Trump sets deadline of two weeks to decide if US will join Israel's war on Iran
US President Donald Trump has set a two-week deadline to decide whether the US will join Israel's war with Iran, allowing time to seek a negotiated end to the conflict, the White House has said.
The decision to leave a window for diplomacy came after Israel's defence minister openly embraced regime change in Tehran as a war aim.
On a visit to a hospital hit by an Iranian missile, Israel Katz said Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 'cannot be allowed to exist' and that he had ordered a surge in attacks to 'undermine' the Iranian government.
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, later insisted that toppling Iran's leaders was 'not a stated or formal goal', as as the conflict entered its seventh day.
The White House said on Thursday that the US president would 'make a decision on whether to attack Iran within two weeks'. It added that correspondence with Tehran had continued and there was still hope of negotiations.
Trump's decision on whether to join the assault against Iran hinged in part on whether America's most powerful conventional 'bunker buster' bombs would be able to take out Iran's most heavily protected nuclear facility, sources familiar with the deliberations said.
Donald Trump seemed to leave a window open for negotiation after the Israeli defence minister openly embraced the idea of regime change in Iran. Picture: AP Photo/Evan Vucci
Israel does not have weapons capable of destroying the Fordow complex, which is buried up to 100 metres below a mountain near the holy city of Qom. Netanyahu and his allies have been encouraging the US to shift from backing Israel's defence to joining the attack, telling Trump that he alone can 'finish off' Iran's nuclear project.
Strike plans have been drawn up, but Trump is waiting to see if Tehran will make a last minute deal to abandon its nuclear programme, sources said.
Amid global warnings against further escalation, Europe is pushing for a diplomatic solution to the war. Iran's foreign minister is travelling to Geneva to meet his British, French and German counterparts on Friday. There have also been offers of mediation from the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and regional powers including Oman.
When Israel launched the conflict a week ago, Netanyahu described it as a focused operation to halt Iran's progress towards making a nuclear bomb, but he has been increasingly vocal about his desire for the government in Tehran to fall.
On a visit to the Soroka hospital in Beersheba on Thursday, after it was hit by an Iranian missile overnight, Netanyahu said Israel was creating conditions for regime change but that Iranians needed to rise up.
Referencing a story from the Bible about the Persian emperor Cyrus the Great liberating Jewish people enslaved in Babylon, Netanyahu told journalists: 'Today, a Jewish state is creating the means to liberate the Persian people.'
Netanyahu later said the fall of the Iranian regime was for the country's people to decide. 'It could be a result, but it's not a stated or formal goal that we have,' he told Israeli public broadcaster Kan.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. File Picture: Abir Sultan/Pool via AP
Iranians have repeatedly attempted to topple or reform their government over decades, and thousands have paid with their lives or freedom.
Many opposition figures, including political prisoners, have rejected the idea that an Israeli war which has already killed hundreds of civilians represents a path to liberation for their country.
They have a grim warning in the fate of neighbouring Iraq after US forces toppled Saddam Hussein. His downfall was celebrated by many Iraqis, but was followed by decades of extreme and often sectarian violence which paved the way for the rise of Islamic State.
The aftermath of an Iranian missile strike on Soroka hospital in southern Israel. The defence minister, Israel Katz, made his comments on a visit to the site. Picture: AP Photo/Leo Correa)
Katz visited Soroka hospital before Netanyahu and effectively called for Khamenei's assassination. He had earlier said he ordered increased attacks on government targets to undermine the regime.
'Khamenei openly declares that he wants Israel destroyed, he personally gives the order to fire on hospitals. He considers the destruction of the state of Israel to be a goal,' Katz told journalists. 'Such a man can no longer be allowed to exist.'
After its initial focus on military and nuclear sites, Israel recently attacked targets, including the state broadcaster, with no links to the nuclear project, but which Katz described as 'symbols of the regime'.
Iran's early morning hit on Soroka hospital in Beersheba did not cause any serious injuries because all staff and patients were in protected areas, the director, Shlomi Kodesh, said.
But images of shattered wards and stunned medics examining the damage caused outrage in Israel.
Other missiles landed around Tel Aviv, injuring more than 200 people across the country as a whole, four of them seriously.
One hit the base of a skyscraper in Ramat Gan, close to central Tel Aviv and about 200 metres from the city's diamond exchange.
'It was like an atom bomb. An earthquake,' said Asher Adiv, 69, who lives in a nearby block of flats. His mother was an Iranian Jew from Isfahan and Asher grew up speaking Farsi.
