By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

U.S. intelligence agencies have assessed that Israel could strike Iran at any time, the two U.S. officials said. Trump, at a bill-signing ceremony, said, “I don’t want to say it’s imminent, but it looks like something that could well happen.”

Tehran has threatened to respond to an Israeli attack with counterstrikes targeting both Israel as well as U.S. forces and facilities scattered throughout the Middle East. The U.S. moved on Wednesday to shrink its presence in the region, with the State Department authorizing the evacuation of some personnel in Iraq and the Pentagon green-lighting the departure of military family members across the region.

The U.S. is committed to defending Israel, including with assistance in repelling the retaliatory attack that Iran has promised if Israel strikes first.

Trump has pinned his hopes of avoiding war on a diplomatic deal with Iran that would limit its nuclear activities in return for easing the harsh economic sanctions squeezing Iran’s economy. U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff plans to travel to Oman’s capital, Muscat, on Sunday for a sixth round of talks with Iran, a person familiar with the matter said.

Both Israel and the U.S. say that the only way to ensure Iran will never have a nuclear weapon is to dismantle or destroy its enrichment capabilities. Iran denies it is seeking such a weapon. It says it has the right, as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to enrich low-grade uranium for civilian purposes.

U.S. intelligence agencies continue to assess in recent weeks that Iran is not moving to construct an actual nuclear weapon, one of the U.S. officials said.

The prospect of a fresh military confrontation in the Middle East has alarmed MAGA advocates inside and outside of Trump’s inner circle, many of whom rallied behind the president due to his anti-war message.

“A direct strike on Iran right now would disastrously split the Trump coalition,” warned MAGA podcaster Jack Posobiec on X “Trump smartly ran against starting new wars, this is what the swing states voted for - the midterms are not far and Congress’s majority is already razor-thin. America First!”

However, advocates of military intervention, including News Corp. chairman emeritus Rupert Murdoch and former Marvel Entertainment chairman Isaac “Ike” Perlmutter, have attempted to persuade Trump to support a strike on Iran in private phone calls with the president, according to people familiar with the matter.

An F-15 jet releases a flare as it flies over Gaza, as seen from Israel. Netanyahu is deeply skeptical that the negotiations will halt the nuclear threat from Iran. He has also insisted that any new agreement with Iran eliminate its ballistic missile capabilities and support for regional proxies such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis in Yemen. That is something the United States also seeks, but so far, the U.S.-Iran talks have focused only on eliminating its nuclear enrichment program. In exchange, Iran wants all sanctions against it lifted, but the administration has said only those related to the nuclear issue would be affected.

Israel has been making extensive preparations for months for a potential strike with Iran, which would include using munitions it has received from the U.S., said two Israelis briefed on the matter. “Everything is laid out, everything is ready,” said one of the Israelis.

“Unless there’s significant progress for some kind of breakthrough on Sunday at the talks in Muscat, I think it’s very likely that we’re heading toward an Israeli strike,” said Raz Zimmt, director of the Iran program at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv. There is also a highly unlikely but small chance of Israel launching an unilateral strike before the weekend talks if Israel discovered that Iran was preparing ballistic missiles for a preemptive attack on Israel, Zimmt said.

The U.S. officials did not divulge the precise nature of the intelligence that led spy agencies to conclude that Israel could launch a strike at any time.

The fallout from an Israeli attack could pose profound dangers to U.S. military forces in the Middle East, including in Iraq, which neighbors Iran.

The State Department established a new Middle East task force on Thursday, designed to be instrumental in the event of a potential mass evacuation of American personnel from the Middle East should Israel move ahead with a military assault, said two U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

The creation of the task force is the latest indication that the Trump administration anticipates a potential major military escalation in the region that could threaten Americans. The State Department has established similar task forces for seminal geopolitical events in the past, including following the Taliban’s lightning takeover of Afghanistan in 2021, when thousands of U.S. government officials and civilians were airlifted out of the region.

Witkoff, the White House envoy, warned Republican senators last week that Iran could respond to an Israeli strike on its nuclear facilities with unprecedented force, said a congressional aide familiar with the matter.

The Witkoff warning came in the form of a closed-door meeting on Capitol Hill with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), Sen. James E. Risch (R-Idaho), and others. Witkoff said that the United States is concerned that Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities could break through Israel’s missile defense systems, resulting in significant casualties and damage to Israeli infrastructure, the aide said

Iran has also said that if attacked by Israel, it would retaliate against the United States. On Wednesday, amid increasing reports that Israel was preparing to strike, Defense Minister Brig. Gen. Aziz Nasirzadeh said that “in case of any conflict, the U.S. must leave the region, because all its bases are within … our range and we will target all of them in the host countries regardless.”

Nasirzadeh expressed hope that the negotiations would succeed. “But if it does not come to an end and a conflict is imposed on us,” he said, “the casualties of the other party will be much heavier than ours.”

Former U.S. military and intelligence officials have said that without military support from Washington, Israel could inflict significant, but limited, damage on Iran’s nuclear sites, which include the Fordow uranium enrichment plant buried deep underground. Israeli strikes might only set back Iran’s program for months, or at most a year, the officials said.

Israel is believed to have limited air-to-air refueling capability, compared to the U.S., to support its attack aircraft, which would likely have to overfly Jordan and Iraq to reach Iran.

In an attack last October, in retaliation for an Iranian ballistic missile strike on Israel, the Israeli Air Force is believed to have significantly degraded Iran’s air defenses and ballistic missile production sites. Israel and its supporters have argued that the strike has opened a finite window to attack Iran’s nuclear sites with less risk for Israeli pilots.

 

 

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