Trump’s promise to extract the United States from its “forever wars” in the Middle East played a role in his 2016 and 2024 election wins.
“Trust in President Trump. President Trump has incredible instincts,” Leavitt said.
Meanwhile, Israel bombed nuclear targets in Iran on Thursday and Iran fired missiles and drones at Israel after hitting an Israeli hospital overnight, as a week-old air war escalated with no sign yet of an exit strategy from either side.
Following the strike that damaged the Soroka medical centre in Israel’s southern city of Beersheba, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tehran’s “tyrants” would pay the “full price”. “Are we targeting the downfall of the regime? That may be a result, but it’s up to the Iranian people to rise for their freedom,” Netanyahu said.
“Freedom requires these subjugated people to rise up, and it’s up to them, but we may create conditions that will help them do it.” Defence Minister Israel Katz said the military had been instructed to intensify strikes on strategic-related targets in Tehran in order to eliminate the threat to Israel and destabilise the “Ayatollah regime”.
As darkness fell on Thursday evening, Iranian media reported air defences engaging “hostile targets” in northern Tehran. Israel’s sweeping campaign of airstrikes aims to do more than destroy Iran’s nuclear centrifuges and missile capabilities. It seeks to shatter the foundations of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s government and leave it near collapse, Israeli, Western and regional officials said.
Netanyahu wants Iran weakened enough to be forced into fundamental concessions on permanently abandoning its nuclear enrichment, its ballistic missile programme and its support for militant groups across the region, the sources said.
Three diplomats told Reuters that Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi have spoken by phone several times since last week. In an apparent reference to the US, Iran’s Supreme National Security Council said on Thursday it would use a different strategy if a “third party” joined Israel in the war.
STRAIT OF HORMUZ THREAT
Earlier, Israel said it had struck Iran’s Natanz, Isfahan and Khondab nuclear sites. It initially said it had also hit Bushehr, site of Iran’s only functioning nuclear power plant, but a spokesperson later said it was a mistake to have said this.
An Iranian diplomat told Reuters Bushehr was not hit and Israel was engaged in “psychological warfare” by discussing it. Any attack on the plant, near Arab neighbours and housing Russian technicians, is viewed as risking nuclear disaster.
On Thursday, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said it had launched combined missile and drone attacks at military and industrial sites linked to Israel’s defence industry in Haifa and Tel Aviv.
Israel reported missiles launched from Iran towards its territory. Iran has been weighing its wider options in responding to the biggest security challenge since its 1979 revolution. A member of the Iranian Parliament’s National Security Committee Presidium, Behnam Saeedi, told the semi-official Mehr news agency Iran could consider closing the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20% of daily global oil consumption passes.