'The Iranian people should make a revolution, and kick out the ayatollahs,' he said. 'We are not just fighting for Israel. We are fighting for the whole world. We ask Trump to go inside and finish the problem.'
Trump, who initially distanced himself from the conflict, has increased the US military presence in the region as he weighs up ordering US forces to join attacks on Iran.
Damage to the Weizmann Institute of Science from an Iranian missile strike in Rehovot, Thursday, June 19, 2025. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)
Khamenei warned on Wednesday that the US would face 'irreparable damage' if it shifted from supporting Israel's defence to an active role in assaults on its territory.
Iran's military has moved missiles to prepare for attacks on US assets if it joins the war, and officials are considering other options to respond to one of the most serious threats since the 1979 revolution that brought the country under the control of clerics.
Several countries are preparing to evacuate their citizens from Iran and Israel, while flights to bring back tens of thousands of Israelis stranded outside the country get under way. Israel's main airport has been closed since the first attacks on Iran.
- The Guardian
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Irish Examiner
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- Irish Examiner
Donald Trump is 'all in' with Benjamin Netanyahu's illegal war on Iran
The unfolding conflict between Israel and Iran is both far more complex and far simpler to understand than much of the reporting to date suggests. Far from a defensive necessity for Israel against an alleged nuclear threat, this escalation appears to be a calculated gamble born of Benjamin Netanyahu's long-held strategic ambitions and the alarming absence of a coherent strategy from the Trump administration, with Iran's nuclear program serving merely as a convenient — and increasingly threadbare — pretext for regime change in Tehran. For years, the international community, including the United States, painstakingly constructed a robust diplomatic framework to ensure the peaceful nature of Iran's nuclear programme. The 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), an agreement between Iran and the P5+1 nations, established an unprecedentedly stringent surveillance and inspection regime, significantly curtailing Iran's nuclear activities. In return, some of the UN-backed sanctions against Iran were lifted or suspended. An Israeli strike hits an oil storage facility in Tehran on Saturday. The assault on Iran is just the latest episode in an alarming pattern of escalating criminal behaviour on the part of Tel Aviv. File photo: AP/Vahid Salemi In 2018, however, bowing to intense pressure from Benjamin Netanyahu, then-president Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew the US from the JCPOA. Netanyahu had always been the most vocal critic of the agreement, advocating for military action even as US officials acknowledged that Iran's compliance, as well as a limit to uranium enrichment of just 3%, made the delivery of a nuclear weapon virtually impossible for decades. Notably, Tulsi Gabbard, US director of national intelligence testified in March 2025 that the intelligence community found no evidence of Iran building a nuclear weapon. More definitively, the director general of the IAEA on 18 June 18, 2025, clearly stated "we did not have any proof of a systematic effort [on Iran's part] to move into a nuclear weapon". Thus the "threat" seems, in large part, to be a manufactured crisis. Regime change Israel's surprise attack on Iran occurred just two days before scheduled Iran-US talks that Iran viewed positively and were progressing smoothly (according to officials on both sides). This strongly suggests that these talks were a mere smokescreen, a deceptive cover for an attack that, according to Trump, the US had been aware of for months. While Iran's nuclear programme serves as Israel's public justification for pursuing the war, the true objective appears to be the destabilization of Iran, a clear intention to topple the government and turn the country into a failed state, akin to the tragedies witnessed in Libya and Syria, where central governments can no longer maintain territorial integrity. The echoes of 2003 when the United States and its allies attacked Iraq are eerie: the insistence that Iran is developing alleged 'weapons of mass destruction', disguising the real goal of the operation which is regime change in Tehran. The campaign to overthrow Saddam Hussein created utter chaos in Iraq and resulted in the deaths of probably a million Iraqis, the displacement of millions, and 4,800 American and coalition deaths, As was the case in Iraq, it seems abundantly clear that Netanyahu and Trump have no plan for what happens if/after the Iranian regime is defenestrated. This intervention, if successful in toppling the Iranian government, carries the terrifying prospect of a prolonged civil war. Iran's diverse regional groups, including militias from Azerbaijan, Iraqi Kurdistan, Turkey, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, could exploit the power vacuum, leading to a scramble for territory and an even wider regional conflagration. Consequences Furthermore, two other dangerous consequences are likely to emerge. Firstly, Iran may conclude that a nuclear weapon is its only true deterrent against such aggression, leading it to abandon all diplomatic efforts to restrict its nuclear program. Secondly, Iran will almost certainly target US allies and interests in the region. This could involve strikes on oil production and refinery infrastructure in the Persian Gulf countries and Saudi Arabia and could block the Strait of Hormuz. Given that roughly 