Sahin Demir<\/p>\n
21 July 2026\u2022Update: 21 July 2026<\/p>\n
Israeli officials believe US President Donald Trump is preparing to significantly expand an ongoing military campaign against Iran, a move they assess could trigger direct Iranian retaliation against Israel, according to local media on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The Jerusalem Post, citing two Israeli officials, said a broader US campaign could target strategic infrastructure and senior Iranian officials.<\/p>\n
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a six-hour security consultation Monday night with ministers and senior defense officials to assess the situation, the newspaper said.<\/p>\n
Netanyahu briefly left the meeting to speak with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, according to an Israeli official cited by the daily.<\/p>\n
The report said US Central Command (CENTCOM) had entered its 11th consecutive day of attacks against Iran, with a source familiar with the campaign claiming that approximately 1,000 targets had been struck over the previous 10 days.<\/p>\n
Trump said Tuesday that Iran was \u201cdesperate\u201d to hold talks and warned that Tehran had \u201cnot seen anything yet.\u201d<\/p>\n
He also said the US would strike the Pickaxe Mountain area near Iran\u2019s Natanz uranium enrichment facility in central Iran \u201cpretty soon.\u201d<\/p>\n
“Normally, I wouldn’t say that. If I thought they could do something about it, I would never say that. But we’ll be hitting that area pretty soon, and very heavily,” he added.<\/p>\n
The Israeli newspaper described the area as a heavily fortified site containing deeply buried tunnel complexes.<\/p>\n
One source told the paper that the prospects of a diplomatic solution were now \u201cvirtually nonexistent,\u201d while another official cautioned that Trump had previously changed course at the last moment and could still do so again.<\/p>\n
The US has escalated attacks against Iran since last week, with Tehran retaliating with strikes targeting facilities and bases it says are used by the US military in several regional countries.<\/p>\n
The exchange of fire between the US and Iran comes despite a Pakistan-brokered memorandum of understanding they signed in June to end their war and reach a lasting peace agreement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sahin Demir 21 July 2026\u2022Update: 21 July 2026 Israeli officials believe US President Donald Trump is preparing to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":553227,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[85,46,43,180804],"class_list":["post-553226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-news","tag-sitekeywords"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553226","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=553226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553226\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/553227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=553226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=553226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=553226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}