Washington — President Trump has been briefed on both the risks and the benefits of bombing Fordo, Iran’s most secure nuclear site, and his mindset is that disabling it is necessary because of the risk of weapons being produced in a relatively short period of time, multiple sources told CBS News.
“He believes there’s not much choice,” one source said. “Finishing the job means destroying Fordo.”
The president approved attack plans on Iran on Tuesday night, but has not made a final decision on whether to strike the country and formally join Israel’s air campaign, a senior intelligence source and a Defense Department official told CBS News on Wednesday. Mr. Trump held off on deciding to strike in case Tehran agrees to abandon its nuclear program, the sources said.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the president will make a decision on whether to order a strike within the next two weeks.
“Based on the fact that there is a substantial chance of negotiations that may or may not take place with Iran in the near future, I will make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks,” Mr. Trump said in a statement read by Leavitt at the White House press briefing.
CBS News previously reported that Mr. Trump was weighing a strike on Fordo, a subterranean uranium enrichment facility. Israel has not conducted any known strikes on Fordo since it began bombing Iranian nuclear and military targets late last week.
Trump’s decision
Mr. Trump is willing to get the U.S. involved if that’s what it takes to knock out the site, sources said. As of Thursday, he was still reviewing his options and has not made a firm decision either way. He has discussed the logistics of using bunker-buster bombs, two of the sources said.
It was not immediately clear how much of the U.S. military infrastructure needed for a strike was in place or how much time it would take to move assets into position.
One option Mr. Trump has considered is that Iran could disable Fordo on its own, if its leaders so choose, two of the sources said.
Ufuk Celal Guzel/Anadolu via Getty Images 
David Lammy, the foreign secretary of the U.K., flew to Washington to meet Thursday with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and White House Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, CBS News learned, with active diplomacy underway to find an off-ramp in the conflict and make a take-it-or-leave-it offer to Iran. London maintains an embassy in Tehran, giving the U.K. visibility that the U.S. does not have in the Iranian capital.
“Now is the time to put a stop to the grave scenes in the Middle East and prevent a regional escalation that would benefit no one,” Lammy said in a statement following his meetings with Trump officials.
Mr. Trump is aware of the diplomatic effort being undertaken, with Lammy, the foreign ministers of Germany, France and the high representative of the European Union set to meet with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi in Geneva on Friday.
The conversation there may help ascertain whether Iran is still open to direct talks with the U.S., not just the European nations, which is something Witkoff has also been trying to initiate through his own personal outreach, according to a U.S. official.
Mr. Trump has viewed intelligence reports indicating the estimated speed at which Iran could produce bombs, two of the sources said.
John Ratcliffe, the CIA director, has said in closed-door settings that Iran is viewed as being very close to possessing nuclear weapons, according to multiple sources.
Ratcliffe has said that claiming Iran isn’t close would be similar to saying football players who have fought their way to the one-yard line don’t want to score a touchdown, one U.S. official said.
Congressional committees that have been briefed by senior CIA analysts have been told the intelligence community’s view remains that no order to weaponize has been given by the supreme leader and that Iran has not restarted research on a delivery mechanism for a nuclear bomb.
The CIA declined to comment.
Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Wednesday that “so far, at least, the intelligence community has stood by its conclusion that Iran is not moving towards a nuclear weapon.”
“They were enriching additional uranium, but they were not weaponizing that yet, and that [decision] was left with the supreme leader,” he told reporters. “If there has been a change in that intelligence, I need to know, and I want to make sure that if it is changed, it’s based upon fact and not political influence.”
“Things change, especially with war”
Mr. Trump told reporters on Wednesday he had not made a final decision on whether to strike Iran.
“I like to make the final decision one second before it’s due, because things change, especially with war,” he said.
“I may do it. I may not do it. I mean, nobody knows what I’m going to do,” he said earlier in the day, adding that he’d like Iran to negotiate on a deal to end its nuclear program.
