Live Updates: Israel and Iran Trade New Strikes on 9th Day of War

Not much, the veterans of such negotiations warn. But then again, the environment is very different this time.

Ayatollah Khamenei is the final word in all foreign policy issues — but he is also most likely in hiding, American intelligence officials say.

Iran’s foreign minister and lead negotiator, Abbas Araghchi, says he is open to placing limitations on Iran’s nuclear output similar to what he and his colleagues negotiated with the United States a decade ago.

But on Friday, he told his European counterparts in Geneva that Iran would never negotiate as long as Israel was dropping missiles on its military bases and nuclear facilities, and carrying out targeted killings of Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps officers and nuclear scientists.

Mr. Trump, for his part, made clear to reporters on Friday that he is interested largely in the coercive part of coercive diplomacy. Iran, he insisted, had only minutes left on the clock. “I’m giving them a period of time, and I would say two weeks would be the maximum,” he said.

And he dismissed the idea that the meeting in Europe would do anything but slow things down. “Iran didn’t want to speak to Europe,” he said. “They want to speak to us. Europe is not going to be able to help.”

Whether Mr. Trump is serious about negotiations or just buying time to better prepare for a military assault and its aftermath remains unclear.

But there was no public evidence yet that the contacts between Mr. Araghchi and Steve Witkoff, the president’s Middle East envoy, could lead to a meeting, much less a deal that would satisfy Mr. Trump. Or even that such a deal would be enough to hold back Israel’s determination to wipe out Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Mr. Araghchi knows every inch of the Iranian nuclear complex, and was a central player in negotiating the 2015 nuclear deal, which Mr. Trump exited three years later. But even today American officials do not know how much sway he holds with the ayatollah.

Mr. Witkoff is the mirror opposite: He knew virtually nothing about the Iranian program and has spent the past few months cramming on the details of nuclear enrichment and Iranian negotiating history. But he has a tight relationship with Mr. Trump that goes back to their New York real estate days, and holds considerable sway over what constitutes an acceptable deal.

If the two men were able to come to the kind of agreement that has eluded them through two and a half months of negotiations, they would still have to sell it back home.

“These are not normal times,” said Richard Haass, who oversaw Iran policy for President George H.W. Bush and was a senior State Department official for President George W. Bush. “The pressure on Iran, since they are losing, is more intense than it has ever been. And the pressure on Trump to use military force if it looks like the Iranians are trying to buy time rather than reach an agreement will be huge.”

Success may depend on exactly what Mr. Trump demands: the “unconditional surrender” that he keeps talking about, or a narrower, face-saving halt in remaining nuclear enrichment, with the understanding that while Iran may retain what it views as its “right” to produce nuclear fuel, it will never again exercise that right.

“Two weeks may be enough time for an unconditional capitulation. A day suffices for that,” said Robert Malley, who participated in the negotiations that led to the 2015 agreement and then led the failed Biden-era effort to reconstitute some version of that deal.

But, Mr. Malley added, “that may be what President Trump wants, but it is almost certainly not what he will get. As the Islamic Republic sees it, it’s tantamount to being offered the choice between committing suicide and taking their chances at being killed. History suggests they will take their chances.”

Mr. Malley noted that there might be room for a diplomatic off-ramp, one in which “Iran agrees to ‘voluntarily’ and ‘temporarily’ stop enriching uranium, which is much easier now that its enrichment capacity is a shadow of its former self.” That, he added, could “give space for U.S.-Iranian negotiations and halt the mad dash to a U.S. war.”

It is the kind of creative approach that, when missiles were not flying, might be wordsmithed over weeks or months in Vienna, then taken back to Tehran and Washington for formal sign-off. Clearly, no one has time for that process now. As he emerged from the talks in Geneva on Friday, Mr. Araghchi did not sound in the mood for even starting down that road, any more than Mr. Trump sounded very interested in negotiating.

The Iranian foreign minister suggested that, in retrospect, perhaps his talks with Mr. Witkoff had been an elaborate American-engineered shadow play, a cover for the Israelis as they prepared for war.

