Trump was lured into war with Iran by tantalizing tidbit in secret phone call: report
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called President Donald Trump last week with a tantalizing tidbit that has since blown up into a major war operation.
Three sources tipped off Axios to the Feb. 23 call, which Trump took in the White House Situation Room and had not been previously reported, and said that Netanyahu told the president that Iran's supreme leader and his top advisers were all set to meet Saturday morning at one location in Tehran – giving U.S. and Israeli forces an opportunity to kill them all in a single strike.
"It answers the question that lawmakers, MAGA skeptics and world leaders have all been asking since Saturday: why now?" Axios reported. "The answer: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his inner circle were irresistible targets of opportunity that neither Trump nor Netanyahu wanted to pass up."
Trump was already leaning toward a military strike, but he decided on the timing after Netanyahu's call, which came after months of close coordination – including 15 phone calls in two months – between the two leaders.
"The U.S. and Israel had considered striking a week earlier than Saturday, but postponed for intelligence and operational reasons, including bad weather," Axios reported. "An initial CIA check, conducted at Trump's direction, confirmed the information about Khamenei gathered by Israeli military intelligence."
Trump told Netanyahu he'd consider a strike, but he and U.S. officials deliberately downplayed talk about Iran in his State of the Union address the following night, saying they did not want the Iranian leaders to change their plans, and the CIA confirmed by Thursday the Tehran gathering for Saturday morning.
"That same day, Trump's envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff called from Geneva after hours of talks with Iranian officials and delivered a blunt verdict: negotiations were going nowhere," Axios reported. "Trump was now convinced of two things: the intelligence was solid, and diplomacy was dead. On Friday at 3:38 p.m. EST, he gave the final order."