Both Trump and Netanyahu knew from intelligence briefings earlier in the week that Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his top aides would soon meet at his compound in Tehran, making them vulnerable to a “decapitation strike,” an attack targeting a country’s top leaders, often used by Israel but rarely by the United States, Reuters reported.
New intelligence indicated that the meeting had been moved forward from Saturday morning to Saturday night, according to three people briefed on the call.
Netanyahu, determined to push forward an operation he had advocated for decades, argued that there might never be a better chance to target Khamenei, Reuters added.
By the time of the call, Trump had already approved the idea of US involvement in a war against Iran but had not yet decided when or under what circumstances the US would get involved, the sources said.
The US military had spent weeks building up its presence in the region, leading many within the administration to conclude that it was only a matter of when Trump would act, despite ongoing talks between Washington and Tehran with Omani mediation. One planned date had been postponed a few days earlier due to bad weather.
Reuters could not determine how Netanyahu’s arguments influenced Trump, but the call amounted to Israel’s closing appeal. The three sources briefed on the call said they believed it, along with intelligence showing a narrow window to kill Iran's leader, helped trigger Trump’s decision to order a war on 27 February as part of Operation Epic Fury.
Netanyahu argued that Trump could make history by removing a leadership long reviled by the West and by many Iranians. He suggested that Iranians might even take to the streets, potentially overthrowing the theocratic system that had governed the country since 1979, according to Reuters.
The first bombs struck on Saturday morning, 28 February. Trump announced that evening that Khamenei had been killed.
At a news conference on Thursday, Netanyahu dismissed as “fake news” claims that Israel had pressured the US into war, saying, “Does anyone really think that someone can tell President Trump what to do? Come on.” Trump has publicly stated that the decision to strike was his alone.
Reuters reporting does not suggest that Netanyahu forced Trump to go to war, but it shows that he was a persuasive advocate. His framing of the decision, including the opportunity to target an Iranian leader who allegedly had overseen plots against Trump, was influential.
The June war
Trump ran his 2024 campaign based on his first administration’s “America First” policy and publicly said he wanted to avoid war with Iran, preferring diplomatic solutions.
As discussions over Iran’s nuclear programme failed last spring, Trump began considering military action, according to the three sources familiar with White House deliberations.
The first attack came in June, when Israel bombed Iran, killing several leaders. US forces later joined, and the joint operation lasted 12 days. Trump publicly praised the outcome, saying the US had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Months later, US and Israeli officials discussed a second operation. Israel still wanted to target Khamenei and began planning under the assumption they would act alone, Defence Minister Israel Katz told Israel’s N12 News on 5 March.
During a December visit to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, Netanyahu expressed dissatisfaction with the June operation’s outcome. Trump signalled he was open to another campaign but also wanted to explore diplomacy, said two people familiar with the relationship between the two leaders.
Two events pushed Trump toward a renewed strike on Iran, according to several US and Israeli officials and diplomats. The 3 January US operation to capture Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro in Caracas, which succeeded without US casualties, demonstrated that ambitious military operations could be low-risk.
Later that month, massive anti-government protests erupted in Iran, and Trump pledged to support protesters, though no immediate action was publicly taken.
Privately, US and Israeli military cooperation intensified, with joint planning conducted by the Israeli military and CENTCOM, the US military’s Middle East command, according to two Israeli officials, Reuters stated.
During a February visit to Washington, Netanyahu briefed Trump on Iran’s ballistic missile programme, emphasizing threats and highlighting sites to justify further US-Israeli attacks. Sources familiar with the private discussions said Netanyahu framed Iran as capable of striking the US, though current missiles cannot reach the homeland.
Decision to strike
By late February, US officials and regional diplomats considered a US attack on Iran very likely, though details remained uncertain, according to two other US officials, one Israeli official, and two additional officials familiar with the matter. Pentagon and intelligence officials briefed Trump on potential advantages to be gained by the attack, including the destruction of Iran’s missile programme.
Before the Netanyahu call, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told a small group of Congressional leaders on 24 February that Israel might attack Iran regardless of US participation, likely prompting Iranian retaliation against US targets, according to three people briefed on the meeting.
Behind Rubio's warning was an assessment by American intelligence officials that such an attack would indeed provoke counterstrikes from Iran against US diplomatic and military outposts and US Gulf allies.
Trump had also been told that eliminating Iran’s top leaders might lead to a government more willing to negotiate with Washington, said two other people familiar with Rubio's briefing.
The possibility of regime change was one of Netanyahu's arguments in the call shortly before Trump gave final orders to attack Iran, said the people briefed on it.
This view was not held by the Central Intelligence Agency, which had assessed in the weeks leading up to the attack that Khamenei would likely be replaced by a hardliner if he were killed.
Trump has repeatedly called for an uprising after Khamenei was assassinated. With the war in its fourth week and the region engulfed in conflict, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards still patrol the streets. Millions of Iranians remain sheltered in their homes, with no sign of the uprising he had predicted.
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