Trump Netanyahu News: No Rush on Iran Strikes

Meta description: Trump says there is no rush to decide on resuming strikes on Iran, as Netanyahu presses for action and Qatar mediates a possible deal.

President Donald Trump has said he is in no hurry to decide whether to resume military action against Iran, telling Axios in a telephone interview on Monday that diplomacy still has room to run even though he expects the United States to act one way or another. The remark, reported on Monday and Tuesday by several outlets carrying the Axios interview, lands at a moment of open disagreement inside and around his administration: the Israeli prime minister is urging a fresh campaign after the midterm elections, some of Trump’s own advisers are urging a deal, and others are urging patience backed by sanctions and a naval blockade. Trump himself has not committed to any of the three paths, and the decision, by every account now in public, remains unmade on Election Day itself.

The interview is the clearest statement yet of where Trump stands in that argument, and its language is deliberately unhurried. “One way or the other, we will do something, but there is no rush,” he told Axios, according to reports of the interview. He argued that American economic pressure had badly weakened Iran, saying the country had no money and no gasoline and that its people were growing very tired of the situation. He also said talks were continuing and going fine, while complaining that Tehran tried to string the process along. “We are talking to them. It’s going fine. The problem with them is … they try and tap tap tap [us along]. There’s less urgency [on the Iranian side] than you think there would be, but they want to make a deal more than they ever wanted,” he said. The combination — a promise of eventual action, a refusal to set a timetable, and a claim that Iran wants an agreement more than ever — is the frame within which every other development of the past few days now has to be read.

That frame matters because the pressure on Trump to move faster is real and comes from more than one direction. It also matters because the alternative to a decision is not quiet: American forces carried out limited strikes on Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz on Monday, the same day as the Axios interview, in an operation officials described as defensive. The gap between a limited defensive strike and a resumed full campaign is precisely what is being argued over in Washington, Jerusalem and the Gulf capitals, and Trump’s “no rush” answer is, for now, his way of holding that gap open.

Trump Netanyahu News: Pressure From Israel After the Midterms

The most direct pressure is coming from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been urging Trump to authorise another wave of strikes against Iran after the November 3 midterm elections, according to officials cited by The Associated Press. Netanyahu raised the possibility of renewed military action during a telephone conversation with Trump over the weekend, but the president did not commit to further strikes, according to a person briefed on the call. Netanyahu is also reported to be working with senior Trump administration officials to persuade Washington to carry out a quick but extensive air campaign against Iran.

The timing of that push is not accidental. Netanyahu and his far-right allies lost their parliamentary majority in last week’s Israeli elections, AP reported, citing regional officials, and a return to full-scale conflict with Iran could help him form an emergency government. That political context does not by itself determine what Trump will do — the decision to resume joint strikes rests with Trump, as reporting throughout this episode has stressed — but it helps explain why the Israeli request is being pressed now, in the days immediately around the American midterms, rather than left until a new Israeli government takes shape.

Nor is the request a new idea raised for the first time at the weekend. ABC News reported on October 22 that the Israeli and American militaries had drawn up plans for possible strikes after the midterm elections, citing two Israeli sources familiar with the preparations. Potential targets in those plans included petrochemical facilities and nuclear sites, including the suspected underground facility at Pickaxe Mountain. One Israeli source told ABC News that regime change, rather than a negotiated agreement, remained the Israeli government’s primary objective. Trump himself has kept Pickaxe Mountain in public view: speaking to reporters at his Florida residence on October 31, he said the United States still had one or two sites in Iran to deal with and mentioned the facility by name, and in a telephone interview with Fox News on November 2 he again raised the possibility of striking it, saying it could be done in literally one hour, at any time, as reported by The Washington Post.

That record cuts both ways for anyone trying to predict Trump’s decision. On the one hand, he has repeatedly threatened further military action and has kept specific targets in his public remarks. On the other, when asked directly on November 2 whether he was considering launching strikes against Iran after the midterm elections, he replied “No”, according to Reuters. The two statements are not necessarily contradictory — ruling out an immediate post-election strike is not the same as ruling out strikes altogether — but together they describe a president who is keeping the military option visible while refusing to be pinned to a timetable. That is consistent with the Axios interview, and it is why Netanyahu’s weekend call ended, by the accounts available, without a commitment.