“So they had perhaps this plan in their mind, and they just needed negotiations perhaps to cover it up,” Mr. Araghchi told Andrea Mitchell of NBC. “We don’t know how we can trust them anymore. What they did was in fact a betrayal to diplomacy.”

Iran, he said, would never entirely stop making nuclear fuel. “Zero enrichment is impossible,” he said. “This is an achievement of our own scientists. It is a question of national pride.”

The Iranian ambassador, Amir Saeid Iravani, denounced “the so-called pre-emptive attacks and existential threat claims used by this terrorist regime and its allies to justify aggression,” and described Israel as a nation that “kills innocent people and violates the territorial integrity of the states.” He held up photos of children he said were killed by Israeli strikes.

The Israeli ambassador, Danny Danon, in turn, accused Iran of “playing the victim,” and demanded of Mr. Iravani, “How dare you ask the international community to protect you from the consequences of your own genocidal agenda?”

The meeting — riddled with personal attacks and finger-pointing among the members — came as talks in Geneva between Iran and European countries adjourned without a breakthrough, and Iran’s foreign minister said serious negotiations were not possible until Israel stopped bombing.

Security Council members largely agreed on the need to end the fighting and seek diplomacy, but their session devolved into arguing over who was to blame.

Dorothy Camille Shea, the interim U.S. representative, denounced Iran as the “principal source of instability and terror in the Middle East” with the capabilities to produce a nuclear weapon, and said the United States continues to support Israel. Other Western nations like Britain and France struck a more cautious tone with a greater emphasis on de-escalation and negotiation.

Vasily Nebenzya, Russia’s ambassador, slammed the United States, Britain, France and Germany for spreading a “groundless fabrication” that Iran had plans to possess nuclear weapons, calling the Western powers “complicit” in the Israeli attacks and “just as dangerous as the deadliest weaponry.”

The International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, declared on June 12 that Iran was in breach of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the first time the agency has passed a resolution against the country in 20 years.

The agency reported that Iran had accelerated its enrichment of uranium, an element that can be used to make an atomic bomb, to a high level. It noted that all of the other nations that possess such highly enriched uranium also have nuclear weapons, but stopped short of saying that Iran was building one.

Mr. Nebenzya called the I.A.E.A. report “biased” and “baseless,” while Fu Cong, China’s representative, took a milder stance on Friday. He condemned Israel’s attacks and called for an immediate cease-fire, but refrained from criticizing the I.A.E.A. or the United States.

U.S. intelligence agencies have assessed that Iran is not trying to build a bomb, though it might be able to do so within a year. When asked about that on Friday, President Trump said, “Well, then my intelligence community is wrong.”

The secretary general of the United Nations, António Guterres, acknowledged Iran’s longstanding denial about seeking nuclear weapons but pointed to a “trust gap.”

“The only way to bridge that gap is through diplomacy, to establish a credible, comprehensive and verifiable solution, including full access to the inspectors of the I.A.E.A.,” he said.

Mr. Guterres warned Israel and Iran to give peace a chance before the conflict escalates further. “We are not drifting toward a crisis. We are racing toward it.”

At least 224 people have been killed and more than 2,500 injured in Israeli strikes across Iran as of Thursday, according to Iran’s Ministry of Health. At least 29 people have been killed and about 900 injured in Iranian strikes across Israel, Mr. Danon said on Friday. Both countries said the majority of their casualties were civilians.

Speaking directly to the camera, Ms. Gabbard warned that the threat of nuclear war remained. “As we stand here today, closer to the brink of nuclear annihilation than ever before,” she said, “political elites and warmongers are carelessly fomenting fear and tension between nuclear powers.”

Mr. Trump berated Ms. Gabbard for the video, according to two people briefed on the conversation. He said that her discussion of nuclear annihilation would scare people and that officials should not talk about it.

Mr. Trump’s displeasure with the video laid bare months of his skepticism of Ms. Gabbard and frustrations with her. The president and some administration officials viewed her overseas travel, as the video exemplified, as being as much about self-promotion of her political career as it was about the business of government, multiple officials said, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal dynamics of the administration.

