Last Monday, the Israeli prime minister called the US president, , with an important piece of information: Iran’s supreme leader and his top advisers were to meet somewhere in Tehran on Saturday morning, according to a report by Axios.
“They could all be killed in a single devastating airstrike,” Netanyahu told Trump and his team, according to three sources briefed on the conversation.
Why is it important?
The February 23 phone call, which remained secret and took place in the White House Conference Room, was a defining moment that set the Iran war in motion.
- It answers the question that all lawmakers, MAGA skeptics and world leaders have been asking since Saturday: why now?
- The answer: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his inner circle were irresistible targets of opportunity that neither Trump nor Netanyahu wanted to lose.
The war was in the plans even earlier
before learning the new information about Khamenei. What he hadn’t decided was when – until Netanyahu called him.
- The Feb. 23 phone call was part of an intensive coordinated effort between the two leaders, who met twice and spoke by phone 15 times during the two months leading up to the war, according to US and Israeli officials.
- The US and Israel had considered attacking a week earlier than Saturday, but postponed it for intelligence and operational reasons, including bad weather.
Through the hall
An initial CIA audit, conducted at Trump’s direction, confirmed information about Khamenei gathered by Israeli military intelligence.
- Preparations accelerated when Trump told Netanyahu he would consider going ahead, but first came the US president’s State of the Union address the following night.
- US officials said Trump made a “deliberate decision” not to focus too much on Iran so as not to scare the Ayatollah into going underground before carrying out the attack.
The “key” day
By Thursday, the CIA had “fully confirmed that all these individuals were 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: the negotiations were going nowhere.
- “If you decide you want to go down the diplomatic route, we will push and fight to reach an agreement. But these guys showed us they weren’t willing to make a deal that would satisfy you,” a US official with direct knowledge of the phone conversation said, according to Trump.
Trump’s two “sure” points
Intelligence information was reliable and diplomacy had failed. On Friday at 3:38 p.m. EST, issued the final order.
- Eleven hours later, bombs fell on Tehran, Khamenei was killed, and the war had begun.
The background
Trump considered Netanyahu a close associate and was genuinely open to his advice on Iran, but he was also determined to exhaust diplomacy first.
- “One side of the house was negotiating and the other side of the house was doing joint military planning” with Israel, a US official said. “He evaluated both things constantly.”
Between the lines
Under pressure for claiming the US had been swayed by Israel, Secretary of State Marco Rubio insisted on Tuesday that this operation “had to happen anyway” and that it was just “a matter of timing”.
- “This weekend presented a unique opportunity for 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 — early January. Bibi was the one who asked for the delay,” an Israeli official said, stressing that the timing was “fully coordinated” with “the understanding that it would be carried out jointly.”
The intrigue
The original plan called for an attack in late March or early April, giving the government time to secure public support. Netanyahu pushed for them to move faster, a US official told Axios.
- The official said Netanyahu began to “agitate” and warn that Iranian opposition leaders who had taken refuge in safe havens were at risk of being killed by the regime.
The acceleration of the schedule left the government unprepared
Instead of spending weeks preparing the public for war, the White House found itself justifying the attacks after the bombs had already been dropped.
- “We didn’t prepare the case in advance as well as we could because the opportunity came too quickly,” the official said.
- Another official acknowledged that there were mixed messages from Rubio and the White House, which began supporting the war after the attack, rather than before.
The friction point
Because Trump and Netanyahu concealed their attack on Saturday, many American citizens were caught completely off guard and caught off guard when Iran launched retaliatory strikes across the Gulf.
- Rubio’s State Department rushed to organize an emergency evacuation operation for more than 1,500 Americans who sought help to leave the area.
- When asked by reporters on Tuesday why there was no evacuation plan, Trump replied: “Because everything happened so fast.”
The other side
Israel’s ambassador to Washington, Yehiel Leiter, declined to comment on the details of the February 23 phone call, denying that Netanyahu “instigated” or ever mentioned the threat to Iranian opposition leaders as a reason to speed up the process.
- “Over the past year, we have worked more closely than ever with our partners in the United States on Iran, and we fully agree on the danger Iran poses to Israel, the United States and the free world,” Leiter told Axios.
- “Anyone who knows President Trump understands that he is a strong leader who cannot be swayed,” the ambassador said.
Conclusion
Trump was equally dismissive on Tuesday of any suggestion that Netanyahu led the decision.
- “We have been negotiating with these madmen and my view was that they would attack first. I was sure of that. If nothing else, I might have forced Israel to make a decision,” he said.
- The White House did not dispute the Axios report and pointed to public statements by Trump and Rubio on Tuesday.
