Such a strike would be a brazen break with President Donald
Trump. It could also risk tipping off a broader regional conflict in the Middle
East — something the US has sought to avoid since the war in Gaza started in
October 2023.
Officials caution it’s not clear that Israeli leaders have
made a final decision, and that in fact, there is deep disagreement within the
US government about the likelihood that Israel will ultimately act. Whether and
how Israel strikes will likely depend on what it thinks of the US negotiations
with Tehran over its nuclear program.
The chance of an Israeli strike on an Iranian nuclear
facility has gone up significantly in recent months. The prospect of a
Trump-negotiated US-Iran deal that doesn’t remove all of Iran’s uranium makes
the chance of a strike more likely.
The heightened worries stem not only from public and private
messaging from senior Israeli officials that it is considering such a move, but
also from intercepted Israeli communications and observations of Israeli
military movements that could suggest an imminent strike.
Among the military preparations the US has observed are the
movement of air munitions and the completion of an air exercise.
Those same indicators could also simply be Israel trying to
pressure Iran to abandon key tenets of its nuclear program by signaling the
consequences if it doesn’t — underscoring the ever-shifting complexities the
White House is navigating.
Trump has publicly threatened military action against Iran
if his administration’s efforts to negotiate a new nuclear deal to limit or
eliminate Tehran’s nuclear program fail. Trump also set a limit on how long the
US would engage in diplomatic efforts.
In a letter to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
in mid-March, Trump set a 60-day deadline for those efforts to succeed. It has
now been more than 60 days since that letter was delivered, and 38 days since
the first round of talks began.
A senior Western diplomat who met with the president earlier
this month said that Trump communicated the US would give those negotiations
only weeks to succeed before resorting to military strikes.
That has put Israel “between a rock and a hard place,” said
Jonathan Panikoff, a former senior intelligence official specializing in the
region.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is under pressure both to
avoid a US-Iran deal that Israel doesn’t view as satisfactory, while also not
alienating Trump — who has already broken with the Israeli prime minister on
key security issues in the region.
“At the end of the day, the Israeli decision-making is going
to be predicated on US policy determinations and actions, and what agreements
President Trump does or does not come to with Iran,” Panikoff said, who added
that he did not believe Netanyahu would be willing to risk entirely fracturing
the US relationship by launching a strike without at least tacit US approval.
Iran is in its weakest military position in decades, after
Israel bombed its missile production facilities and air defenses in October
last year, combined with an economy weakened by sanctions and Israel’s
decimation of its most powerful regional proxies. Israel.
The US is stepping up intelligence collection to be prepared
to assist if Israeli leaders decide to strike, one senior US official told CNN.
A source familiar with the Trump administration’s thinking
told CNN the US is unlikely to help Israel carry out strikes on Iranian nuclear
sites at this moment.
Israel does not have the capacity to destroy Iran’s nuclear
program without American assistance, including midair refueling and the bombs
required to penetrate the facilities deep underground, a need that is also
reflected in previous US intelligence reports.
An Israeli source told CNN that Israel would be prepared to
carry out military action on its own if the US were to negotiate what this
source described as a “bad deal” with Iran that Israel cannot accept.
It is more likely they strike to try and get the deal to
fall apart if they think Trump is going to settle for a ‘bad deal’. The
Israelis have not been shy about signaling both publicly and privately.
A US intelligence assessment from February suggested Israel
could use either military aircraft or long-range missiles to capitalize on
Iran’s degraded air defense capabilities, CNN previously reported.
The same assessment also described how such strikes would
only minimally set the Iranian nuclear program back and wouldn’t be a cure-all.
“It’s a real challenge for Netanyahu,” Panikoff said.
The US talks with Iran are stuck on a demand that Tehran not
enrich uranium, a process which can enable weaponization, but which is also
necessary to produce nuclear power for civilian purposes.
Special envoy Steve Witkoff, who is leading the US delegation,
told ABC News over the weekend that Washington “cannot allow even 1% of an
enrichment capability” under an agreement. “We’ve delivered a proposal to the
Iranians that we think addresses some of this without disrespecting them,” he
said.
Khamenei said on Tuesday that he does not expect
negotiations with the United States over Tehran’s nuclear program to “reach a
conclusion,” calling the US demand that Iran not enrich uranium a “big
mistake.”
Iran insists it has a right to enrich under the United Nations’
Treaty on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and says it will not relinquish that right
under any circumstances.
Another round of talks may take place in Europe this week,
according to Witkoff. Both the US and Iran have put proposals on the table, but
after more than a month of the talks facilitated by Oman, there is no current
US proposal with Trump’s sign-off, sources said.
US intelligence agencies in February issued warnings that
Israel will likely attempt to strike facilities key to Iran’s nuclear program
this year, CNN previously reported.
It has “consistently been the Israeli position that the
military option is the only option to stopping Iran’s military nuclear program,”
one US official noted.
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