Inside Trump’s decision to attack Iran: ‘a window of opportunity’

Donald Trump 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’s leaders and mullahs, according to two people familiar with deliberations.The Israelis had been tracking the movements of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, and determined there was a window of opportunity to launch attacks as they convened, the people said.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.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 “there were several gatherings that morning, and they targeted all of them.”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 that Khamenei had been killed.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.The attacks were decried by Oman’s foreign minister who had helped broker talks. “I 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,” Badr Albusaidi said in a post on X.The strikes followed a week of rapid developments and hinged in part on whether Trump’s special envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, concluded Iran was stalling when they met for talks at the residence of Oman’s ambassador in Geneva, as the Guardian first reported.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’s bombing campaign last year, and deliver its remaining stockpile to the US.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.But Witkoff and Kushner ended the day disappointed. And on Friday, 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.Donald Trump arrives in Palm Beach on 27 February. Photograph: Matt Rourke/APSenior US officials said on Saturday that Trump weighed a number of factors for strikes. One official said the main rationale was Iran’s arsenal of conventional missiles, which they said posed an “intolerable threat” to the US that Iran refused to address.“They refused, at every instance, and consistently have refused to address ballistic missiles,” said the official. “They will not even talk about it. They won’t talk about it with us. They won’t talk about it with our regional partners. They will not talk about those missiles at all.”Another official said the US was suspicious of Iran’s claim their nuclear enrichment was for peaceful purposes. The US offered free nuclear fuel “forever”, but that was rejected by Iran. The official said that was a “big tell” to negotiators.The US also developed intelligence that Iran was rebuilding its enrichment sites that were destroyed in Trump’s Operation Midnight Hammer last year, the official said. The US believed Iran was stockpiling partially enriched uranium and ultimately did not want a deal.“The 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,” the official said. “We are not going to be held hostage by them, and we are not going to let them hit us first.”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 “USA” baseball cap he was shown wearing in his taped address announcing the start of the Iran operation.