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President-elect Donald Trump is weighing his options to stop Iran from building a nuclear weapon, including preemptive airstrikes that would end years of containing Tehran with sanctions, according to a new report.
Members of Trump’s transition team are reviewing the military strike option more closely now following the recent upheavals in the Middle East, including the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria and Israel’s decimation of Tehran terror proxies Hezbollah and Hamas, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Uzi Rabi, director of the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Tel Aviv University, said Trump has a “great opportunity” to end the Middle East conflict and halt Iran’s nuclear weapon ambitions.
“He’s a businessman, and he will tell the Iranians, ‘You have the chance, OK, to remain in power. We will relieve the sanctions, but you will stop anything with regard to the military nuclear infrastructures, and you will stop building or supporting terrorist proxies in the Middle East,’” Rabi told The Post.
Rabi said Trump, 78, will likely present the ultimatum with a warning that if Tehran refuses, “then you are going to have a very severe military attack on your head, be it an Israeli attack backed by the Americans, be an American attack, be it any sort of combination between these options.”
Iran’s nuclear capabilities have been on Trump’s mind recently, with the president-elect speaking about his concerns in calls with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, sources told the Journal.
With the discussions still in the early stages, the soon-to-be 47th president appears to be in favor of a tactic that is harsh but avoids igniting a new war in the Middle East that could drag in the US.
Trump’s transition team is working on a strategy centered on strict economic sanctions, a repeat of his first term, but his aides are fleshing out military steps that can be taken against Tehran.
The steps include increasing military pressure in the region by sending more US troops, warplanes and ships to the Middle East.
The US could also sell additional advanced weapons to Israel, including bunker-busting bombs, to pressure Tehran with a foe that has hit its nuclear facilities in the past.
The option for a direct US strike, however, is not off the table, as Trump recently said in his interview with Time magazine that America could go to war with Iran after investigators found that Tehran had once plotted to assassinate him.
“Anything can happen,” he told the magazine that named him 2024 Person of the Year. “It’s a very volatile situation.”
While Israeli officials have not commented on the possibility of joining the US in a preemptive strike against Iran, Netanyahu previously said he and Trump “see eye to eye on the Iranian threat in all its components, and the danger posed by it.”
Tehran has long denied that it is working to produce nuclear weapons despite reports in recent years that the nation is working to enrich its uranium supply to weapons-grade level.
