United States President Donald Trump will decide Washington’s course of action in relation to the Israel-Iran conflict in two weeks’ time, the White House said on Thursday.
Speculation has been rising this week that the US could decide to assist its longstanding ally, Israel, in strikes against Iran, which it claims are designed to neutralise Iran’s nuclear programme. In particular, Israel wants the US to provide “bunker buster” bombs, which may be able to penetrate deep within the mountain in northwest Iran, where the Fordow nuclear facility is located.
This comes after a week of Trump shifting his position on the conflict.
Here is what we know:
What has Trump said about potential US action in Iran?
On Thursday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt shared what she described as a direct quote from the US president with reporters: “Based on the fact that there’s a substantial chance of negotiations that may or may not take place with Iran in the near future, I will make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks.”
How has Trump changed his position on the Iran-Israel conflict?
When Israel first attacked Iran late on June 13, the Trump administration clearly stated that it had not been involved, calling Israel’s attack “unilateral action”. It has become clear since then, however, that the US did have knowledge of the attacks in advance.
Trump also said he believed Iran was “very close” to having a nuclear weapon during the Group of Seven (G7) summit in Canada this week, contradicting his own US intelligence reports. This marked a shift from his position in May, when he made public statements that Tehran and Washington were close to a nuclear deal.
On Wednesday, Trump refused to say whether the US would join the conflict.
“I may do it. I may not do it. I mean, nobody knows what I’m going to do,” he told reporters outside the White House.
Finally, on Thursday, Trump appeared to give a two-week deadline for talks with Iran to succeed before the US would take action.
Does this mean Trump has delayed a US attack on Iran for two weeks?
No. It also does not necessarily mean the US will attack Iran at all. Leavitt remained ambiguous on what could happen after two weeks.
The press secretary said: “The president is always interested in a diplomatic solution … he is a peacemaker-in-chief. He is the peace-through-strength president. And so, if there’s a chance for diplomacy, the president’s always going to grab it. But he’s not afraid to use strength as well.”
But Mona Yacoubian, senior adviser and director of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), said that while two weeks would give time for more negotiations with Iran, it would also provide the US with time to “flow in additional forces should it decide to join Israel in the conflict”.
For now, it is impossible to say which of these two possibilities is more likely – or if the “two weeks” mentioned by Trump is even a deadline at all.
“I don’t even know if President Trump knows what he wants,” Iranian American analyst Negar Mortazavi told Al Jazeera.
“He campaigned as the president of peace … he promised he’s going to end conflicts. Russia-Ukraine hasn’t ended. Gaza has escalated, and he just let the third big Middle East war, which looks like a regime-change war, start under his watch. So, he says one thing. He does another.”
Others believe Trump’s “two weeks” comment is a negotiation tactic to apply pressure on Iran during talks.
Jamal Abdi, president of the National Iranian American Council, told Al Jazeera that Trump could be attempting to build leverage with threats to strong-arm Iran into accepting his demands of “total surrender”.
“I think he’s trying to present himself as this madman who is unpredictable, and in so doing, he can then insist on this very hard line that Iran has refused to accept for decades of full dismantlement of its [nuclear] enrichment programme,” Abdi told Al Jazeera.
“The delay certainly could be part of a broader negotiating strategy which exploits Iran’s weakened position as a result of wide-ranging military strikes to extract more substantial concessions from Iran on the nuclear issue and potentially on other points of contention as well, for example its ballistic missiles programme,” Yacoubian said.
”It’s extremely difficult to predict what will happen next,” she added. “President Trump’s idiosyncratic negotiating strategy alongside his instinctual, ‘from-the-gut’ decision-making approach underscores the unpredictability of the coming days – which may well be the point!”
Has Trump declared deadlines before, and has he stuck to them?
In the past, Trump has assigned similar timelines relating to Iran’s nuclear programme, the Russia-Ukraine war and global trade tariffs. But he does not always stick to them.
“Imposing deadlines stands as perhaps the one predictable element of Trump’s approach to finding solutions to complex problems,” said Yacoubian. “Setting explicit deadlines has characterised Trump’s negotiating style in several realms, from Ukraine to politically sensitive domestic challenges.”
Iran-Israel conflict
In the lead-up to the current conflict, Trump says he gave Iran a 60-day deadline to negotiate an agreement over its nuclear programme, but talks continued beyond its expiry, Yacoubian noted. In the end, it was Israel which took action, launching a series of strikes on Iranian military and nuclear sites on June 13.
Russia-Ukraine war
Since the beginning of his presidency in January this year, Trump has been attempting to lead peace negotiations to bring an end to the war in Ukraine.
On May 28, Trump set a two-week deadline to determine whether his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, was willing to end the conflict.
Trump told reporters then: “Within two weeks. We’re gonna find out whether or not [Putin is] tapping us along or not. And if he is, we’ll respond a little bit differently.”
As the two-week window approached an end, the New York Post asked Trump in a podcast whether Putin cared about Russia losing thousands of soldiers in Ukraine. He said, “I’m starting to think maybe he doesn’t.”
Since the two-week window ended, Russia and Ukraine do not appear to be any closer to a peace agreement. But Trump has not signalled a shift in US policy towards Russia despite his previous threat.
A report by the Reuters news agency, published on Tuesday, further claimed that the Trump administration had disbanded an interagency working group aimed at placing pressure on Russia to speed up talks with Ukraine. Reuters cited three unnamed US officials in its report. The existence of this working group had not been made public.
Trade tariffs
Trump has also announced pauses and delays to his on-again-off-again trade tariffs first imposed on trading partners of the US in April.
In April, he announced a 90-day pause for all its tariff targets except China, with which the US reached a trade deal earlier this month. The tariff pause is set to expire on July 8.
