Israel had planned to strike Iranian nuclear sites as soon as next month but was waved off by President Trump in recent weeks in favor of negotiating a deal with Tehran to limit its nuclear program, according to administration officials and others briefed on the discussions, reported the New York Times.
Trump made his decision after months of internal debate over whether to pursue diplomacy or support Israel in seeking to set back Iran’s ability to build a bomb, at a time when Iran has been weakened militarily and economically.
The debate highlighted fault lines between historically hawkish American cabinet officials and other aides more skeptical that a military assault on Iran could destroy the country’s nuclear ambitions and avoid a larger war. It resulted in a rough consensus, for now, against military action, with Iran signaling a willingness to negotiate.
Israeli officials had recently developed plans to attack Iranian nuclear sites in May. They were prepared to carry them out, and at times were optimistic that the United States would sign off. The goal of the proposals, according to officials briefed on them, was to set back Tehran’s ability to develop a nuclear weapon by a year or more.
Almost all of the plans would have required US help not just to defend Israel from Iranian retaliation, but also to ensure that an Israeli attack was successful, making the United States a central part of the attack itself.
For now, Trump has chosen diplomacy over military action. In his first term, he tore up the Iran nuclear deal negotiated by the Obama administration. But in his second term, eager to avoid being sucked into another war in the Middle East, he has opened negotiations with Tehran, giving it a deadline of just a few months to negotiate a deal over its nuclear program.
Earlier this month, Trump informed Israel of his decision that the United States would not support an attack. He discussed it with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when Netanyahu visited Washington last week, using an Oval Office meeting to announce that the United States was beginning talks with Iran.
In a statement delivered in Hebrew after the meeting, Netanyahu said that an agreement with Iran would only work if it allowed the signatories to “go in, blow up the facilities, dismantle all the equipment, under American supervision with American execution.”
The New York Times based its report on conversations with multiple officials briefed on Israel’s secret miliary plans and confidential discussions inside the Trump administration. Most of the people interviewed spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss military planning.
Israel has long planned to attack Iranian nuclear facilities, rehearsing bombing runs and calculating how much damage it could do with or without American help.
But support within the Israeli government for a strike grew after Iran suffered a string of setbacks last year.
In attacks on Israel in April, most of Iran’s ballistic missiles were unable to penetrate American and Israeli defenses. Hezbollah, Iran’s key ally, was decimated by an Israeli military campaign last year. The subsequent fall of the government of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria eliminated a Hezbollah and Tehran ally and cut off a prime route of weapons smuggling from Iran.
Air defense systems in Iran and Syria were also destroyed, along with the facilities that Iran uses to make missile fuel, crippling the country’s ability to produce new missiles for some time.
Initially, at the behest of Netanyahu, senior Israeli officials updated their American counterparts on a plan that would have combined an Israeli commando raid on underground nuclear sites with a bombing campaign, an effort that the Israelis hoped would involve American aircraft, reported the New York Times.
But Israeli military officials said the commando operation would not be ready until October. Netanyahu wanted it carried out more quickly. Israeli officials began shifting to a proposal for an extended bombing campaign that would have also required American assistance, according to officials briefed on the plan.
Some American officials were at least initially more open to considering the Israeli plans. Gen. Michael E. Kurilla, the head of US Central Command, and Michael Waltz, the national security adviser, both discussed how the United States could potentially support an Israeli attack, if Trump backed the plan, according to officials briefed on the discussions.
With the United States intensifying its war against the Iran-backed Houthi militants in Yemen, Kurilla, with the blessing of the White House, began moving military equipment to the Middle East. A second aircraft carrier, Carl Vinson, is now in the Middle East, joining the carrier Harry S. Truman in the Red Sea.
The United States also moved two Patriot missile batteries and a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, known as a THAAD, to the Middle East.
Around a half-dozen B-2 bombers capable of carrying 30,000-pound bombs essential to destroying Iran’s underground nuclear program were dispatched to Diego Garcia, an island base in the Indian Ocean.
Even if the United States decided not to authorize the aircraft to take part in a strike on Iran, Israel would know that the American fighters were available to defend against attacks by an Iranian ally.
