Renewed hostilities might not be any more successful than the war’s first phase, and President Trump has repeatedly canceled plans for a return to major combat.
The yearslong effort to groom the former Iranian president as an intelligence asset culminated in a dramatic effort to take him to a Mossad safe house in Iran in the early days of the war. But the plan fell apart.
Multiple officials said that the president told Israel’s leader that the United States and Iran were within days of a breakthrough that would clear the way for talks on a long-term nuclear deal.
His changes to the proposed deal were potentially designed to speed up the process by putting pressure on Iran to accept the current framework, one official said.
An Israeli strike designed to free Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from house arrest in Tehran, U.S. officials said, was part of an effort to bring about regime change and put him in power.
An Air Force officer of a F-15E Strike Eagle shot down on Friday by Iran spent a day in hostile territory with little more than a pistol for protection.
President Trump’s hopes that an Israeli plan to ignite an internal uprising against Iran’s theocratic government could bring the war to a swift end have so far been dashed.
The aftermath of U.S.-Israeli airstrikes in Tehran on Saturday. Three weeks into the war, American and Israeli intelligence assessments have concluded that the theocratic Iranian government is weakened but intact.
As the conflict with Iran expands and intensifies, President Trump’s options — to fight on, or to move toward declaring victory and pulling back — both carry deeply problematic consequences.
President Trump has wrestled publicly with his stay-or-leave options, sometimes suggesting that the war is all but won and at others seeming to acknowledge that there is still heavy fighting ahead.
The U.S. and Israel have pounded Iran’s leadership and undercut its defense capabilities, but President Trump has offered wildly different explanations for what he hopes to achieve.
President Trump’s embrace of military action in Iran was spurred by an Israeli leader determined to end diplomatic negotiations. Few of the president’s advisers voiced opposition.
The killing of Iran’s supreme leader and other top Iranian officials came after close intelligence sharing between the United States and Israel, according to people familiar with the operation.
There is little sign that Iran has made significant progress in reconstituting its nuclear program, leaving questions about the timing and motive behind potential plans for further attacks.
Little has happened in the past six months to indicate that Iran has made significant strides toward rebuilding its capacity to enrich nuclear fuel and fashion a nuclear warhead.