Inside Trump’s decision to attack Iran: ‘a window of opportunity’ | Trump administration
Donald Trump launched strikes on Saturday as part of a joint operation against Iran after developing intelligence that Israel could target the country’s leaders and mullahs simultaneously, according to two sources familiar with the discussions.
Sources said the Israelis were monitoring the movements of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, and when they gathered, they decided there was a window of opportunity to launch an attack.
The idea behind the Iranian regime’s decapitation was the belief that Iran’s revolutionary guards may be deeply loyal to Khamenei, but would not be able to support any of his successors to the same extent in the event of his death, the people said.
The two people spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive details of an ongoing operation. Another person who gave information about the Israeli army’s preparations for the operation said, “Many meetings were held that morning and they targeted all of them.”
On Saturday afternoon, a US official confirmed that the US believes Khamenei and five to 10 senior Iranian leaders were killed in an Israeli attack on a compound in Tehran. Trump later Posted on Truth Social He said that Khamenei was killed.
While Trump announced the start of an operation that could last for days in a video he published on Saturday, he did not give a reason why the US launched the attack, but sources said that the opportunity to target Khamenei accelerated the timeline of the attacks.
The attacks were condemned by Oman’s foreign minister, who is mediating the talks. “I am appalled. Active and serious negotiations have once again been undermined. This serves neither the interests of the United States nor the cause of global peace well,” Badr Albusaidi said. he said in a post In X.
The strikes followed a week of rapid developments and, according to the Guardian’s initial report, depended in part on whether Trump’s special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner concluded that Iran was stalling when they met for talks at the residence of Oman’s ambassador in Geneva.
In all-day talks Thursday, Witkoff and Kushner persuaded Iran to destroy its three main nuclear enrichment sites at Fordow, Isfahan and Natanz, the targets of Trump’s bombing campaign last year, and to hand over remaining stockpiles to the United States.
They also insisted that any deal must last indefinitely, without provisions to phase out restrictions in the 2015 deal negotiated with the Obama administration. Trump withdrew from that agreement, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, during his first term.
However, Witkoff and Kushner ended the day in disappointment. And on Friday, Trump was briefed on his military options by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine and U.S. Navy Adm. Brad Cooper, commander of U.S. Central Command.
Trump considered a number of factors for the attacks, senior US officials said on Saturday. The main reason for this is Iran’s conventional missile arsenal, which poses an “intolerable threat” to the United States that Iran refuses to address, one of the officials said.
“They refused in every case and consistently refused to address issues related to ballistic missiles,” the official said. “They won’t even talk about it. They won’t talk about it with us. They won’t talk about it with our regional partners. They won’t talk about those missiles at all.”
Another official said the United States is suspicious of Iran’s claim that its nuclear enrichments are for peaceful purposes. The US offered free nuclear fuel “forever”, but Iran rejected the offer. This was “big news” for negotiators, the official said.
The official said the United States also had intelligence that Iran was rebuilding enrichment sites destroyed in Trump’s Operation Midnight Hammer last year. The US believed that Iran was stockpiling partially enriched uranium and ultimately did not want a deal.
“Frankly, the President had no choice. We cannot continue to live in a world where these people not only have missiles, but also have the ability to produce 100 missiles a month forever,” the official said. “We won’t be held hostage by them and we won’t let them shoot us first.”
Trump hit the Mar-a-Lago club on Friday and was seen exiting Air Force One wearing the same white “USA” baseball cap he wore in his taped address announcing the start of the Iran operation.
