{"id":310933,"date":"2026-02-26T08:16:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-26T08:16:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/310933\/"},"modified":"2026-02-26T08:16:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T08:16:09","slug":"donald-trump-advisors-would-rather-israel-strike-iran-before-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/310933\/","title":{"rendered":"Donald Trump advisors would rather Israel strike Iran before US"},"content":{"rendered":"

Senior advisors to US President Donald Trump would prefer if Israel struck Iran first, believing that such a move would provide better optics and help muster voter support for a US strike<\/a>, Politico reported on Wednesday, citing two people familiar with the discussions.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s thinking in and around the administration that the politics are a lot better if the Israelis go first and alone and the Iranians retaliate against us, and give us more reason to take action,\u201d the sources told Politico.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The motivation behind the idea centers on Iran\u2019s retaliation<\/a>, the sources claimed, as \u201cmore Americans would stomach a war with Iran if the United States or an ally were attacked first.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

According to them, the line of thought around Trump is \u201cwe\u2019re going to bomb them [Iran].\u201d<\/p>\n

However, other considerations are also being taken into account, according to the sources, including the risk of potentially depleting the US\u2019s munition stockpiles, which could give China an opening to take Taiwan. Potential American casualties are another consideration.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we\u2019re talking about a regime-change scale attack, Iran is very likely to retaliate with everything they\u2019ve got,” Politico quoted one of the sources as saying. “We have a lot of assets in the region, and every one of those is a potential target, and they\u2019re not under the Iron Dome.”<\/p>\n

“So there\u2019s a high likelihood of American casualties. And that comes with lots of political risk.\u201d<\/p>\n

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi is set to meet Trump\u2019s envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, in Geneva on Thursday<\/a> for what has been described as a \u201cdecisive\u201d meeting.<\/p>\n

The talks are expected to determine whether there is still a path to an agreement between Tehran and Washington, or whether the likelihood of a US military strike will rise significantly.<\/p>\n

International Atomic Energy Agency head Rafael Grossi and Oman’s Foreign Minister Sayyid Badr bin Hamad Al Busaidi are also expected to participate.<\/p>\n

Sources familiar with the contacts between Iran and Washington told The Jerusalem Post that while the chances of reaching an agreement are slim, the possibility cannot be ruled out.<\/p>\n

Before departing for Geneva, Araghchi<\/a> said Iran would never abandon its nuclear activities \u201cfor peaceful purposes.\u201d He also warned that if the United States attacks Iran, American bases in Arab countries would become \u201clegitimate targets.\u201d<\/p>\n

Amichai Stein contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Senior advisors to US President Donald Trump would prefer if Israel struck Iran first, believing that such a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":310934,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[50433,54,22155,42,87,39558,46,45061,43,7313,40,38,41,39,2488,1032,76279],"class_list":{"0":"post-310933","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-abbas-araghchi","9":"tag-donald-trump","10":"tag-geneva","11":"tag-headlines","12":"tag-iran","13":"tag-iron-dome","14":"tag-israel","15":"tag-jared-kushner","16":"tag-news","17":"tag-steve-witkoff","18":"tag-top-news","19":"tag-top-stories","20":"tag-topnews","21":"tag-topstories","22":"tag-trump-administration","23":"tag-united-states","24":"tag-us-iran"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=310933"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310933\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/310934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=310933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=310933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=310933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}