President Donald Trump on Sunday promised to secure “PEACE, soon, between Israel and Iran” but wouldn’t rule out direct U.S. involvement in the conflict when confronted on the issue by ABC’s Rachel Scott.
The president posted early Sunday morning that the U.S. had “nothing to do with” Israel’s ongoing campaign of military strikes against Iran and cautioned the country against retaliating in any way that would draw America into the conflict.
“If we are attacked in any way, shape or form by Iran, the full strength and might of the U.S. Armed Forces will come down on you at levels never seen before,” he wrote on Truth Social. “However, we can easily get a deal done between Iran and Israel, and end this bloody conflict!!!”
He later reiterated that he would soon broker a peace deal between the two nations, adding: “I do a lot, and never get credit for anything, but that’s OK, the PEOPLE understand. MAKE THE MIDDLE EAST GREAT AGAIN!”
Multiple reports over the weekend suggested that Israel pleaded with the U.S. to get more involved in the conflict, which first boiled over Thursday when Israel launched a series of missile attacks on the capital city of Tehran.
Trump reportedly vetoed an Israeli plan to strike and kill Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, arguing in a conversation with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that it was a bad idea. The plan was first reported by Reuters and confirmed by CNN and CBS, among others.
Netanyahu didn’t deny the incident in an interview with Fox News Sunday morning, saying: “There’s so many false reports of conversations that never happened, and I’m not going to get into that.”
“We will do what we need to do, and I think the United States knows what is good for the United States and I’m just not going to get into it,” he added.
The call to take a harder line on Iran was also taken up by a group of pro-Israel House members, led by Reps. Don Bacon, a Republican, and Josh Gottheimer, a Democrat. The group sent a letter to Trump, first reported by Axios, that called for the president to impose further sanctions on Iran and ensure that it has “zero enrichment, zero pathway to a nuclear weapon.”
In an interview Sunday with ABC News’ Scott, Trump said he had no immediate plans to do so but left the door open to direct U.S. involvement in the conflict — the first time he had done so since the fighting began.
“We’re not involved in it. It’s possible we could get involved. But we are not at this moment involved,” the president said.
The conflict escalated again on Sunday when Israel launched a new round of strikes on Tehran, a rare daytime assault that The New York Times called one of “the fiercest and most prolonged in the decades-long enmity between Israel and Iran.” At least 128 people have died in Iran so far, according to the country’s health ministry.
The strikes also came just hours after Iran canceled a round of nuclear talks with representatives from the U.S., limiting Trump’s avenues for a diplomatic solution to the current round of hostilities.
Earlier this year, Trump said he had given Iran 60 days to “make a deal” concerning its nuclear program, a deadline that came and went this week before Israel’s strikes.
He told ABC News that he had no intention of setting a new deadline but said peace talks were ongoing.
“No, there’s no deadline. But they are talking. They’d like to make a deal. They’re talking,” he said.
“Something like this had to happen because I think even from both sides, but something like this had to happen. They want to talk, and they will be talking.”
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Brett Bachman is a senior editor for breaking news at NOTUS.