Iran War News: Three Options Before the White House

Inside the administration, the argument has crystallised into three competing approaches, each with its own backers, according to reporting by Axios, Channel 12 and others. The first option is a diplomatic settlement. Vice President JD Vance and White House envoy Steve Witkoff are urging Trump to move towards an agreement, arguing that renewed military action may not improve a situation that diplomacy could still resolve. The second option is a return to fighting. Netanyahu and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth are reported to favour renewed combat, arguing that Iran cannot be trusted to negotiate or to honour an agreement. The third option is to hold the current pressure in place: maintain the naval blockade and economic sanctions, launch neither a new war nor an immediate deal, and wait to see whether Tehran softens its position in the coming weeks or months. That course is associated with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and reporting by Channel 12, carried by The Times of Israel, also named CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Secretary of State Marco Rubio among those favouring continued economic pressure without either a new war or a deal.

The Wall Street Journal added a further element to the picture, reporting that Trump has been leaning towards a large attack on Iran after the midterm election but has not decided whether to proceed. According to people familiar with the Saturday call, he told Netanyahu that he wanted to give continuing diplomatic efforts a chance to succeed. That account sits alongside the Axios interview rather than against it: a president leaning in one direction in private, telling an ally he will give diplomacy a chance, and telling a news outlet there is no rush, is a president who has not yet been forced — by events, by allies or by his own deadline — to choose.

Rubio’s own public comments point in the same direction. Speaking on Saturday, the secretary of state said Trump had not made a decision on further strikes and would prefer a diplomatic solution. “He hasn’t made a decision,” Rubio said, adding that Trump “would prefer to solve it diplomatically”. Rubio added that Trump was confident the United States had the capability to achieve its military objectives if necessary, but preferred a peaceful solution. Vance, speaking to Fox News in Minnesota, struck a similar note of cautious optimism about the diplomatic track. “The President and I both feel pretty good about the prospects for potentially coming to a negotiated settlement. We’re going to keep on working at it… We’ve certainly made some progress. We’ll see if we can make some more,” he said, while also noting that he and Trump had held a number of good conversations with the Iranians.

The disagreement is therefore not between officials who want action and officials who want inaction. It is between three different theories of what action means: a deal that ends the confrontation, a campaign that finishes it militarily, or sustained pressure that waits for Tehran to move first. Each theory has a plausible reading of the same facts — an Iranian economy under severe strain, a military that has taken heavy damage, and a leadership that has not yet accepted American terms — and each leads to a different answer about what Trump should do next. The president’s refusal to rush the choice is, in that sense, not indecision so much as a decision to let the three arguments, and the mediation running alongside them, play out a little longer.

White House News: The Qatar Mediation and the Three-Day Framework

The mediation giving Trump that extra time is being run by Qatar, and its current shape is now reasonably clear from reporting by Axios, Reuters and others. Qatari mediators have prepared a draft agreement setting out a three-day sequence of confidence-building measures aimed at resuming direct negotiations between the United States and Iran. A diplomat familiar with the developments told Axios that the mediators were awaiting feedback from both Washington and Tehran, and Qatari mediator Ali al-Thawadi travelled to Tehran on Monday to continue discussions on the proposed agreement, with the diplomat indicating that progress was being made.

The sequence of recent meetings shows how active the channel has been even while the military argument continued in public. Iranian negotiators left Doha on Sunday after several days of discussions, Reuters reported, with a draft proposal being circulated and a follow-up meeting still possible. Al-Thawadi’s trip to Tehran the next day was the follow-on step: carrying the framework to the Iranian side and seeking its response. The details of what the three days would contain have not been published, and officials have not described the individual steps, but the purpose is not in doubt — a short, sequenced set of moves by both sides that would be enough to restart direct talks after months in which the two countries have communicated largely through intermediaries.

