President Donald Trump will decide whether to attack Iran within the next two weeks, and has issued a plea to stave off the backlash in his MAGA base: Trust in Trump.
As a MAGA civil war over military intervention threatens to tear his party apart, the president has left the door open to a diplomatic off-ramp.
“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,” he said, in a direct message issued through his White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt.
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The unexpected twist is reminiscent of the two week window Trump regularly gives Russia to start negotiating a genuine ceasefire with Ukraine.
It comes after the president left the nation on edge for days about the possibility that he would help Israel destroy a deeply buried nuclear enrichment facility at Fordow, in northeast Iran, using a 30,000 pound bomb known as a “bunker buster”.
Trump gave numerous mixed messages, insisting the strikes could be imminent and saying it was “too late” to talk while also insisting that there was scope for negotiations.
On Wednesday, he even boasted that “nobody knows what I’m doing” when it comes to Iran.
Tensions escalated this week when he abruptly departed the G7—despite having meetings locked with global allies including Australia and India—to rush to Washington to deal with the issue.
For the next three days, he then huddled with his national security advisers to decide whether the U.S. military helps Israel’s bombing campaign.
But such a move would risk any remaining chance of the nuclear disarmament deal Trump has been pursuing and threatened to tear apart the very base that got him elected.
The MAGA civil war over the Iran put conservatives such as pro-Israel war hawks Laura Loomer and Mark Levin on one side, and America First firebrands such as Charlie Kirk, Steve Bannon and Jack Posobiec on the other.
“We can’t have another Iraq,” Bannon warned at a breakfast with reporters hosted Wednesday by The Christian Science Monitor.
Earlier today, he was spotted at the White House but Leavitt declined to say what he was doing there.
The issue also spilled out onto screens this week, with conservative pundit Tucker Carlson—who accused the president of being “complicit” in the Middle East conflict—skewering Texas Senator Ted Cruz over his support for regime change.
Asked what the president would say to those who voted for his “America First” doctrine and didn’t want the nation involved in another foreign war, Leavitt replied: “Trust in President Trump.”
“President Trump kept America and the world safe in his first term as president, implementing a ‘peace through strength’ foreign policy agenda,” she said.
“With respect to Iran, nobody should be surprised by the President’s position that Iran absolutely cannot obtain a nuclear weapon. He’s been absolutely unequivocal about this.”
Trump’s announcement was immediately mocked online. One critic on social media described it as “beyond parody” while another joked: “He’s going to announce it during Infrastructure Week when the healthcare plan comes out.”
Leavitt was also quizzed about the issue in the briefing room, with one reporter noting that Trump had regularly given Russia two week deadlines on Ukraine, with no outcome.
However, she blamed the Biden administration, saying both were complicated global conflicts that the president had inherited.
