Summary: The White House held a high-profile press conference Thursday afternoon, with President Donald Trump once again convening his top national security officials in the crisis room to hear from intelligence officials and make key decisions about the Israel-Iran war. The biggest question, of course, is: Will the United States go directly to war with Iran?
- The White House quoted Trump as saying: “Given the fact that there is a significant possibility that negotiations with Iran will or will not take place in the near future, I will make a decision on whether or not to go within the next two weeks.”
- Leavitt: Trump sees Iran talks as significant opportunity
- Leavitt: Witkoff has been in contact with Iran
- Leavitt: Trump has always been interested in diplomatic solutions
- Leavitt: US believes Iran has never been closer to a nuclear weapon
- Leavitt: Iran can and should reach an agreement or face consequences
- Leavitt: Trump still in touch with Netanyahu
- Leavitt: Iran is in a weakened position and we have sent a deal
- Leavitt: Iran has everything it needs to acquire a nuclear weapon, all it needs is a decision
Oil price falls on “two-week” announcement as can is pushed back:
The most pressing issues at stake:
- Will the latest diplomacy work? In a groundbreaking development, Reuters reports that Iran has held direct talks with the United States about de-escalating the situation and possibly resuming nuclear negotiations.
- The Guardian reports that Trump only wants to attack Iran if the US can destroy the Fordow enrichment facility.
- Destroying Fordow would require at least a 30,000-pound bunker buster bomb, but it still may not be effective in ending Iran’s enrichment capability.
- Netanyahu said regime change in Tehran is not currently a goal, but it is still possible.
- Tactical nuclear weapon on the table?
- Will the Iranians close the Strait of Hormuz, choking off global oil transport?
- Reports of defensive and self-defense measures being taken by US bases in the region
- NBC reports that an Israeli intelligence official said the “imminent collapse” of the Iranian government is “far from the truth.”
- Iran warns that “third-party intervention” would lead to immediate military response
- Netanyahu has said the US has “helped a lot”, without elaborating.
WATCH (starting at 1:00 PM ET):
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Update (12:10 ET): Just an hour away from the high-profile White House press conference, an article in The Guardian has raised the stakes …
Donald Trump has suggested to defense officials that it would only make sense for the United States to launch attacks on Iran if a so-called bunker buster bomb destroyed the critical uranium enrichment plant at Fordow, people familiar with the discussions say.
Trump was told that dropping the 13.6-ton (30,000-pound) GBU-57 bomb would destroy Fordow, but he does not appear to be fully convinced, the sources said, and has held off on authorizing the strikes, also waiting for the possibility that the threat of U.S. intervention would lead to negotiations with Iran.
The effectiveness of the GBU-57 missiles has been a subject of deep debate in the Pentagon since the beginning of Trump’s term, according to two defense officials who were told that only a tactical nuclear weapon might be able to destroy Fordow because it is buried so deeply.
Tactical nuclear weapons now?
And there is much, much more to consider. A likely full-scale American military intervention in the war would lead to complete regime change in Iran. What happens next?
Iran as a society is much larger and even more ethnically complex than neighboring Iraq … and we all remember Pandora’s Box and the US “forever war” very well. Shortly after the fall of Saddam came the rise of ISIS and the hellish, over a decade-long Syrian civil war. Have politicians forgotten already? (Or more likely they don’t care…) Adding to the chaos is the IRGC, which is likely to close the vital Strait of Hormuz – which would send oil prices skyrocketing.
At the end of the day, we’ll likely find out if Trump remains a negotiator … or a war hawk… will he listen to the likes of Tulsi Gabbard and Tucker Carlson or Lindsey Graham and Mark Levin? At the same time…
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Israel’s war with Iran is nearing its first week, with both sides continuing to wreak havoc from above during Thursday’s opening session. In a development that advocates of U.S. intervention are sure to exploit, southern Israel’s largest hospital reportedly suffered “extensive” damage after an Iranian ballistic missile hit. Meanwhile, the Israeli air force, ignoring warnings from the International Atomic Energy Agency about radiation risks, bombed Iran’s Arak heavy water reactor, even though Iran had modified it under the 2015 nuclear deal to make it unfit for producing weapons-grade plutonium.
Other important recent developments:
- Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said: “The Prime Minister and I have ordered an increase in the intensity of attacks against government targets in Tehran in order to destabilize the Ayatollah’s regime.”