Iran — which has long insisted the program exists solely for peaceful purposes — said Wednesday it “does NOT negotiate under duress,” and said it would “respond to any threat with a counter-threat.”
Iran has prepared missiles and equipment for strikes on U.S. bases in the Middle East if the U.S. joins the Israeli campaign, according to a senior U.S. intelligence official and a Pentagon official briefed on the matter.
Israel began striking Iran last Friday morning. The Trump administration has said publicly it is not participating in the offensive strikes, though CBS News previously reported the U.S. has helped Israel intercept Iran’s retaliatory missile strikes.
In recent days, Mr. Trump has not ruled out the idea of joining Israel’s campaign, saying on Truth Social his “patience is wearing thin.”
The president said Tuesday the U.S. knows the whereabouts of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. “He is an easy target, but is safe there — We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now,” Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social. On Sunday, CBS News reported Mr. Trump had opposed an Israeli plan to kill Khamenei.
Next steps in possible negotiations
Two diplomatic sources indicated to CBS News that Turkey and Oman, as well as European countries including Italy and Norway, had offered to host potential direct or indirect talks between the U.S. and Iran should Tehran choose that path. At this point, there are no direct US-Iran talks scheduled, though European allies are trying to help coordinate.
On Thursday, the Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said Rubio had told him that the U.S. is ready for direct negotiations with Iranian counterparts. A French diplomat said that Rubio spoke by phone with his French counterpart, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot, and conveyed that the U.S. was ready for “direct contact with the Iranians at any time.” Barrot and Rubio are expected to speak again after the Geneva consultations in order to coordinate.
Amidst the chaos inside Iran following the Israeli strikes and the killing of top Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps officials, it is not clear just what Araghchi’s marching orders will be when he arrives in Geneva, nor how functional the Iranian government itself is at this moment.
Sources in the region indicated that connectivity and international calls into Iran are difficult to complete. The cyber attacks that have paralyzed the banking system itself underscore the internal disruption, and as of Thursday multiple diplomats acknowledged it all made it more difficult to arrange for in person talks with Araghchi in the first place. Iranian state news announced Araghchi is expected to transit on to Turkey on June 20.
One diplomatic source indicated that the ongoing Israeli assault may also make the supreme leader fearful to communicate given concerns about avoiding signals intelligence intercepts that could be used to target him.
Mr. Trump has been frustrated in recent weeks that while Iran shows up to the negotiating table, its leaders have not shown a willingness to negotiate terms. A U.S. official familiar with the efforts told News CBS that Iran sat for two weeks on the most recent Witkoff proposal presented by the U.S. without directly declining or accepting its terms. Instead Iranian leadership issued press statements, but the negotiators did not directly engage on the specifics or discuss the terms of the offer. That lack of substantive engagement left the Trump administration in doubt over whether Iran was engaging in good faith negotiations, or simply running out the proverbial clock.
Netanyahu has publicly questioned whether Iran’s leaders were playing with Mr. Trump, and used that uncertainty to justify his unilateral decision to launch military strikes. Multiple U.S. and foreign diplomats indicated that Mr. Trump did not bless the strikes but also did not explicitly tell Netanyahu to go forward. Diplomatic sources acknowledged to CBS News that Iran’s leaders may also be wondering about the degree of coordination between the U.S. and Israel, and uncertain over whether the U.S.-initiated diplomacy was all a ruse to justify the military force that Netanyahu has long advocated.
A U.S. official insisted to CBS News Thursday evening that Mr. Trump’s interest in diplomacy was genuine as was his aversion to getting the U.S. military drawn into a Middle East war, especially without a clear sense of what will come next should the Iranian regime collapse. U.S. and European diplomats confirmed that behind closed doors there are conversations about who would lead Iran next, whether the nuclear sites and material can be secured, as well as environmental and health impacts for allies in surrounding areas that could result from military strikes on nuclear facilities.
and
Kathryn Watson
contributed to this report.
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