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      No U.S. Decision on Joining War Yet, Though It Could Come in Days, Israeli Officials Say

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      Israel on Saturday struck sites in southwestern Iran that would most likely be on any potential flight path used by U.S. warplanes on the way to attack a key Iranian nuclear facility.The Trump administration has not told the Israeli military whether the United States plans to join the war on Iran, two Israeli defense officials said on Saturday.But the two officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss security matters, said they believed that Washington was likely to enter the war and that it was already making preparations to do so.Based on Israeli conversations with their American counterparts over the past two days, the officials said, a U.S. strike on Iran could take place in the coming days.President Trump was scheduled to meet with his national security team at the White House on Saturday evening to discuss the possibility of joining Israel’s attacks on Iranian nuclear sites. While the White House has said Mr. Trump has not made a final decision on an attack, the United States has dispatched several Air Force B-2 bombers from an American base and across the Pacific.The bombers can carry the 30,000-pound bunker-buster bombs Mr. Trump is considering dropping on Fordo, the heavily fortified underground nuclear facility in Iran that is critical to its nuclear program.The planes could provide options to the president, even if they are not ultimately deployed. In moving the B-2 bombers — and allowing the public to know about it — the White House may also be seeking to pressure Iran to come to the negotiating table.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Israeli Attacks in Iran Kill Three More Commanders, Israel Says

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      The claims by the Israeli military came as aircraft tracker data indicated American B-2 bombers might be moving into position for joining the assault on Iran.Israeli warplanes struck and killed three Iranian commanders, Israel’s defense ministry said Saturday, including the head of the force that supports the Palestinian group Hamas and other proxy militias around the Middle East.The reported killing of the commanders expanded Israel’s tally of assassinated Iranian officials in the nine days of war between the two countries. Israel identified the commander of the force that coordinates with proxy militias as Mohammed Said Izadi, and said he was killed in an assault on the holy city of Qum.The new attacks came amid fears that the war could expand with the involvement of the United States, a prospect that President Trump has kept vague, leaving the world guessing his intentions.Mr. Trump was scheduled to travel late Saturday afternoon from his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., to Washington, where he was to meet with his national security team in the evening and then again on Sunday. The president typically spends both weekend days out of town at one of his properties. Before Mr. Trump’s return to the White House, flight tracker data suggested multiple B-2 military aircraft had taken off from a Midwestern military base. Defense analysts took note of flight movements amid the president’s deliberations about whether to join Israel’s efforts to destroy Iran’s nuclear sites. Only Washington possesses the 30,000-pound bomb many consider essential to an air assault on Fordo, a deeply buried nuclear complex — and the aircraft, the B-2, capable of delivering the munition.The movement of the B-2s, however, did not mean a final decision had been made about whether to strike. It is not unusual to shift military assets into position to provide options to the president and military commanders even if they are not ultimately deployed.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Markets Are Balancing on a Knife’s Edge

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      The world has been anything but peaceful, but you wouldn’t know that from looking at the markets.The calm in the markets has been unnerving.You might think the world has been enjoying a season so tranquil that the stock, bond and currency markets have fallen asleep.Yet the world has been anything but peaceful lately, whether in the United States, Ukraine or the Persian Gulf. And the Federal Reserve gave the markets another reason for concern on Wednesday when it held interest rates steady. Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, said that the economy faced the risks of both higher inflation and stagnating economic growth, but that the central bank needed more evidence before it could decide where the greatest dangers lay.“Right now, it’s a forecast in a foggy time,” he said. Even more than usual, the path ahead isn’t clear. Still, there was barely any reaction in market prices. Nor has anything else seriously disrupted major markets.That’s noteworthy, when you consider the crises that are looming: the highest tariffs in decades; a contentious crackdown on immigration and a swelling budget deficit in the United States; and, in the Middle East, an escalating war between Israel and Iran that could sharply reduce global oil supplies.This isn’t to say all markets have been entirely placid. The price of oil has oscillated since Israel launched a barrage of air attacks on Iran last Friday, setting off a new, heightened stage of conflict between the two longtime adversaries. President Trump has warned Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that the United States might intervene directly, saying, “Our patience is wearing thin.” The start of a much bigger war, with the United States joining the Israeli effort to eliminate Iran as a potential nuclear threat, would undoubtedly wake the markets from their apparent slumber.High StakesThe economic risks in the Persian Gulf are enormous. If Iran were desperate enough, in addition to targeting U.S. forces in the region it could throttle the oil supplies that pass through the Strait of Hormuz. Shipping through the strait encompasses one quarter of “total global seaborne oil trade,” according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, and protecting that oil route has been a preoccupation of U.S. military planners since the days of the shah of Iran, who was deposed in 1979.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Buys Himself Time, and Opens Up Some New Options

