{"id":451431,"date":"2026-03-01T04:54:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-01T04:54:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/451431\/"},"modified":"2026-03-01T04:54:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-01T04:54:07","slug":"inside-trumps-decision-to-attack-iran-a-window-of-opportunity-trump-administration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/451431\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside Trump\u2019s decision to attack Iran: \u2018a window of opportunity\u2019 | Trump administration"},"content":{"rendered":"

Donald Trump<\/a> launched attacks against Iran on Saturday as part of a joint operation with Israel after they developed intelligence that they could simultaneously target the country\u2019s leaders and mullahs, according to two people familiar with deliberations.<\/p>\n

The Israelis had been tracking the movements of Iran\u2019s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, and determined there was a window of opportunity to launch attacks as they convened, the people said.<\/p>\n

The thinking behind decapitating the Iranian regime was a belief that while the Iranian revolutionary guard might be deeply loyal to Khamenei, in the event of his death they would not back any of his successors to the same extent, the people said.<\/p>\n

The two people spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive details of an ongoing operation. Another person briefed on Israeli military preparations for the operation added that \u201cthere were several gatherings that morning, and they targeted all of them.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Saturday afternoon, a US official confirmed that the US believed Khamenei and five to 10 top Iranian leaders had been killed in an Israeli strike on a compound in Tehran. Trump later posted on Truth Social<\/a> that Khamenei had been killed. His death was later confirmed by state media in Iran.<\/p>\n

Trump did not give a reason for why the US had launched attacks when he announced the start of what could be a days-long operation in a video Saturday, but the opportunity to target Khamenei accelerated the timeline for strikes, the people said.<\/p>\n

The attacks were decried by Oman\u2019s foreign minister who had helped broker talks. \u201cI am dismayed. Active and serious negotiations have yet again been undermined. Neither the interests of the United States nor the cause of global peace are well served by this,\u201d Badr Albusaidi said in a post<\/a> on X.<\/p>\n

The strikes followed a week of rapid developments and hinged in part on whether Trump\u2019s special envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, concluded Iran was stalling when they met for talks at the residence of Oman\u2019s ambassador in Geneva, as the Guardian first reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In talks that lasted all day Thursday, Witkoff and Kushner pushed Iran to agree to destroy its three main nuclear enrichment sites at Fordow, Isfahan and Natanz, which were the targets of Trump\u2019s bombing campaign last year, and deliver its remaining stockpile to the US.<\/p>\n

They also insisted that any deal must be forever, without the sunset provisions that phased out restrictions in the 2015 accord negotiated with the Obama administration. Trump withdrew from that agreement, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, during his first term.<\/p>\n

But Witkoff and Kushner ended the day disappointed. And later, Trump was briefed on his military options by Gen Dan Caine, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, and US navy Adm Brad Cooper, the commander of US Central Command, who has been more bullish on the success of strikes.<\/p>\n

Donald Trump arrives in Palm Beach on 27 February. Photograph: Matt Rourke\/AP<\/p>\n

Senior US officials said on Saturday that Trump weighed a number of factors for strikes. One official said the main rationale was Iran\u2019s arsenal of conventional missiles, which they said posed an \u201cintolerable threat\u201d to the US that Iran refused to address.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey refused, at every instance, and consistently have refused to address ballistic missiles,\u201d said the official. \u201cThey will not even talk about it. They won\u2019t talk about it with us. They won\u2019t talk about it with our regional partners. They will not talk about those missiles at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another official said the US was suspicious of Iran\u2019s claim their nuclear enrichment was for peaceful purposes. The US offered free nuclear fuel \u201cforever\u201d, but that was rejected by Iran. The official said that was a \u201cbig tell\u201d to negotiators.<\/p>\n

The US also developed intelligence that Iran was rebuilding its enrichment sites that were destroyed in Trump\u2019s Operation Midnight Hammer last year, the official said. The US believed Iran was stockpiling partially enriched uranium and ultimately did not want a deal.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe President, frankly, had no choice. We cannot continue to live in a world where these people not only possess missiles but the ability to make 100 of them a month in perpetuity,\u201d the official said. \u201cWe are not going to be held hostage by them, and we are not going to let them hit us first.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump traveled to his Mar-a-Lago club on Friday, and was seen emerging from Air Force One already wearing what appeared to be the same white \u201cUSA\u201d baseball cap he was shown wearing in his taped address announcing the start of the Iran operation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Donald Trump launched attacks against Iran on Saturday as part of a joint operation with Israel after they…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":451432,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-451431","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\/451431","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=451431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451431\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/451432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=451431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=451431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=451431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}