What happened
President Donald Trump said Thursday he will decide whether to join Israel's attack on Iran "within the next two weeks," as "there's a substantial chance of negotiations" with Tehran "in the near future." Israel launched more airstrikes targeting Iran's nuclear facilities Thursday and Iranian missiles struck several buildings in Israel, including a large hospital in Beersheba, through Friday morning as the conflict entered its eighth day.
Who said what
Trump's two-week window "opened up diplomatic options, with the apparent hope Iran would make concessions after suffering major military losses," The Associated Press said. "But at least publicly, Iran has struck a hard line."
Trump has approved an attack plan and is "seriously considering joining the war," Axios said, citing U.S. officials, but first he "wants to ensure" the operation "wouldn't drag the U.S. into a prolonged war in the Middle East" and would destroy Iran's nuclear program. Polls show Americans are deeply "skeptical about a potential U.S. military strike," The Washington Post said.
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What next?
The foreign ministers of Britain, France, Germany and the EU are meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi in Geneva on Friday in the hopes of giving Trump "an off-ramp on bombing Iran," Politico said. U.K. Foreign Secretary David Lammy, who is flying to the talks from a meeting in Washington with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, said yesterday that a "window now exists within the next two weeks to achieve a diplomatic solution." But "two weeks," for Trump, is a famously "slippery" and "subjective unit of time" that "can mean something, or nothing at all," The New York Times said.
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