- Netanyahu pushed hard to attack Iran.
- Rubio warned that US facilities would be attacked.
- Operation Epic Fury launched on February 27.
Less than 48 hours before the US-Israeli attack on Iran began, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke by phone with President Donald Trump about the reasons for launching the kind of complex and distant war that the American leader had once campaigned against.
Both Trump and Netanyahu knew from intelligence reports earlier in the week that Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and his key lieutenants would soon meet at his compound in Tehran, making them vulnerable to a “decapitation attack,” an attack on the top leaders of a country often used by the Israelis but traditionally less so by the United States.
But new intelligence suggested the meeting had been moved from Saturday night to Saturday morning, according to three people briefed on the call.
The call had not been previously reported.
Netanyahu, determined to press ahead with an operation he had urged for decades, argued that there may never be a better opportunity to assassinate Khamenei.
When the call occurred, Trump had already 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.
For weeks, the US military had established a presence in the region, leading many within the administration to conclude that it was just a question of when the president would decide to move forward. A possible date, just a few days before, had been canceled due to bad weather.
Reuters could not determine how Netanyahu's argument affected Trump as he contemplated issuing strike orders, but the call amounted to the Israeli leader's closing argument to his American counterpart.
All three sources briefed on the call said they believed it — along with intelligence showing an ever-closer window to assassinate Iran's leader — was a catalyst for Trump's final decision to order the military on Feb. 27 to press ahead with Operation Epic Fury.
The first bombs fell on Saturday morning, February 28. Trump announced that night 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 said Reuters The military operation was designed to “destroy the Iranian regime's ballistic missile and production capabilities, annihilate the Iranian regime's Navy, end its ability to arm its proxies, and ensure that Iran can never obtain a nuclear weapon.”
Neither Netanyahu's office nor Iran's representative to the UN responded to requests for comment.
Netanyahu, in a press conference Thursday, dismissed as “fake news” claims that “Israel somehow dragged the United States into a conflict with Iran. Does anyone really believe that anyone can tell President Trump what to do? Come on.”
Trump has said publicly that the decision to attack was his alone.
Reuters The reports, in which officials and others close to both leaders spoke primarily on condition of anonymity given the sensitivity of internal deliberations, do not suggest Netanyahu forced Trump to go to war.
But reports show that the Israeli leader was an effective advocate and that his formulation of the decision (including the opportunity to assassinate an Iranian leader) was persuasive to the president.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth suggested in early March that revenge was at least one reason for the operation, telling reporters: “Iran tried to kill President Trump, and President Trump had the last laugh.”
June attack targeted nuclear facilities
Trump ran his 2024 campaign based on his first administration's “America First” foreign policy and publicly said he wanted to avoid war with Iran, preferring to deal with Tehran diplomatically.
But as discussions over Iran's nuclear program failed to reach a deal last spring, Trump began contemplating an attack, according to three people familiar with White House deliberations.
A first attack came in June, when Israel bombed Iran's nuclear facilities and missile sites, killing several Iranian leaders. U.S. forces later joined the attack, and when that joint operation ended after 12 days, Trump publicly reveled in the success and said the U.S. had “destroyed” Iran's nuclear facilities.
However, months later, talks resumed between the United States and Israel over a second airstrike aimed at hitting additional missile facilities and preventing Iran from gaining the ability to build a nuclear weapon.
The Israelis began planning their attack on Iran under the assumption that they would act alone, Defense Minister Israel Katz told the Israeli press. News N12 on March 5.
But during a December visit to Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, Netanyahu told Trump that he was not completely satisfied with the outcome of the joint operation in June, said two people familiar with the relationship between the two leaders, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Trump indicated he was open to another bombing campaign, the people added, but that he also wanted to try another round of diplomatic talks.
Two events pushed Trump to attack Iran again, according to several US and Israeli officials and diplomats.
The Jan. 3 U.S. operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in Caracas—which resulted in no American deaths and at the same time removed a former U.S. enemy from power—demonstrated the possibility that ambitious military operations could have few collateral consequences for U.S. forces.
Later that same month, massive anti-government protests broke out in Iran. Trump promised to help protesters, but did little immediately to make it public.
Privately, however, cooperation intensified between the Israel Defense Forces and the US military command in the Middle East, known as Centcom, with joint military planning carried out during secret meetings, according to two Israeli officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Not long after, during a visit by Netanyahu to Washington in February, the Israeli leader briefed Trump on Iran's growing ballistic missile program, pointing out specific sites of concern.
He also laid out the dangers of the ballistic missile program, including the risk that Iran would eventually gain the ability to strike U.S. territory, three people familiar with the private conversations said.
The White House did not respond to questions about Trump's December and February meetings with Netanyahu.
Trump's chances in history
In late February, many U.S. officials and regional diplomats considered a U.S. attack on Iran highly likely, although details remained uncertain, according to two other U.S. officials, an Israeli official and two additional officials familiar with the matter.
Trump was briefed by Pentagon and intelligence officials on the potential advantages that would accrue from a successful strike, including the annihilation of Iran's missile program, according to two people familiar with those briefings.
Before the phone call between Netanyahu and Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told a small group of senior congressional leaders on Feb. 24 that Israel would likely attack Iran whether or not the United States participated, and that Iran would then likely retaliate against U.S. targets, according to three people briefed on the meeting.
Behind Rubio's warning was an assessment by U.S. intelligence officials that such an attack would certainly prompt counterattacks by Iran against U.S. diplomatic and military posts and U.S. allies in the Gulf, three sources familiar with U.S. intelligence reports said.
This prediction turned out to be accurate. The attacks have led to Iranian counterattacks on U.S. military assets, the deaths of more than 2,300 Iranian civilians and at least 13 U.S. service members, attacks on U.S. allies in the Gulf, the closure of one of the world's most important shipping routes, and a historic spike in oil prices that is already being felt by consumers in the United States and beyond.
Trump had also been informed that there was a chance, however small, that the assassination of Iran's top leaders could usher in a government in Tehran that was more willing to negotiate with Washington, two other people familiar with Rubio's briefing said.
The possibility of regime change was one of Netanyahu's arguments in the call shortly before Trump gave final orders to attack Iran, the people briefed on the matter said.
That view was not supported by the Central Intelligence Agency, which had assessed in previous weeks that Khamenei would likely be replaced by an internal hardliner if he were killed, as Reuters previously reported.
The CIA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump repeatedly called for an uprising after Khamenei's assassination. With the war in its fourth week and the region engulfed in conflict, Iran's Revolutionary Guard still patrols the country's streets. Millions of Iranians remain sheltered in their homes.
Khamenei's son Mojtaba, considered even more anti-American than his father, has been named Iran's new supreme leader.
