Trump says Iran missed chance of deal, stays vague on US strike

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Iran squandered the chance to make a deal over its nuclear enrichment, but declined to say whether the United States plans to join Israel’s offensive aimed at destroying the program.

“I may do it. I may not do it,” Trump told reporters Wednesday at the White House when asked if he is moving closer to bombing Iran. “I mean, nobody knows what I’m going to do.”

Iran had been in negotiations with the U.S. over its nuclear program for weeks, and had a further meeting scheduled, when Israel attacked Friday. The two Mideast nations have since traded missile strikes and escalating rhetoric — Israeli leaders threatening to topple the Islamic Republic, and their Iranian counterparts vowing defiance and retaliation — while the Trump administration weighs how deeply to get involved in its ally’s war.

Trump’s ambiguous comments add a new layer of tension to the deepening Israel-Iran clash. The president, who has campaigned for a decade in opposition to American wars in the Middle East, also faces a tense divide among his supporters over whether the U.S. should enter the fray. America has so far limited its participation to helping Israel defend itself against Iranian missile and drone launches.

Trump said he encouraged Benjamin Netanyahu in a call Tuesday to “keep going” with his offensive operations, adding that he gave the Israeli premier no indication that U.S. forces would participate in the attacks.

But the U.S. is seen as being able to provide military firepower necessary to destroy Iran’s underground enrichment facility at Fordow, which analysts say Israel is unable to do alone. Iran has warned it can hit American bases across the region, where tens of thousands of troops are stationed, if the U.S. joins the Israeli attack.

Trump didn’t close the door to a resumption of nuclear talks — he said Iran had sought a meeting, a claim Tehran disputed — but downplayed the likelihood they would bear fruit. “I said it’s very late to be talking,” the president said. “There’s a big difference between now and a week ago.”

The comments were Trump’s first substantive remarks since meeting Tuesday with his National Security Council, where the U.S.’s options were discussed. He spoke to reporters on the South Lawn of the White House, where workers were installing a giant flagpole outside the executive mansion’s diplomatic entrance. Hours earlier he’d demanded “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER” from Iran in a social media post.

Since Israel’s strikes started, Iran has fired 400 ballistic missiles and hundreds of drones at Israel, killing 24 people and injuring more than 800, according to the Israeli government. At least 224 Iranians have been killed by Israel’s attacks. Iran has hit targets including a key oil refinery in the port of Haifa that was forced to shut down.

“The Americans should know that the Iranian nation is not one to surrender,” Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a statement published on his official website Wednesday. “Any military incursion by the United States will undoubtedly result in irreparable damage.”

Out of Patience

“Good luck,” Trump said when asked for his response. “We cannot let Iran get a nuclear weapon. I’ve been saying it for a long time. I mean it more now than I ever mentioned.”

Dennis Ross, who served as President Bill Clinton’s Middle East envoy and just returned from a trip to the region, said the Iranian regime is likely looking for an off-ramp from the current conflict despite the bellicose comments from Khamenei.

Its top priority is survival, followed by avoiding a direct conflict with the U.S., said Ross, who is now a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “When they feel profoundly threatened, they will make concessions. They certainly feel vulnerable and threatened right now.”

Iran’s missile and drone launches against Israel appeared to be subsiding Wednesday evening, although the reason wasn’t immediately clear. While the Israeli army earlier said it had destroyed around one-third of Iran’s missile launchers, Tehran still possesses thousands of ballistic missiles that can reach Israel, national security adviser Tzachi Hanegbi said Monday.

Trump said the Iranian government had contacted the U.S. about the conflict and even proposed a White House meeting to settle the matter, yet he said his patience with the Islamic Republic had “already run out.” Iran’s mission to the United Nations denied that claim in an X post Wednesday, saying “No Iranian official has ever asked to grovel at the gates of the White House.”

The question of whether to strike Iran has the potential to cause domestic political headaches for Trump, whose base is split between isolationists and traditional conservative interventionists. Supporters of both political parties oppose the U.S. joining Israel’s attack on Iran by clear majorities, a YouGov survey found.

Trump said his bottom line remains that “Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon” and “it’s not a question of anything else.” During his first term, Trump withdrew from an agreement aimed at curtailing Iran’s atomic program, which the U.S. and other world powers had spent years negotiating.

Republican hawks have been supportive of military action against Iran, but Trump has faced pressure from some of his isolationist supporters to take a more measured approach. “We have all been very vocal for days now urging, ‘Let’s be America First. Let’s stay out,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said Tuesday on CNN.

During a breakfast Wednesday hosted by the Christian Science Monitor, longtime Trump ally Steve Bannon said Trump’s supporters want him to focus on issues most important to his base, like cracking down on immigration. But Bannon said that if the president has more information that backs the case for intervention “and makes that case to the American people, the MAGA movement will support President Trump.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, appearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Wednesday, declined to answer directly whether Trump had asked the Pentagon to provide options for striking Iran.

Hegseth said that “maximum force protection at all times is being maintained” for U.S. troops stationed in the region, and said that “the president has options and is informed of what those options might be, and what the ramifications of those options might be.”

The U.S. has continued building its military presence in the region. The USS Ford carrier strike group is set to depart next week on a regularly scheduled deployment, initially in the European theater, according to a U.S. official.

Meanwhile, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said the location of Iran’s near-bomb-grade stockpile of enriched uranium cannot currently be verified.

IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said Wednesday the whereabouts of the material are now unclear, given Tehran warned him the stockpile could be moved in the event of an Israeli attack. The agency continues to see no indication of significant damage to Iran’s Fordow nuclear site, he added.

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(With assistance from Skylar Woodhouse, Akayla Gardner, Courtney McBride and Eric Martin.)