- Russian spokesman Dmitry Peskov warned that direct US participation in Israel’s war against Iran would trigger a terrible spiral of escalation.
- President Trump has reportedly approved the Pentagon’s plan to attack Iran but is delaying giving the green light, continuing to push for Iran to give up uranium enrichment – which Iran sees as an intolerable intrusion into its sovereignty. “I may do it, I may not do it,” he told reporters.
- The foreign ministers of Iran, Britain, France and Germany will discuss the nuclear standoff in Geneva on Friday.
- MAGA conservatives continue to angrily reject U.S. involvement in the war started by Israel, as evidenced by Tucker Carlson’s relentless criticism of Iran-hawk Ted Cruz in a viral interview.
In its initial counterattacks on Israel, Iran largely confined its rocket fire to nighttime. After the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) had significant success in penetrating Israel’s highly regarded Iron Dome, Iranian fire is now increasingly occurring in broad daylight, as was the case on Thursday morning in a 30-rocket attack that caused dozens of injuries, six of them serious:
One of the Iranian missiles hit Soroka Hospital in the southern city of Beer-Sheva, and health officials said the explosion caused extensive damage and injuries. Iran said the missile was aimed at a nearby Israeli military intelligence facility; the Times reported that the nearest known military facility is more than two kilometers away. The Times said this video captures both the sound of the thunderous explosion and the huge mushroom cloud that hit the hospital:
Israeli President Isaac Herzog stressed that the hospital is staffed by both Jewish and Arab staff, “working side by side … caring for Israelis of all faiths and our Palestinian neighbors.” Thanks largely to the evacuation of the floor that was attacked on Wednesday, no deaths have been reported at the hospital and injuries are minor. Israeli officials were quick to condemn the attack. “The rocket fired at the Soroka Medical Center is a terrorist act and crosses a red line,” Health Minister Uriel Buso told the Times of Israel. Israel’s critics are quick to point out that Israel’s massively destructive campaign in Gaza has damaged or destroyed 94 percent of the hospitals in the territory.
The Iranian bomb also caused extensive damage in the city of Ramat Gan, a major business and educational center just 5 kilometers east of Tel Aviv. Ramat Gan, home to many modern skyscrapers, has been nicknamed the “Manhattan of Israel.” Some of these shiny skyscrapers collapsed Thursday morning, seriously injuring two people:
On the other side of the war map, bombs and missiles rained down on Iran, and the Israeli military said 40 fighter jets had struck dozens of facilities, including the Arak heavy water reactor and the Natanz facility, which Israel says Iran is using to develop nuclear weapons. In March, the U.S. intelligence community said it continued to believe that Iran, true to its decades-long assurances, was not seeking nuclear weapons.
Ironically, Israel’s attack on Arak serves to draw attention to the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal, from which Trump withdrew the United States in 2018, sowing the seeds of a war that still rages today. Under that deal, Iran filled the core of its heavy water reactor with cement to make it incapable of producing weapons-grade plutonium. Other JCPOA changes were also underway at the Arak facility. In announcing Thursday’s attack, the Israel Defense Forces even referred to it as the “inactive nuclear reactor at Arak” —which only underscores the fact that the original nuclear deal fully achieved its purpose and was abandoned only out of deference to Israel and its Western partners, who were looking for a false pretext for war, strikingly similar to the one used in the disastrous invasion of Iraq.
Under the JCPOA, Iran agreed to redesign Arak to make it impossible to produce weapons-grade plutonium, and the IAEA confirmed that the reactor core is filled with cement. Arak redesign is underway in cooperation with China. It looks like Israel just destroyed it https://t.co/95gCmixMlG
— Evan Hill (@evanhill) June 19, 2025
Earlier in the day, Israel had warned Iranians to evacuate the area around the reactor, using social media posts that showed satellite images of the facility circled in red. Israel’s warning came after reports that Iranians had been almost completely without internet access for more than 12 hours. The outage was allegedly caused by the Iranian government; the New York Times reported that the move was partly motivated by fears of Israeli cyberattacks. Earlier this week, Israel’s ambassador to the US cryptically promised “some surprises on Thursday night and Friday that will make [Israel’s] explosives-sniffing operation [in Lebanon] almost easy.”
