President Trump told reporters Thursday that Iran has 10 to 15 days to reach a nuclear deal, calling that timeframe "pretty much maximum." He said he would decide in the next 10 or 15 days whether to continue diplomacy or order a military strike. Hours earlier, at a meeting of his Board of Peace in Washington, he put it more plainly: "We're either going to get a deal, or it's going to be unfortunate for them."
U.S. and Israeli officials tell Axios that a military operation against Iran would likely be a massive, weeks-long campaign and could begin within days. That is not a targeted airstrike. That is something closer to full-scale war.
Top national security officials have told the president the military is ready for potential strikes on Iran as soon as Saturday, though Trump has not yet made a final decision about whether to strike. The forces in position tell the story of how seriously this administration is taking the threat.
According to the Daily Mail, the scale of the military buildup in the Middle East is staggering. Trump's armada has grown to include two aircraft carriers, a dozen warships, hundreds of fighter jets, and multiple air defense systems, with some of that firepower still on its way. More than 150 U.S. military cargo flights have moved weapons systems and ammunition to the Middle East. Just in the past 24 hours, another 50 fighter jets, including F-35s, F-22s, and F-16s, headed to the region.
The movements of additional American warships and airplanes, with the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier near the mouth of the Mediterranean Sea, don't guarantee a strike, but they bolster Trump's ability to carry out one should he choose to do so. The USS Abraham Lincoln is already stationed in the Arabian Sea.
Trump faces one of the weightiest decisions of his second term as he orders the largest military buildup in the Middle East in 22 years. And unlike previous posturing by previous administrations, this president has a track record of following through. Last June, the White House set a two-week window for Trump to decide between further talks or strikes. Three days later, he launched Operation Midnight Hammer.
Trump advisers Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff met with Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi for three hours in Geneva on Tuesday. While both sides said the talks "made progress," the gaps are wide and U.S. officials aren't optimistic about closing them.
Vice President Vance offered the clearest public assessment of where things stand. He told Fox News:
In other ways it was very clear that the president has set some red lines that the Iranians are not yet willing to actually acknowledge and work through.
Vance made it clear that while Trump wants a deal, he could determine that diplomacy has "reached its natural end." That phrase carries weight coming from the vice president. It is not ambiguity. It is a warning.
U.S. officials said after Tuesday's talks that Iran needs to come back with a detailed proposal in two weeks. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Wednesday the two sides are "still very far apart on some issues."
One unnamed Trump adviser told Axios the mood inside the White House has shifted:
The boss is getting fed up. Some people around him warn him against going to war with Iran, but I think there is 90% chance we see kinetic action in the next few weeks.
If Trump decides to go ahead, his options range from more targeted strikes to sustained operations that could potentially last for weeks. Some include plans to take out Tehran's leaders. Many would be on a much larger scale than the hours-long bombing run that targeted Iranian nuclear facilities last summer.
Sascha Bruchmann, a research fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, told The Telegraph that the design of such a campaign would extend far beyond nuclear sites:
Air strikes would likely aim to hit the regime in its communications, so it was unable to communicate and organise itself, levelling the playing field [for anti-regime forces].
Bruchmann added that the strategic aim would be to fracture the regime's internal cohesion:
The aim would be that the mainstream Iranian army, the Artesh, might side with the people. I want to be clear that we didn't see that in January, but that would be the design.
The Israeli government is pushing for a maximalist scenario targeting regime change as well as Iran's nuclear and missile programs, and is preparing for a scenario of war within days, according to two Israeli officials. Analysts have described a potential campaign as "existential for the regime." That is the entire point.
While the United States masses forces for what could be the most consequential military operation in two decades, America's closest ally is busy finding reasons to sit it out.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has blocked a request from President Trump to allow U.S. forces to use UK air bases during any preemptive attack on Iran, saying it could break international law. According to The Times of London, Starmer has denied the use of RAF Fairford in England and Diego Garcia for any strike on Iran.
