President Donald Trump said he would hold a meeting on Wednesday to discuss the conflict in the middle, but continued to go back to whether the US is planning to become a member of Israel's offensive focused on destroying Iran's nuclear enrichment program.
Trump told reporters that he would meet his advisers in the situation of the White House and again punished Tehran because he was 'late' to negotiate with him, but said he had not made a definitive decision to launch strikes.
“I have ideas about what to do,” said the president of reporters in the Oval Office. “I would like to make the final decision a second before it is owed because things change, especially with war.”
Earlier in the day asked if he came closer to bombing Iran, Trump said, “I can do it. I can't do it.”
Trump said he did not close the door for a meeting between us and Iranian officials, but repeatedly offered justifications when he decided to enter the conflict. He said that Iran was “a few weeks away” from having a nuclear weapon, a remark that is contrary to the findings of the American intelligence community.
“They should have closed that deal,” Trump said about Iran's leaders. “Eventually they decided not to do it. And now they want them to do it.”
Iran had been negotiations with the US for weeks about his nuclear program and had planned a further meeting when Israel attacked on Friday. The two Central Eastern countries have since traded rocket attacks and escalating rhetoric – Israeli leaders who are in danger of overthrowing the Islamic Republic, and their Iranian counterparts who experience challenging and retribution – while the Trump government weighs how deeply involved in the war of its ally.
Trump's ambiguous remarks add a new layer of voltage to the floor of Israel-Iran collision. The president, who has been campaigning for ten years in contrast to American wars in the middle, also stands for a tense gap among his supporters about whether the US should enter the fight. Until now, America has limited its participation to help Israel defend themselves against the launches of Iranian rocket and drone.
Trump said he encouraged Benjamin Netanyahu in a phone call on Tuesday to “continue” with his attacking operations, and added that he gave the Israeli Prime Minister no indication that American troops would participate in the attacks.
But the US is seen as being able to offer military firepower that is needed to destroy the underground enrichment facility of Iran at Fordow, which analysts say that Israel cannot do alone. Iran has warned that the American bases can hit in the region, where tens of thousands of troops are stationed when the US joins the Israeli attack.
Trump did not close the door to a resumption of nuclear conversations – he said that Iran had searched for a meeting, a statement that Tehran disputed – but the chance that they would bear fruit. “I said it's very late to talk,” said the president. “There is a big difference between now and a week ago.”
The comments were Trump's first substantive comments since the meeting on Tuesday with his National Security Council, where the US options were discussed. He spoke with reporters on the South Lawn of the White House, where workers installed a gigantic flagpole outside the diplomatic entrance of the Executive Mansion. Hours earlier he had demanded 'unconditional surrender' of Iran in a post on social media.
Since the strikes of Israel have started, Iran has fired 400 ballistic rockets and hundreds of drones in Israel, in which 24 people are killed and more than 800 injured, according to the Israeli government. At least 224 Iranians were killed by the attacks of Israel. Iran has hit goals, including an important oil refinery in the port of Haifa that was forced to close.
“The Americans must know that the Iranian nation is not someone who surrendered,” said Iran Ayatollah's highest leader Ali Khamei in a statement published on his official website on Wednesday. “Every military raid by the United States will undoubtedly lead to irreparable damage.”
“Good luck,” Trump said when he was asked for his response. “We can't let Iran get a nuclear weapon. I've been saying it for a long time. I mean it more than I have ever mentioned.”
Dennis Ross, who served as the envoy of the Middle East of President Bill Clinton and has just returned from a trip to the region, said that the Iranian regime is probably looking for an off-disaster of the current conflict despite the warlike remarks of Khamenei.
The top priority is survival, followed by avoiding a direct conflict with the US, said Ross, who is now a fellow at the Washington Institute for near East Policy. “If they feel deeply threatened, they will make concessions. They certainly feel vulnerable and threatened.”
The rocket of Iran and Drone was launching against Israel on Wednesday evening, although the reason was not immediately clear. While the Israeli army said earlier that it had destroyed about a third of Iran's rocket launchers, Tehran still possesses thousands of ballistic rockets that Israel can reach, the national security adviser Tzachi Hanegbi said Monday.
The American ambassador in Israel Mike Huckabee announced on Wednesday that the embassy is organizing evacuations of Americans in Israel who want to leave. Protection staff has already started leaving the country, said a spokesperson. The announcements came a day after the American embassy in Jerusalem said it would be closed on Wednesday to Friday.
Trump said that the Iranian government had contacted the US about the conflict and even a meeting of the White House had proposed to arrange the case, but he said that his patience with the Islamic Republic was “on”. The mission from Iran to the United Nations denied that claim in an X -post Wednesday and said: “No Iranian official has ever asked for roughly to the gates of the White House.”
The question of whether he should hit Iran has the potential to cause domestic political headache for Trump, whose basis is divided between isolationists and traditional conservative interventionists. Supporters of both political parties are opposed to the US who join the clear majorities of Iran's Israel, according to a Yougov survey.
Trump said his bottom line remains that “Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon” and “it's not a matter of anything else.” During his first term, Trump withdrew from an agreement aimed at limiting the Iran's atomic program, that the US and other world powers had spent years with negotiations.
Republican hawks support military action against Iran, but Trump has had to deal with pressure from some of his isolationist supporters to follow a more measured approach. “We have been encouraging for days now:” Let's be America first. Let's stay away, “said representative Marjorie Taylor Greene on Tuesday at CNN.
During a breakfast organized by the Christian Science Monitor on Wednesday, Trump -Bonden Bannon said for years that Trump's supporters want him to focus on issues that are most important for his basis, such as detecting immigration. But Bannon said that if the president has more information that supports the case for intervention “and who makes it to the American people, the Maga movement will support President Trump.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseeth, who appeared in front of the Senate's Armed Services Committee on Wednesday, refused to answer directly whether Trump had asked Pentagon to offer options for striking Iran.
Hegseeth said that “maximum power protection is being maintained at all times” for American troops stationed in the region, and said that “the president has options and is informed about what those options could be, and what the consequences of those options could be.”
The US continued to build its military presence in the region. The USS Ford Carrier Strike Group will leave next week on a regularly planned deployment, initially in the European theater, according to an American officer.
In the meantime, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said that the location of Iran's near-bomb-grade stock of enriched uranium cannot be verified.
The IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said on Wednesday that the place of residence of the material is now unclear, since Tehran warned him that the stock could be moved in the case of an Israeli attack. The agency does not continue to see an indication of considerable damage to the Fordow's nuclear site of Iran, he added.
With the help of Skylar Woodhouse, Akayla Gardner, Courtney McBride and Eric Martin.
This article was generated from an automated feed from the news agency without changes in text.
