Trump to Decide on Direct U.S. Strike Against Iran Within Two Weeks
President Trump says he will decide within two weeks whether the U.S. will directly strike Iran. As Israel and Iran trade missile fire, diplomatic talks begin—but the risk of broader war remains high.
Trump weighs military response as Israel-Iran war intensifies. Photo: @Dailyflynews
June 20, 2025 Hour: 3:13 am
President Donald Trump announced Thursday that he will decide within two weeks whether the United States will directly enter the escalating war between Israel and Iran, citing a “substantial chance” of diplomatic negotiations resuming over Iran’s nuclear program.
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The White House statement, read by Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, confirmed that Trump is seriously weighing a military strike against Iran’s Fordo uranium enrichment facility. The highly fortified site is buried deep within a mountain and is considered invulnerable to most munitions—except the U.S.’s arsenal of bunker-buster bombs.
The announcement comes amid the seventh day of open hostilities between Iran and Israel, a conflict that has already claimed hundreds of lives and severely damaged critical infrastructure in both countries.
Earlier Thursday, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz issued a direct threat against Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, after Iranian missiles struck a major hospital in southern Israel and hit residential areas near Tel Aviv. At least 240 people were wounded in the attacks, according to Israeli officials.
“The military has been instructed and knows that in order to achieve all of its goals, this man absolutely should not continue to exist,” Katz said in a televised address, referring to Khamenei.
Shortly after, Israeli warplanes conducted new airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear sites, marking the latest escalation in a conflict that began with Israel’s surprise bombing campaign on June 13.
A missile strike on Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba caused widespread damage and panic. Eighty patients and medical workers were wounded—most with minor injuries—thanks to partial evacuation measures enacted in recent days. Still, key infrastructure at the hospital, including its old surgery building, was damaged, disrupting gas, water, and air-conditioning systems.
Soroka, which provides medical care to about one million residents, had around 700 patients at the time of the strike. Following the attack, it limited services to life-threatening cases only.
Residential areas also suffered damage. In Ramat Gan, personal belongings were strewn across the wreckage of apartments hit by Iranian missiles.
The Israeli Home Front Command confirmed that one of the Iranian missiles carried a cluster munition warhead—designed to release multiple bomblets over a wide area, posing severe risks to civilians. The military has not disclosed the launch location of that missile.
Iranian officials denied deliberately striking the hospital. They claimed the intended target was a facility associated with Israel’s elite military technology unit C4i, located approximately three kilometers from Soroka, within the Gav-Yam Negev high-tech park. The Israeli army declined to comment. However, an Israeli military source acknowledged anonymously that there was no intelligence indicating Iran had targeted the hospital directly.
According to a Washington-based Iranian human rights organization, at least 657 people have been killed in Iran, including 263 civilians, and over 2,000 wounded, since the start of Israel’s air campaign last Friday.
Iran has retaliated with over 450 missiles and 1,000 drones, according to Israeli military estimates. Most were intercepted by Israel’s air defense systems, but at least 24 people have died in Israel, and hundreds more have been injured.
In anticipation of missile attacks, many Israeli hospitals, including Soroka, activated emergency plans over the past week. Parking garages were converted into wards, and vulnerable patients were transferred to underground shelters. A heavily fortified subterranean blood bank was also mobilized, originally developed in the wake of the 2023 Gaza conflict.
Doctors at Soroka reported that Thursday’s missile strike hit almost immediately after air raid sirens sounded. The explosion was powerful enough to be heard from a hospital safe room.
Despite the violence, a new diplomatic push is underway. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi is set to meet with European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell and representatives from the UK, France, and Germany in Geneva on Friday.
U.K. Foreign Secretary David Lammy also held a meeting at the White House with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and special envoy Steve Witkoff. In a social media post after the meeting, Lammy said: “A window now exists within the next two weeks to achieve a diplomatic solution.”
Indirect U.S.–Iran talks scheduled for Sunday were canceled as tensions escalated.
Despite U.S. hopes of leveraging Iran’s military losses into diplomatic concessions, Tehran’s public stance has hardened.
Iran’s Supreme Leader warned that any U.S. military intervention would result in “irreparable damage.” On Thursday, Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf accused Trump of trying to coerce Iran into a deal through military threats. “The delusional American president knows that he cannot impose peace on us by imposing war and threatening us,” he said.
The Israeli military has expanded its strikes to key nuclear sites, including the enrichment facility at Natanz, centrifuge workshops in Tehran, and other sites in Isfahan. It also launched an attack on the Arak heavy water reactor, a facility that could theoretically be used to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons.
Iranian state TV said the Arak site had been evacuated before the strike and insisted there was “no radiation danger whatsoever.” Under the 2015 nuclear deal, Iran had agreed to redesign the reactor to prevent weapons-grade plutonium production, but that work was left incomplete after Trump withdrew from the agreement in 2018.
In 2019, Iranian nuclear official Ali Akbar Salehi admitted that Tehran had purchased replacement parts for the reactor, anticipating a future need to bypass the concrete-filled modifications imposed under the agreement.
The Israeli military said its strike aimed “to prevent the reactor from being restored and used for nuclear weapons development.”
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has stated that Iran’s restrictions on inspections have led the agency to lose “continuity of knowledge” over the country’s heavy water production. This means the IAEA cannot verify Iran’s current stockpile or activities related to the Arak reactor.
Israeli officials believe the destruction of Iranian ballistic missile launchers has contributed to a decline in the intensity of attacks against Israel in recent days. However, military analysts warn that the conflict remains volatile and unpredictable, particularly with the possibility of U.S. involvement.
On Friday morning, Iranian media reported that Israeli airstrikes had reached the industrial outskirts of Rasht, a city near the Caspian Sea. Israeli authorities had previously issued warnings for civilians to evacuate the area, though it remains unclear how many received the message due to ongoing internet blackouts inside Iran.
President Trump’s upcoming decision on whether to authorize direct U.S. military involvement may fundamentally reshape the course of the conflict. While some in Washington hope that Iran’s strategic setbacks will push it toward negotiation, others warn that escalation risks a broader regional war.
As the death toll mounts and diplomacy falters, the next two weeks could prove decisive for the Middle East—and for global stability.
Author: MK
Source: AP