Alongside the Qatari framework sits an Iranian proposal of its own. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei said Tehran’s proposal was based on a seven-step plan submitted in September. Under that proposal, the United States would lift its naval blockade and Iran would reopen the Strait of Hormuz, and the arrangement would also envisage a waiver for Iranian oil sales, the cancellation of new sanctions, and subsequent discussions on other issues, Reuters reported. Baghaei said the proposal had been condensed to allow its implementation within two days, and added that negotiations over Iran’s nuclear programme could resume only after Tehran had verified that its conditions had been met. Trump had rejected the original seven-step proposal in September, Reuters reported, so the condensed version is best understood as Tehran’s attempt to repackage terms Washington already turned down once, in a form short enough to be tested quickly.

Tehran’s public posture during this phase has been deliberately two-sided. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Iran was prepared for both diplomacy and military confrontation, warning that any renewed military action would invite a stronger response. He also said consultations through mediators were continuing, telling the Iranian state news agency IRNA: “We have presented our conditions and proposals and everything depends on the political rationality of Washington.” Baghaei, for his part, said responsibility for advancing negotiations rested with Washington, reiterating Tehran’s demand for an end to the American naval blockade. Araghchi has also sought to reassure Gulf neighbours, telling them Iran harbours no hostility towards the Gulf Cooperation Council states and wants regional security arrangements led by countries in the region, while appreciating the positive roles played by Qatar and Oman and continuing dialogue with Saudi Arabia.

What neither side has done is close the gap on sequencing: who moves first, and how much each side gives up before the other reciprocates. That is exactly the question the Qatari three-day framework is designed to answer, and it is why the mediators are still awaiting feedback from both capitals. Until that feedback arrives, the diplomatic track remains a process rather than an outcome, and Trump’s “no rush” line can be read as an acknowledgement of that fact as much as a strategic choice.

Pentagon News: The Qeshm Strike and the Limits of Limited Action

The military track, meanwhile, has not stood still while diplomacy proceeds. On Monday, American forces carried out limited strikes on Qeshm Island near the Strait of Hormuz, in an operation officials described as defensive. The Wall Street Journal first revealed the strike, and CNN, citing three American officials, reported that it came in response to Iran firing at an American aircraft, while Fox News gave the same account. The Washington Post reported that one official said the operation was intended to protect American troops from Iranian forces using surface-to-air missiles, while another said the strikes hit Iranian missile launchers. ABC News separately reported that the operation was in response to an Iranian attack on an American aircraft, and that officials described the strikes as limited and said they did not signal the resumption of major combat operations.

The details reported by the Journal add precision. In one incident on Monday, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps fired a surface-to-air missile at an American jet fighter, which fired back in self-defence, officials said. In a separate incident the same day, American forces intercepted a Revolutionary Guard missile that originated from Qeshm and was targeting commercial shipping. The Pentagon referred questions about the operation to United States Central Command, which did not immediately respond, and no battle-damage assessment has been made public. Iranian state media reported several explosions on Qeshm Island, with the state news agency IRNA describing at least five loud explosions in rapid succession late on Monday and eyewitnesses reporting two unidentified military aircraft operating at high speed overhead.

The operation matters for the wider argument because it shows how narrow the line between “limited” and “resumed” can look from the region. The Washington Post reported that the strike came despite an earlier White House statement that the United States would not attack Iran before the midterm elections, and that it was part of a series of limited strikes carried out by American forces in recent weeks. Regional allies have warned Washington against launching another extensive military campaign: according to AP, officials fear renewed hostilities could prompt Iran-aligned Houthi rebels in Yemen to intensify attacks against Saudi Arabia and commercial shipping in the Red Sea, while Iran-backed militias in Iraq could also become involved. Gulf countries, the Journal reported on Monday, are preparing for the possibility of renewed American strikes and Iranian retaliation. That preparation is itself a cost of the current uncertainty: even a decision deferred is a decision that other governments must plan around.

The Qeshm operation also remains distinct, in the reporting, from the wider air campaign Netanyahu is urging Trump to authorise. Officials have been careful to describe Monday’s strikes as defensive and limited, and Trump has not committed to a broader offensive. But the distinction depends on intent and scale, both of which are harder to verify from outside than the fact of explosions on an island at the mouth of the world’s most important oil waterway. For Gulf governments watching both the mediation and the missiles, the question is not whether Monday’s strikes were defensive in design, but whether the next American action will be.

