Donald Trump’s decision to allow “two weeks” to decide whether the US will join in Israel’s assault on Iran may be an effort at conflict resolution via diplomacy, or may have more to do with waiting for a second aircraft carrier strike group, the USS Nimitz, to arrive in the Middle East next week.
To give the US president the benefit of the doubt, he may genuinely hope to do some kind of deal with the Iranians. If that is so, it will be bad news for Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, whose war aims are reliant on the direct involvement of the US.
Israel does not appear to have the conventional ‘bunker buster’ weapons needed to attack Iran’s underground Fordow uranium enrichment plant – but it has been widely assumed that the US does. Without carrying out such an attack, Netanyahu’s aim of wrecking the core of Iran’s nuclear ambitions will fail, and he will be in trouble politically.
