US President Donald Trump has said that he and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will mutually decide when to end the ongoing war with Iran. Trump also said it was unlikely that Israel would have to continue attacking Iran after the US halted its strikes.
When asked about the end of the war and Netanyahu’s role in it, Trump told The Times of Israel that he would have the last word.
“I think it’s mutual… a little bit. We’ve talked. I’ll make a decision at the right time, but everything will be taken into account,” he said.
“Iran would destroy Israel”
On the decision to launch Operation Epic Fury, Trump said Iran would destroy Israel and the Middle East if the US did not intervene.
“Iran was going to destroy Israel and everything else around it… We worked together. We destroyed a country that wanted to destroy Israel,” Trump said.
How long will the US-Iran war last?
The US and Israel launched an attack on Iran on February 28. The conflict is now in its second week and Trump has declared that nothing short of total Iranian surrender will end it. Rejecting any form of capitulation, Iran has vowed to resist and has dragged the entire Middle East into the conflict by firing missiles and drones at US bases and assets across the region.
Trump has yet to set a timetable for ending the war, which he says could take several weeks. The Trump administration has publicly projected the potential duration of the military operation to be 4–6 weeks. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth suggested this could be extended to eight weeks or more, noting that the US was prepared for a “war of attrition”.
But others, including Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton, have argued that the conflict could drag on for months if the US fails to push for regime change in Iran soon.
Many also argued that after the initial shock of the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Iranian regime and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) have consolidated their positions and are in much better control of the country than they were less than a week ago.
Will the US put boots on the ground in Iran?
The absence of the popular uprising that the U.S. was counting on in Iran against the government after the airstrikes also made those in Washington seriously consider putting boots on the ground.
Trump has refused to put American boots on the ground in Iran, and over the weekend there were reports that the Defense Department had canceled a major exercise by the command of the elite 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Liberty, which many saw as preparation for its deployment to Iran.
On Sunday, Axios reported that the US and Israel were in talks to send special forces to Iran to secure its stockpile of highly enriched uranium.
Last week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told a congressional briefing that “People are going to have to go and get it when asked if Iran’s enriched uranium is going to be secured.
