CNN
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Hours before Israeli fighters launched an attack on Iran early on Friday, President Donald Trump, who raised new fears about a full-scale war in the region, revealed that it was the outcome he wanted to avoid.
“I don’t want them to come in. I mean, it’s going to blow it away,” he said.
The fact that Israel has come in anyway – without our involvement and against the wishes he has put publicly stated – now Trump is stabbing one of the biggest tests of his young presidency.
By his own narrative, the strike is the risk of cutting off diplomatic attempts with Tehran, even as his top envoy prepares to depart for Oman for another consultation this weekend.
It threw Paul into his already tense relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been sharply opposed for months and urged him to hold back the strike this week.
And it presents him with another global conflict without a simple resolution.
Trump will now find himself caught during the cross-current race from within his party. Many Republicans immediately provided support to Israel on Thursday. This is about “Game-on” written by longtime Iranian Hawk Sen. Lindsey Graham on X.
However, Trump has never fully adopted the tensions in his party’s foreign policy, especially in his second term. His administration is piled up with officials that began with his vice president. He is deeply skeptical of the involvement of US military overseas without expressing American interests.
Trump did not provide a signal shortly after the attack that he was ready to use American military assets to protect Israel from expected Iranian retaliation, as did Israel and Iran when they fired fire last year.
Without US aid, Israeli air defense could not withstand major Iranian onslaught.
Instead, the focus of the public message from the US administration was to protect Americans in the Middle East and to warn Iran not to drag the US into the fight.
Still, due to all the complicated dynamics Trump now has made arrangements, the attacks barely come as a surprise to the president and his team.
Even if he spoke from the East Room on Thursday, the president and his aides knew there was a high chance that a strike would be coming soon, sources said despite repeated attempts to urge Netanyahu to hold him down.
When the strike began, Trump had appeared on the south lawn on a Congressional picnic. According to White House officials and other sources, he later returned to the West Wing to flock with the highest officials.
A brief statement from Secretary of State Marco Rubio then called for distance between the United States and any role in the attack.
“Tonight, Israel took a one-sided action against Iran. We are not involved in a strike against Iran, and our number one priority is to protect the US troops in the region,” read the statement distributed by the White House.
“Israel advised us that we believe this action is necessary for self-defense. President Trump and the administration have taken all the necessary steps to protect our troops and continue to be in close contact with our local partners,” Rubio continues. “Let me be clear: Iran should not target our interests or personnel.”
It lacks even a boilerplate language that provides support for Israel and its defense, the statement revealed: this is not a Trump conflict, it is an Israeli conflict.