Trump News: Oil, Inflation and the Economic Case

Hours after the Axios interview, Trump took to Truth Social and linked falling oil prices to expectations of a possible diplomatic settlement with Tehran. “Oil Prices are DROPPING LIKE A ROCK, down almost $10 a Barrel, A RECORD, because people feel that there will not be a War with Iran. Iran wants a settlement, as soon as possible. It could happen!” he posted. In closing remarks reported by Business Standard, he went further, claiming oil was down $10 in a single day — the biggest drop in oil in history, in his telling — and that it would fall further because the United States was winning with Iran easily. “Their navy is gone, their air force is gone… They have no money but the only thing they have is the highest inflation in the last 15 years for any country over 300% inflation and they want to make a deal and that could happen,” he said.

Those figures are Trump’s claims, and they should be read as such: they are his case for why pressure is working, made in his own voice, not independently verified measurements published with the interview. But as political argument they are central to his position. If Iran’s economy is collapsing under sanctions and blockade, if its forces have been degraded, and if markets are already pricing in a settlement, then waiting costs Washington little and a rushed campaign risks throwing away an advantage that time is already delivering. That is the logic that connects the oil-price post to the “no rush” interview: both present patience as strength, not hesitation.

Trump also repeated the red line that has run through his Iran policy from the start. “We have no nuclear weapons for Iran. We’re not going to allow Iran ever to have a nuclear weapon. They’ve understood that. And they’ve said it even recently that ‘we will not have a nuclear weapon’,” he said. That line is the one point on which the three camps inside his administration appear to agree: whatever the route — deal, campaign or continued pressure — it must end with Iran without a nuclear weapon. Where they differ is on whether that outcome is best secured by negotiating now, by striking again, or by waiting behind a blockade until Tehran accepts terms it has so far resisted.

The economic backdrop also explains why the decision is being watched so closely by American voters. The conflict has lasted about eight months, involving strikes, a naval blockade and disrupted shipping through a waterway through which about 20 million barrels of oil passed every day before the war, and the Pentagon cost estimate for the campaign has been put at more than $47 billion. Gas prices have surged as a consequence, and the cost of living has become one of the dominant issues of the midterm campaign. A settlement that brought oil prices down would be a political asset; a resumed campaign that pushed them up again would be a liability. Trump, watching midterm returns on Election Day, has every reason to weigh that arithmetic alongside the military advice.

What Happens Next

The immediate next steps are procedural, and they will be visible only in fragments. Mediators are awaiting feedback from Washington and Tehran on the Qatari draft, al-Thawadi’s Tehran trip will produce either a response or a request for more time, and the Iranian side’s condensed two-day version of its September proposal remains on the table. If either channel produces movement, the three-day confidence-building sequence could begin and direct negotiations could resume for the first time in months. If neither does, Trump will face the same three options, but with less diplomatic cover for choosing patience — and with Netanyahu’s request still standing.

The other thing to watch is what Trump says once the midterm results are known. His November 2 “No” answer concerned strikes immediately after the elections; it did not foreclose action later, and the Journal’s reporting that he has leaned towards a large attack after the midterms remains the most hawkish signal in the record. Whether the election outcome strengthens the hand of the deal-makers or the hawks inside his administration — whether a Congress controlled by Democrats pushes him towards confrontation or towards a settlement he can present as a win — is one of the unanswered questions of election night, and it will shape the Iran decision as surely as anything happening in Doha or Tehran.

For now, the position is exactly as Trump stated it on Monday: something will be done, one way or the other, but there is no rush. Netanyahu has asked for a campaign and has not received a commitment. Vance and Witkoff have argued for a deal and have not received one. Bessent, Ratcliffe and Rubio have argued for holding pressure and, for the moment, that is what is happening — a blockade maintained, limited strikes carried out in self-defence, and mediators shuttling between capitals with a three-day framework that neither side has yet accepted. The decision has been deferred, not made, and the next move belongs to whoever answers the mediators first.

Source: IranWire