesday, his foreign minister, Gideon Sa\u2019ar, described it differently as a mission to \u201cseverely damage [the Iranians\u2019] plan to eliminate the state of Israel\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Asked how that would be achieved, Sa\u2019ar told the Guardian: \u201cWe are doing that gradually. First we cut the [tentacles] of the octopus, when we dealt with Hamas and Hezbollah. Now we are dealing with the head of the octopus.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cRegime change is not an objective of this war,\u201d the minister insisted however, during a visit to a missile strike site in Rishon LeZion, east of Tel Aviv. He added that regime change \u201cmay be a result, but its not an objective\u201d of the war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Israel\u2019s choice of targets has broadened over the course of the campaign, in line with its rhetoric. In recent days it has bombed the Iranian capital, ordering the residents of a part of northern Tehran<\/a>, a third of a million people, to leave their homes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Israeli evacuation order was modelled on those routinely issued to Palestinians in Gaza, where bombing by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has flattened entire residential neighbourhoods over the course of a 20-month conflict.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Explosion could be heard in Tehran early on Wednesday after Israel announced a wave of fresh attacks. The IDF warned residents to evacuate from a neighbourhood south of Mehrabad International Airport, which includes residential areas, military installations, pharmaceutical companies and industrial firms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n