Trump takes questions from journalists several times a week – often in lengthy sessions in the Oval Office or on Air Force One – but his comments do not necessarily always translate into concrete actions, and often contradict each other.<\/p>\n
He is fond of reminding reporters that he prefers to keep his intentions to himself and a small circle of insiders to avoid potential adversaries knowing his next moves.<\/p>\n
“I’m not going to talk to you about that,” he snapped at a reporter on Thursday when asked about potential military action. “We’re going to make a deal or get a deal one way or the other.”<\/p>\n
Even if an operation is carried out, Trump has so far yet to specify what the precise military objective would be, with US officials having reportedly presented him with a wide range of options for what could be a weeks-long campaign.<\/p>\n
In the past, Trump has also used deadlines to achieve an element of surprise.<\/p>\n
At the time of Operation Midnight Hammer in July last year – which saw US forces strike Iranian nuclear facilities – White House officials were still publicly discussing the possibility of successful talks.<\/p>\n
The day before US missiles and bombs struck the facility, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt read a statement from Trump in which he said that because “negotiations may or may not take place with Iran in the near future, I will make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks”.<\/p>\n
Any strikes in the near future would come at a challenging time domestically for the Trump administration, with polls showing that a growing number of Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of immigration and the economy.<\/p>\n
Unlike the one-day strike in Iran last year and the quick operation to capture Nicol\u00e1s Maduro in January, a protracted, multi-week conflict with Iran threatens alienating parts of Trump’s Maga base which were drawn to his campaign promise of an end to messy foreign entanglements.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Trump takes questions from journalists several times a week – often in lengthy sessions in the Oval Office…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":437175,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-437174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=437174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437174\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/437175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=437174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=437174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=437174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}