Washington — Top national security officials have told President Trump the military is ready for potential strikes on Iran as soon as Saturday, but the timeline for any action is likely to extend beyond this weekend, sources familiar with the discussions told CBS News.
Mr. Trump has not yet made a final decision about whether to strike, said the officials, who spoke under condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive national matters.
The conversations have been described as fluid and ongoing, as the White House weighs the risks of escalation and the political and military consequences of restraint.
Over the next three days, the Pentagon is moving some personnel temporarily out of the Middle East region — primarily to Europe or back to the United States — ahead of potential action or counterattacks by Iran if the U.S. were to move ahead with its operation, according to multiple officials.
It’s standard practice for the Pentagon to shift assets and personnel ahead of a potential U.S. military activity and doesn’t necessarily signal an attack on Iran is imminent, one of the sources said.
Contacted by CBS News on Wednesday afternoon, a Pentagon spokesperson said they had no information to provide.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio plans to visit Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in about two weeks for further discussions, according to one of the sources.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said at a White House briefing Wednesday there are “many reasons and arguments that one could make for a strike against Iran” but diplomacy is always the president’s first option. She declined to discuss whether a potential strike would be coordinated with Israel.
Leavitt told reporters the administration had “a very successful operation in June that targeted Iran’s nuclear facilities.”
“Iran would be very wise to make a deal with President Trump and with his administration,” she said.
The USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier group and its flotilla of warships is already in the region and a second carrier group, the USS Gerald Ford, was en route to the Middle East.
As of Wednesday, the Ford was off the coast of West Africa, according to maritime vessel tracking data.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Tuesday posted an AI-generated photo of the Ford at the bottom of the ocean.
“The US President constantly says that the US has sent a warship toward Iran. Of course, a warship is a dangerous piece of military hardware,” read Khamenei’s post on X. “However, more dangerous than that warship is the weapon that can send that warship to the bottom of the sea.”
Iranian and American negotiators held mediated talks Tuesday on Iran’s nuclear program. The discussions in Geneva, Switzerland, lasted several hours.
The Trump administration said some progress has been made, but on Wednesday Leavitt said, “We’re still very far apart on some issues.”
“I believe the Iranians are expected to come back to us with some more detail in the next couple of weeks, and so the president will continue to watch how this plays out,” she said.
No date has been set for follow-up consultations.
Mr. Trump told Netanyahu during a meeting at Mar-a-Lago in December that the president would support Israeli strikes on Iran’s ballistic missile program if a deal between Washington and Tehran could not be reached, two sources said.
Iran warned pilots Wednesday to avoid the southern region of Iran on Thursday, due to rocket launches.
Last June, the U.S. joined Israel in strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities during its 12-day war with Iran, causing what intelligence suggested was severe damage to the regime’s nuclear program.
Before the war, Iran had ramped up its enrichment program in the wake of the U.S. withdrawal from the 2014 nuclear deal. It had started enriching uranium up to 60% purity, a short technical step away from weapons-grade levels, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, which said Iran was the only country in the world to enrich to that level that was not armed with a nuclear bomb.
[/gpt3]
