Less than 48 hours before the US-Israeli strike on Iran began, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke by phone to US President Donald Trump about the reasons for launching the kind of complex, far-off war the American leader once had campaigned against.
Both Trump and Netanyahu knew from intelligence briefings earlier in the week that Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his key lieutenants would soon meet at his compound in Tehran, making them vulnerable to a “decapitation strike” – an attack against a country’s top leaders often used by Israelis but traditionally less so by the United States.
But new intelligence suggested that the meeting had been moved forward to Saturday morning from Saturday night, according to three people briefed on the call.
Netanyahu, determined to move forward with an operation he had urged for decades, argued that there might never be a better chance to kill Khamenei and to avenge previous Iranian efforts to assassinate Trump, these people said. Those included a murder-for-hire plot allegedly orchestrated by Iran in 2024, when Trump was a candidate.
The Justice Department has accused a Pakistani man of trying to recruit people in the United States in the plan, meant as retaliation for Washington’s killing of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ top commander, Qassem Soleimani.
By the time the call took place, Trump already had approved the idea of the United States carrying out a military operation against Iran but had not yet decided when or under what circumstances the United States would get involved, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal deliberations.
The US military had for weeks built up a presence in the region, prompting many within the administration to conclude it was just a matter of when the president would decide to move forward. One possible date, just a few days earlier, had been scuttled because of harsh weather.
Reuters was unable to determine how Netanyahu’s argument affected Trump as he contemplated issuing orders to strike but the call amounted to the Israeli leader’s closing argument to his US counterpart. The three sources briefed on the call said they believed it – along with the intelligence showing a closing window to kill Iran’s leader – was a catalyst for Trump’s final decision to order the military on February 27 to move ahead with Operation Epic Fury.
Trump could make history by helping to eliminate an Iranian leadership long reviled by the West and by many Iranians, Netanyahu argued. Iranians might even take to the streets, he said, overthrowing a theocratic system that had governed the country since 1979 and been a leading source of global terrorism and instability ever since.
The first bombs struck on Saturday morning, February 28. Trump announced that evening that Khamenei was dead.
In response to a request for comment, White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly did not directly address the call between Trump and Netanyahu but told Reuters the military operation was designed to “destroy the Iranian regime’s ballistic missile and production capacity, annihilate the Iranian regime’s Navy, end their ability to arm proxies, and guarantee that Iran can never obtain a nuclear weapon”.
Neither Netanyahu’s office nor Iran’s UN representative responded to comment requests.
Netanyahu in a news conference on Thursday dismissed as “fake news” claims that “Israel somehow dragged the US into a conflict with Iran. Does anyone really think that someone can tell President Trump what to do? Come on”.
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Trump has said publicly that the decision to strike was his alone.
Reuters’ reporting, with officials and others close to both leaders speaking mostly on condition of anonymity given the sensitivity of internal deliberations, does not suggest that Netanyahu forced Trump to go to war. But the reporting shows that the Israeli leader was an effective advocate and that his framing of the decision – including the opportunity to kill an Iranian leader who allegedly had overseen efforts to kill Trump – was persuasive to the president.
Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth in early March suggested that revenge was at least one motive for the operation, telling reporters: “Iran tried to kill President Trump, and President Trump got the last laugh.”
The Israelis also wanted to kill Khamenei, a bitter geopolitical foe who had repeatedly fired missiles into Israel and supported heavily armed proxy forces encircling the nation. That included the Hamas militant group that launched the surprise attack on October 7, 2023, from Gaza, and Hezbollah, based in Lebanon.
The Israelis began to plan their attack on Iran under the assumption they would be acting alone, Defence Minister Israel Katz told Israel’s N12 News on March 5. But during a December visit to Trump’s Florida home, Netanyahu told Trump he was not fully satisfied with the outcome of the joint operation in June, said two people familiar with the matter, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Trump indicated he was open to another bombing campaign, the people said, but he also wanted to try another round of diplomatic talks.
During a February visit by Netanyahu to Washington, the Israeli leader briefed Trump on Iran’s growing ballistic missile programme, pointing out specific sites of concern.
The White House did not respond to questions about Trump’s December and February meetings with Netanyahu.
Before the phone call between Netanyahu and Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told a small group of top Congressional leaders on February 24 that Israel was likely to attack Iran, whether the US took part, and Iran would then be likely to retaliate against US targets, according to three people briefed on the meeting.
This prediction proved accurate. The strikes have led to Iranian counter-attacks on US military assets, the deaths of more than 2,300 Iranian civilians and at least 13 US service members, attacks on US Gulf allies, the closure of one of the world’s most vital shipping routes and a historic spike in oil prices.
The CIA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
South China Morning Post
