President Donald Trump says he will decide “within the next two weeks” whether to join Israel’s air war against Iran—an elastic deadline he has used in past crises but, this time, one announced as US forces quietly empty forward bases and load hospital pallets.
Within 48 hours of that pledge, every unsheltered US aircraft left Qatar’s Al Udeid Air Base and Navy ships slipped out of Bahrain; CENTCOM also pre-positioned extra blood supplies around the Gulf, a precaution normally taken only when hostile fire is judged highly likely.
The White House is framing the rush as deterrence: press secretary Karoline Leavitt warned that Iran now has “all it needs” to build a bomb in “a couple of weeks” once Ayatollah Ali Khamenei gives the order.
Israel is shortening that clock by other means. The Jewish Chronicle reports Mossad lured Iran’s entire IRGC Aerospace leadership into a bunker outside Tehran with a spoofed “emergency call,” then destroyed the site in a precision strike, severing Iran’s missile command.
Washington’s own target set now extends to the deeply buried Fordow enrichment plant. The Financial Times says advisers have floated B-2 strikes, while Fox News sources claim tactical nuclear weapons have not been ruled out.
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Fox cited the report by The Guardian which referenced that the US military has “doubts whether the bunker-buster bombs [will] get the job done,” and “only a tactical nuke may finish it.” The report further claimed that Trump wasn’t considering the tactical nuke as it was not an option presented to him. Fox says its sources belie these reports: bunker-buster bombs could get the job done and that “nothing is off the table.”
However, defense analysts note even America’s heaviest bunker-busters may not breach Fordow’s granite shell without multiple waves and significant risk to aircrews.
Trump insists he is reacting to Iranian threats on his own life: the Justice Department unsealed murder-for-hire charges against an IRGC asset last November, and the president told reporters he has directed aides to “obliterate” Iran if an assassination succeeds. Yet in the same breath he boasts that Khamenei is “an easy target… but safe there—at least for now,” effectively mirroring the very language he condemns.
Tehran, for its part, vows any US strike will bring “irreparable consequences.”
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