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      While President Trump appears to be offering one more off ramp to the Iranians, he also is bolstering his own military options.President Trump’s sudden announcement that he could take up to two weeks to decide whether to plunge the United States into the heart of the Israel-Iran conflict is being advertised by the White House as giving diplomacy one more chance to work.But it also opens a host of new military and covert options.Assuming he makes full use of it, Mr. Trump will now have time to determine whether six days of relentless bombing and killing by Israeli forces — which has taken out one of Iran’s two biggest uranium enrichment centers, much of its missile fleet and its most senior officers and nuclear scientists — has changed minds in Tehran.The deal that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei rejected earlier this month, which would have cut off Iran’s main pathway to a bomb by eventually ending enrichment on Iranian soil, may look very different now that one of its largest nuclear centers has been badly damaged and the president is openly considering dropping the world’s largest conventional weapon on the second. Or, it may simply harden the Iranians’ resolve not to give in.It is also possible, some experts noted, that Mr. Trump’s announcement on Thursday was an effort to deceive the Iranians and get them to let their guard down.“That could be cover for a decision to strike, immediately,” James G. Stavridis, a retired Navy admiral and the former supreme U.S. commander in Europe, said on CNN. “Maybe this is a very clever ruse to lull the Iranians into a sense of complacency.”Even if there is no deception involved, by offering one more off-ramp to the Iranians, Mr. Trump will also be bolstering his own military options. Two weeks allows time for a second American aircraft carrier to get into place, giving U.S. forces a better chance to counter the inevitable Iranian retaliation, with whatever part of their missile fleet is still usable. It would give Israel more time to destroy the air defenses around the Fordo enrichment site and other nuclear targets, mitigating the risks to U.S. forces if Mr. Trump ultimately decided to attack.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Israel’s Military Says Iran Struck Israel With Missile Armed With Cluster Munitions

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      Israel’s military accused Iran of using a type of weapon banned by more than 100 countries, though not by Iran or Israel. Experts said evidence offered support for the claim.The Israeli military said Iran launched a missile with a cluster munition warhead at a populated area in central Israel on Thursday, according to Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, a military spokesman — the first report of that type of weapon being used in the current war.Iran’s mission to the United Nations declined to respond to the Israeli claim, which was linked to a ballistic missile that struck Or Yehuda, Israel, and nearby towns. No one was killed by the missile or its bomblets, and it was unclear if anyone was injured.A munition lands on a sidewalk in Or Yehuda, Israel on Thursday morning.Or Yehuda MunicipalityCluster munitions have warheads that burst and scatter numerous bomblets, and are known for causing indiscriminate harm to civilians. More than 100 countries have signed on to a 2008 agreement to prohibit them — but Israel and Iran have not adopted the ban, nor have major powers like the United States, Russia, China and India.Videos and photographs verified by The New York Times show an unexploded bomblet on the patio of an apartment building in Or Yehuda after an Iranian missile barrage on Thursday.The object, which resembles a narrow artillery shell or rocket warhead, is most likely a submunition similar to those that have armed some Iranian ballistic missiles since 2014, according to Fabian Hinz, a research fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a London-based think tank.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      U.S. Spy Agencies Assess Iran Remains Undecided on Building a Bomb

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      U.S. intelligence officials said Iran was likely to pivot toward producing a nuclear weapon if the U.S. attacked a main uranium enrichment site, or if Israel killed its supreme leader.U.S. intelligence agencies continue to believe that Iran has yet to decide whether to make a nuclear bomb even though it has developed a large stockpile of the enriched uranium necessary for it to do so, according to intelligence and other American officials.That assessment has not changed since the intelligence agencies last addressed the question of Iran’s intentions in March, the officials said, even as Israel has attacked Iranian nuclear facilities.Senior U.S. intelligence officials said that Iranian leaders were likely to shift toward producing a bomb if the American military attacked the Iranian uranium enrichment site Fordo or if Israel killed Iran’s supreme leader.The question of whether Iran has decided to complete the work of building a bomb is irrelevant in the eyes of many Iran hawks in the United States and Israel, who say Tehran is close enough to represent an existential danger to Israel. But it has long been a flashpoint in the debate over policy toward Iran and has flared again as President Trump weighs whether to bomb Fordo.White House officials held an intelligence briefing on Thursday and announced that Mr. Trump would make his decision within the next two weeks.At the White House meeting, John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director, told officials that Iran was very close to having a nuclear weapon.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in US Politics

      Trump’s plan for Iran divides Republicans – podcast

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      Archive: ABC News, AP, BBC News, CBS Mornings, CNN, KTLA 5, MSNBC, NBC News, PBS Newshour, Tucker Carlson, The War Room
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      In Crisis With Iran, U.S. Military Officials Focus on Strait of Hormuz

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      Pentagon officials are trying to prepare for all of the ways Iran could retaliate, as President Trump hints at what he might do.Iran retains the naval assets and other capabilities it would need to shut down the Strait of Hormuz, a move that could pin any U.S. Navy ships in the Persian Gulf, American military officials say.In meetings at the White House, senior military officials have raised the need to prepare for that possibility, after Iranian officials threatened to mine the strait if the United States joined Israel’s attacks on the country.Pentagon officials are considering all of the ways Iran could retaliate, as President Trump cryptically hints at what he might do, saying on Wednesday that he had not made a final decision.In several days of attacks, Israel has targeted Iranian military sites and state-sponsored entities, as well as high-ranking generals. It has taken out many of Iran’s ballistic missiles, though Iran still has hundreds of them, U.S. defense officials said.But Israel has steered clear of Iranian naval assets. So while Iran’s ability to respond has been severely damaged, it has robust a navy and maintains operatives across the region, where the United States has more than 40,000 troops. Iran also has an array of mines that its navy could lay in the Strait of Hormuz.The narrow 90-mile waterway connecting the Persian Gulf to the open ocean is a key shipping route. A quarter of the world’s oil passes through it, so mining the choke-point would cause gas prices to soar.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More