20-25% of global oil exports pass through the strait daily, this will have significant implications for global energy security. The erratic behaviour of the US president is evident in Trump's fluctuating positions throughout this war — from urgent calls for peace, to presenting a final offer to Iran that never materialized, to urging Tehran residents to evacuate, denying involvement in attacks, threatening to assassinate Iran's supreme leader, and finally demanding 'unconditional surrender'. Rogue state Forget these lurching statements about Iran: there is a good case for arguing that they are performative and that Trump is all in as Netanyahu's partner in crime. Trump's American version of authoritarianism neatly dovetails with Benjamin Netanyahu's model: lawlessness and loutishness define them. Violence is their operational creed. Israel is a rogue state now completely out of control. The assault on Iran is just the latest episode in an alarming pattern of escalating criminal behaviour on the part of Tel Aviv, from the repeated and decades-long flouting of UN resolutions, to the ramped up building of illegal settlements and outrageous settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, the murder of large numbers of UN officials and journalists, and cross-border attacks on Lebanon and Syria. Already it is evident that, far from protecting civilians via 'precision strikes' against Iranian regime figures, the casualty list includes at least 250 civilians, including more than 20 children, echoing the approach the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) has taken in Gaza. Gaza has become not just an Israeli concentration camp but a death camp, where Palestinians are corralled, starved and murdered by Israeli forces every day of the week. 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The protracted silence of the European Union as Israel carried out the mass slaughter of more than 50,000 Palestinian civilians in Gaza has provided Tel Aviv with confidence that there would be minimal pushback if it went ahead with its large-scale attack on Iran. Photo: Said Khatib/AFP via Getty Images An outstanding example of this phenomenon can be seen in the protracted silence of the European Union, as Israel carried out the mass slaughter of more than 50,000 Palestinian civilians in Gaza. This provided Tel Aviv with confidence that there would be minimal pushback if it went ahead with its large-scale attack on Iran. The attack on Iran is a dangerous manifestation of Netanyahu's expansive regional ambitions, supported by a US administration seemingly devoid of a cohesive strategy. The consequences, both for Iran and the wider world, could be devastating, far outweighing any purported security gains for Israel and the United States. 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3 hours ago
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The deadline to save the mission is ten weeks from now, when the UN will vote on whether to renew the mandate for UNIFIL. The UNIFIL mission (United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon) began in 1978 to maintain peace and security on the border between Lebanon and Israel after a period of increased tension between the two countries. Irish troops are part of a massive international presence of 10,500 troops from 50 countries to monitor both sides of the border. A total of 48 Irish soldiers have been killed there on active service. Their deaths were caused in action, in accidents, and in kidnappings by Israeli forces, Hezbollah, AMAL, and local militias aligned to Israel or to Lebanese factions. The Journal has confirmed that US officials, led by envoy Tom Barrack, have been in Lebanon and Israel to assess the effectiveness or not of the UNIFIL mission. In a move that is consistent with previous missions by the US, Barrack has no background in diplomacy; he is a real estate investor. 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It is understood that no immediate plans are in place for this. The Defence Forces and the government are awaiting the outcome of the vote in August. The Irish Defence Forces logisticians have carried out this operation before in the 2000s when the Irish temporarily withdrew from Lebanon and they recently successfully moved massive amounts of equipment and vehicles home to Ireland from their Syria mission . Camp Shamrock where the Irish are based with troops from Ghana and Poland. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo Israeli strategic goal Sources said that the strategic goal for Israel is to make northern Israel free from the threat of rocket fire as well as other major cities inside the Jewish State. This is the justification for the previous invasions. The main body of Israeli troops have withdrawn back across the Blue Line but, within the Irish area of operations, south of the towns of Bint Jbeil and At Tiri, the IDF maintains one of a number of forward operating bases. Overflights by Israeli drones and aircraft are being monitored by a massive French radar station in the area with an Irish and LAF patrol fired upon recently by Israeli forces as well as a number of other incident. Hezbollah militants have also been seeking to intimidate UN troops. The powder keg atmosphere in the Levant will continue but sources said the Irish government remains hopeful that a compromise can be found to soothe the tensions in the UN assembly and for the mission to continue. Readers like you are keeping these stories free for everyone... A mix of advertising and supporting contributions helps keep paywalls away from valuable information like this article. Over 5,000 readers like you have already stepped up and support us with a monthly payment or a once-off donation. Learn More Support The Journal
