President Donald Trump has continued to offer mixed signals about whether the United States would directly intervene in the ongoing conflict between Israel and Iran, which has seen six days of intense bombing.
The Republican leader began his Wednesday on the White House lawn, where he installed two giant flagpoles, each 88 feet — or 27 metres — high.
During that appearance, however, he was confronted with the question looming over the Middle East conflict: Would the US join Israel in striking Iran’s nuclear facilities?
“You don’t know that I’m going to even do it,” Trump told one reporter. “I may do it. I may not do it. Nobody knows what I’m going to do. I can tell you this: Iran’s got a lot of trouble, and they want to negotiate.”
Later, as he posed for photographs in the Oval Office with the Juventus football club, Trump once again signalled he had not made up his mind — and was unlikely to do so until the last possible moment.
“ I have ideas as to what to do, but I haven’t made a final [call],” Trump said.
“I like to make a final decision one second before it’s due, you know? Because things change, especially with war. Things change with war. It can go from one extreme to the other.”
That ambiguity over whether the US may enter the fray has fed uncertainty within the conflict — and led to controversy on the domestic front for Trump.
Military to ‘stand ready’
Some Republicans and Democrats have introduced legislation to limit Trump’s ability to engage in the fighting between Iran and Israel. Meanwhile, conservative commentator Tucker Carlson has published a video interview he recorded with right-wing Senator Ted Cruz, where the two Trump supporters sparred over whether the US should push for regime change in Iran.
Trump himself was asked to weigh in on their debate on Wednesday from the Oval Office. The president signalled that he was sympathetic to Carlson’s desire to keep the US out of a costly foreign conflict — but with a caveat.
“I don’t want to fight either. I’m not looking to fight,” Trump said. “But if it’s a situation between fighting and them having a nuclear weapon, you have to do what you have to do. Maybe we won’t have to fight. Don’t forget: We haven’t been fighting.”
The Trump administration has described Israel’s initial strike on June 13 as a “unilateral action”. But the president himself has signalled that he knew of the attack in advance and supported Israel’s military campaign.
In testimony to Congress, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told lawmakers that the US military would be ready if called upon.
“President Trump’s word means something. The world understands that,” Hegseth said. “And at the Defense Department, our job is to stand ready and prepared with options. And that’s precisely what we’re doing.”
Speculation about nuclear capabilities
The current conflict, Trump has repeatedly argued, would have never begun if Iran had agreed to US terms for limiting its nuclear programme. US officials had been meeting with their Iranian counterparts since April to talk about limiting Iran’s enrichment of uranium, a necessary step for building a nuclear weapon.
But Iran has long denied any ambitions of building a nuclear arsenal and has instead maintained that its uranium is used for civilian energy purposes only.
Still, Trump tied the ongoing conflict with Israel to the fear that Iran had gotten close to building a bomb. He warned that, if Iran had a nuclear weapon, “the entire world will blow up”.
“I’ve been saying for 20 years, maybe longer, that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. I’ve been saying it for a long time, and I think they were a few weeks away from having one,” Trump said on Wednesday.
In March, however, Trump’s director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, testified before Congress that the US intelligence community had assessed “Iran is not building a nuclear weapon”. She has since walked back that comment, calling her position in line with the president’s.
Critics have warned that Trump may be building the case for US involvement in the conflict between Israel and Iran by highlighting the risk of Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities.
Israel too has pointed to the possibility of an Iranian nuclear weapon as its rationale for launching the first strike. A US ally, Israel is widely believed to have its own undisclosed nuclear arsenal.
Stalled negotiations
Negotiations with the US, however, came to a standstill after Israel’s June 13 strike, which spiralled into a heated exchange of missile fire. A scheduled meeting over the weekend was cancelled, and some of Iran’s representatives in the nuclear talks were killed in the initial blasts, as were military leaders and scientists.
Trump bemoaned the failure of those talks again on Wednesday, blaming Iran for failing to comply with a 60-day deadline he set in April.
“Why didn’t you negotiate with me before all this death and destruction?” Trump asked. “I said to people: Why didn’t you negotiate with me two weeks ago? You could have done fine. You would’ve had a country. It’s very sad to watch this.”
He confirmed that Iranian officials had reached out to him for a White House meeting since the outbreak of the recent conflict.
“I said it’s very late to be talking,” Trump told reporters, relaying his reply. “ There’s a big difference between now and a week ago.”
Trump’s own words in recent days have fuelled fears that the conflict could escalate into a regional war. Just a day prior, on Tuesday, Trump publicly mused that he could kill Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and called for the country’s “unconditional surrender”.
Iran has since responded to Trump’s remarks. In an interview with CNN host Christiane Amanpour, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Majid Takht-Ravanchi dismissed reports that his officials were trying to get negotiations with the US back on track.
“We are not reaching out to anybody. We are defending ourselves,” Takht-Ravanchi said. “We can negotiate under the threats. We cannot negotiate while our people are under bombardment every day. So we are not begging for anything.”
“If the Americans get involved directly, definitely our hands will not be tied. We will do whatever is necessary to protect our people and our interests.”
Khamenei himself said US involvement in the conflict would have “serious irreparable consequences” and denounced Trump’s threats.
Repeated calls for ‘unconditional surrender’
Trump himself on Wednesday offered different interpretations of how he saw the conflict ending, the first coming in his appearance on the White House lawn, where he repeated his call for “unconditional surrender”.
“Unconditional surrender: That means I’ve had it. OK? I’ve had it. I give up. No more. Then we go blow up all the nuclear stuff that’s all over the place there,” Trump said, again blaming Iran for the fighting.
“They had bad intentions. For 40 years, they’ve been saying: Death to America! Death to Israel! Death to anybody else that they didn’t like. They were bullies. They were schoolyard bullies, and now they’re not bullies any more.”
Later, in the Oval Office, Trump indicated the conflict could be resolved simply by assuring Iran did not get its hands on a nuclear weapon.
“We’re not looking for ceasefire. We’re looking for a total complete victory. You know what the victory is? No nuclear weapon.”
He warned that the upcoming week would “be very big” — though he shared no details about what that meant for the future of the conflict.
The death toll in Iran has reportedly risen to 240 people, including 70 women and children.
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