Britain's concern is that allowing the U.S. to use the bases "would be a breach of international law, which makes no distinction between a state carrying out the attack and those in support if the latter have 'knowledge of the circumstances of the internationally wrongful act.'"
The legal logic is worth examining. Britain's position is that supporting a preemptive strike against the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism, a regime actively pursuing nuclear weapons and slaughtering its own citizens, might be "internationally wrongful." The Iranian regime kills thousands of its own people and the UK government's first instinct is to check the legal footnotes.
Graham said the use of British military bases against Iran is a "necessity for an attack" and called Iran "the largest state sponsor of terrorism on the planet" at its weakest point because of both the Iranian people rising up and the crushing blows delivered by the U.S. and Israel. He is right on both counts.
Starmer's refusal did not go unanswered. The two leaders spoke by phone on Tuesday evening. The following day, Trump took to Truth Social to withdraw support for a deal that would see sovereignty over the Chagos Islands, home to the joint U.S.-UK Naval Support Facility Diego Garcia, handed to Mauritius in return for a 99-year lease on the military base.
Trump's post was direct:
I have been telling Prime Minister Keir Starmer, of the United Kingdom, that Leases are no good when it comes to Countries, and that he is making a big mistake by entering a 100 Year Lease with whoever it is that is 'claiming' Right, Title, and Interest to Diego Garcia, strategically located in the Indian Ocean.
He closed with four words that left no room for interpretation: "DO NOT GIVE AWAY DIEGO GARCIA!"
The proposed Chagos agreement would see Britain hand control of the islands to Mauritius while leasing back Diego Garcia for 99 years at a reported cost of £35 billion. Starmer is prepared to spend tens of billions of pounds of taxpayer money to surrender sovereignty over a strategically vital military asset to a country with no credible security interest in it. That is the foreign policy of a government that has confused legal timidity with moral seriousness.
Washington last year gave its blessing to the agreement, but in January Trump described it as an act of "great stupidity." Just one day before Trump's post, the State Department had issued a statement saying Washington "supports the decision of the United Kingdom to proceed with its agreement with Mauritius." Asked about the discrepancy, Press Secretary Leavitt said the president's post should be taken as the "policy" of the Trump administration.
Clear enough.
Trump came close to striking Iran in early January over the killing of thousands of protesters by the regime. But when the window of opportunity passed, the administration shifted to a two-track approach: nuclear talks paired with a massive military buildup. By delaying and bringing so much force to bear, Trump has raised expectations for what an operation will look like if a deal can't be reached. And right now, a deal does not look likely.
The dynamics are clear:
Trump's military and rhetorical buildups make it hard for him to back down without major concessions from Iran on its nuclear program. His advisers don't view the deployment of all that hardware as a bluff.
The clock is now running. Amid the U.S. threat to launch a military campaign, the Iranian UN Ambassador sent a letter to the UN Secretary General and the Security Council warning of an Iranian retaliation. Tehran is fortifying nuclear sites. Russia is conducting joint naval drills with Iran in the Gulf of Oman. Europe is evacuating personnel from the region.
Poland's prime minister urged his citizens to immediately leave Iran, warning that "within a few, a dozen, or even a few dozen hours, the possibility of evacuation will be out of the question." Nations across the region are acting as though war is imminent, because the signals say it is.
Iran's Supreme Leader, 86 years old and presiding over a crumbling regime, responded to the buildup with characteristic bravado. He posted on X that while a warship is dangerous, "more dangerous than that warship is the weapon that can send that warship to the bottom of the sea."
That is the kind of talk that comes from a man who has never been held to account. The largest state sponsor of terrorism on the planet is the weakest it's been. The Iranian people know it. The Israeli government knows it. The American military, positioned across the region in numbers not seen since the early days of Iraq, knows it.
The question is no longer whether the United States can act. It is whether Tehran has the sense to make a deal before it finds out what happens when it doesn't.
