Donald J. Trump. Photo: Official Facebook Page of Donald Trump
After incoming National Security Advisor Mike Waltz vowed that the next U.S. administration would reinstate the maximum pressure policy on the Iranian regime, The Wall Street Journal on Thursday reported that pre-emptive strikes on the regime’s nuclear facilities are also being weighed by President-elect Donald Trump.
According to the report, the transition team is weighing several options for how to deal with the regime, which reportedly tried to assassinate Trump and, in recent months, has sharply increased its stockpile of fissile material.
A member of the transition team said the United States must take more action against Iran, which “is actively trying to kill President Trump.”
“That certainly influences everybody’s thinking when it comes to what the relationship is out the gate,” the source added.
A report from the Office of the U.S. Director of National Intelligence (DNI) recently warned that “Iran now has enough fissile material to make more than a dozen nuclear weapons ,” but has not yet decided to proceed.
Despite Trump’s aversion to starting new wars and his stated desire to reduce U.S. troops stationed in the Middle East, the WSJ said a military option to prevent Iran from building a nuclear bomb has received more serious consideration in recent weeks.
The regime lost several of its terror proxies over the past months, as Israel has nearly destroyed Hamas in Gaza, decapitated Hezbollah in Lebanon, and seen the Assad regime in Syria collapse under the pressure of a rebel onslaught.
When asked about the possibility of war with Iran, Trump said that “anything can happen” during an interview with Time that was published on Thursday. “It’s a very volatile situation,” he added.
While Trump reportedly considered a pre-emptive strike on Iranian nuclear facilities at the end of his previous term, the regime is now weaker than it has been in decades, presenting an opportunity for the president-elect to take dramatic action at the start of his second term, which begins on Jan. 20, 2025.
“If you were going to actually do something to neutralize the nuclear-weapons program, this would be it,” Mark Dubowitz, chief executive of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), told WSJ.
The newspaper cited four people familiar with the transition team’s plans, who said that two broad options are currently under discussion.
The first strategy envisions a massive ramping up of military pressure with the deployment of additional American forces to the region. This could include the sale of advanced bunker-buster bombs to Israel, enabling it to target fortified nuclear facilities without direct U.S. involvement.
The second option is a combined approach, using the threat of military strikes alongside new sanctions, aiming to pressure Iran into accepting a diplomatic solution.
“You’re going to see a huge shift on Iran,” Trump’s incoming national security advisor, Waltz, said.
Last month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he and Trump had spoken three times on the phone and emphasized that they were seeing “ eye-to-eye on the Iranian threat in all its aspects, and on the dangers they reflect. We also see the great opportunities facing Israel, in the area of peace and its expansion, and in other areas.”