Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called President Donald Trump last Monday, February 23, to say that Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei will meet with senior members of his leadership team, a senior US official told NBC News on Wednesday.
Netanyahu told President Trump and his advisers that the entire group could be killed in one strike on Saturday morning because they were all meeting in one place, the US official said, adding that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) quickly confirmed the information.
The conversation between Netanyahu and Trump, first reported on Wednesday by the American publication Axios, took place in the White House Crisis Room, according to the quoted official, and marked a crucial moment that led to the establishment of the exact timing of the initial airstrikes on Iran.
That phone call was one of several critical factors that led to Trump's decision to attack Iran, the official said, adding that the White House leader also considered:
- Iran's efforts to build nuclear weapons,
- the failure to make any progress in direct negotiations with the Islamic Republic
- and expanding Tehran's ballistic missile program.
The importance of the call
They could all be there and killed in one devastating airstrike, Netanyahu told Trump and the US president's team, according to three sources with knowledge of the discussion, cited by Axios.
The importance of the Feb. 23 call, the pivotal moment that triggered the war with Iran, answers the question that American lawmakers, MAGA skeptics and world leaders began asking starting Saturday: Why now?
And the answer, according to Axios, is this: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his inner circle were irresistible targets that neither Trump nor Netanyahu wanted to miss.
The US president was already inclined to attack Iran before learning the new information about Khamenei. What he hadn't decided was when – until Netanyahu called him, notes the American publication.
The Feb. 23 call was part of months of intensive coordination between the two leaders, who met twice and spoke on the phone 15 times in the two months leading up to the war, according to US and Israeli officials.
The US and Israel had considered striking a week earlier than Saturday, December 23, but delayed for operational and intelligence reasons, including bad weather.
An initial CIA check, conducted at Trump's direction, confirmed information about Khamenei gathered by Israeli military services.
Preparations accelerated when Trump told Netanyahu he would consider going ahead — but first came the US president's State of the Nation address the following night.
US officials said Trump made a “deliberate decision” not to focus excessively on Iran, so as not to frighten the ayatollah and cause him to hide in bunkers before the attack could be carried out.
By Thursday, February 26, the CIA “had fully confirmed that those people were all going to be together and that we had to take advantage of that,” one source said.
That same day, Trump's emissaries, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, called from Geneva after hours of talks with Iranian officials and delivered an unequivocal verdict: negotiations were going nowhere.
“If you decide you want to do diplomacy, we will push and fight to get a deal. But these people have shown us they are not willing to make a deal that satisfies you,” Trump was told, according to a US official with direct knowledge of the conversation.
Thus, Trump became convinced of two things: the intelligence was solid, and diplomacy was dead. At 3:38 PM EST on Friday, he gave the final order for the military operation to begin.
Eleven hours later, the bombs fell on Tehran, Khamenei was killed and the war began.
Behind the scenes details
Trump considered Netanyahu a close partner and was genuinely open to his advice on Iran, but he was also determined to exhaust the diplomacy book first.
“One side of the administration was negotiating and the other side was making joint military plans” with Israel, a US official said. “He (Trump, no) evaluates both things constantly.”
Criticized for suggesting the US had been dragged into the conflict by Israel, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio insisted on Tuesday that the operation “had to happen anyway” and that it was simply “a matter of timing”.
“This weekend was a unique opportunity to take joint action against this threat,” he told reporters on Capitol Hill. “We wanted this to be as successful as possible.”
“Trump wanted to strike earlier – in early January. It was Bibi (Netanyahu's nickname, no) who asked for the delay,” an Israeli official said, stressing that the timing was “fully coordinated” with “the understanding that it would be done jointly.”
The original plan called for an attack in late March or early April, giving the Washington administration time to build public support. Netanyahu insisted on moving faster, a US official told Axios.
The official said Netanyahu began to “stir spirits” and warn that Iranian opposition leaders hiding in conspiratorial houses were in danger of being killed by the regime in Tehran.
The speeding up of the operation's timetable caught the administration by surprise: instead of spending weeks building the public case for war, the White House found itself justifying the attacks after the bombs had already been dropped.
“We didn't make the case as far in advance as we could have because the opportunity came up very quickly,” the official said.
Another official acknowledged there were mixed messages from Rubio and the White House, which began building the case for war after the attack, not before.
A big problem
Because Trump and Netanyahu did not announce Saturday's attack, many American citizens were caught completely by surprise and stranded in the Middle East as Iran launched retaliatory attacks on the Persian Gulf states.
The State Department, led by Rubio, rushed to organize an emergency evacuation for more than 1,500 Americans who requested assistance to leave the region.
Asked by reporters at the White House press conference on Tuesday why there was no evacuation plan, Trump replied: “Well, because it all happened very quickly.”
Version of the Israeli ambassador
Israel's ambassador to Washington, Yechiel Leiter, declined to comment on the details of the February 23 call, but denied that Netanyahu had started to “stir spirits” or cited a threat to Iranian opposition leaders as a reason to hasten the timing of the operation.
“Over the past year, we have worked more closely than ever with our partners in the United States on Iran, and we agree on the danger that Iran poses to Israel, to the United States and to the free world,” Leiter told the American publication.
“Anyone who knows President Trump understands that he is a strong leader who cannot be swayed,” the ambassador said.
And Trump just as flatly rejected on Tuesday any suggestion that Netanyahu had driven his decision to attack Iran.
“I was negotiating with these crazy people and I thought they were going to strike first. I was convinced of that. If anything, I may have forced Israel's hand,” the White House leader said.
Trump resumes one of the justifications: “When crazy people have nuclear weapons…”
On Wednesday, Trump said the United States was in a “position of strength” in the war against Iran.
“We are now in a position of strength and their leaders are disappearing fast. Everyone who wants to be a leader ends up dying,” the US president told a group of technology executives at the White House.
“We are doing very well on the war front, and that is an understatement. Someone asked me: “On a scale from 1 to 10, how would you rate this?”. I answered about 15″, he added, quoted by AFP and Agerpres.
Speaking on the fifth day of the war, Donald Trump resumed his justifications for the attack on Iran, saying Tehran was on the way to acquiring nuclear weapons.
“When crazy people have nuclear weapons, bad things happen,” he added.
White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt had said in an earlier press briefing that the “vile Iranian terrorist regime” was on the verge of being “completely destroyed” and that Iran would “pay for its crimes.”