But the tensions surrounding Ms. Gabbard are now in the open, as Mr. Trump considers mounting a military strike on Iran. Ms. Gabbard, a critic of overseas entanglements, has privately raised concerns of a wider war. And on Friday Mr. Trump said “she’s wrong” when he was asked about her testimony in March that Iran had not decided to build a nuclear weapon.

After the video was posted, the president also told Ms. Gabbard that he was disappointed in her, and wished she had used better judgment, according to one of the two people briefed on the conversation. He told Ms. Gabbard that he believed she was using her time working for him to set herself up for higher office. Mr. Trump told Ms. Gabbard that if she wanted to run for president, she should not be in the administration, one of the people briefed on the meeting said.

While Ms. Gabbard is a former Democrat, her credentials as a critic of America’s long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and as a skeptic of foreign military interventions appeal to Mr. Trump’s base, and her views dovetail with those of some of his other advisers. Her supporters are openly advocating that the president keep her.

“The president needs someone who will give him the right intelligence information, whether he likes it or not,” said Daniel L. Davis, an analyst at the think tank Defense Priorities, which advocates a restrained foreign policy. “If you put someone else in there, they might only tell him what he wants to hear.”

Mr. Davis, a retired Army lieutenant colonel, was Ms. Gabbard’s choice for a top intelligence role before criticism from Republicans over his skepticism of Israel’s war in Gaza forced her to rescind the appointment.

There is no question, officials said, that Ms. Gabbard’s standing has been weakened and that she is embattled. But few in the administration want to see her depart. Some say she has people who like her, while others worry about who might replace her. Two officials said that Mr. Trump’s anger over the video had faded and that they were back on better terms.

Ms. Gabbard continues to brief the president regularly and speaks often to John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director, who held Ms. Gabbard’s job in the first Trump administration, according to multiple officials.

In a statement, the White House press office dismissed any notion she has been sidelined. Steven Cheung, a White House spokesman, said Mr. Trump had “full confidence” in his national security team. “D.N.I. Gabbard is an important member of the president’s team and her work continues to serve him and this country well,” Mr. Cheung said.

Ms. Gabbard was an aggressive supporter of Mr. Trump on the 2024 campaign trail. He and his top advisers valued her input, especially when Mr. Trump was preparing to debate Vice President Kamala Harris — whom Ms. Gabbard had memorably attacked in a Democratic primary debate in 2019.

After the election, Mr. Trump quickly decided to nominate her for director of national intelligence. But from the beginning he made clear to associates that he harbored some doubts. Mr. Trump, according to associates, saw her as overly interested in her own success.

Mr. Trump drew a contrast between Ms. Gabbard and the other former Democrat he named to his cabinet, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

“Bobby’s a star,” Mr. Trump told one associate. “Tulsi? Tulsi wants to be a star.” Mr. Trump’s implication was that unlike Mr. Kennedy, Ms. Gabbard did not have what it took to succeed in politics.

And soon after her swearing-in, he began to complain about her effectiveness.

At the same time, Mr. Trump — long mistrustful of the intelligence community — questioned whether there needed to be an Office of the Director of National Intelligence at all.

A senior intelligence official said Ms. Gabbard had overseen a 25 percent cut in the size of her office. And Ms. Gabbard has repeatedly told people in the White House that she is willing to be the last director of national intelligence, according to an official. The office, Ms. Gabbard said, could be reabsorbed into the C.I.A., or become something akin to the National Security Council, a bare-bones oversight group.

At least for a time, the kind of foreign policy restraint Ms. Gabbard favors appeared to gain traction this spring.

In White House discussions about Israel and Iran, Ms. Gabbard raised the range of possible consequences of an Israeli strike against Iran, saying it could trigger a wider conflict that brought in the United States. Vice President JD Vance, at times also a skeptic of military intervention, made similar arguments and was among those who supported Mr. Trump’s impulse to initially try to negotiate a deal with Iran.

As the C.I.A. delivered intelligence reports that Israel intended to strike Iran regardless, Mr. Trump and senior aides became more publicly supportive of the Israeli campaign.

Ms. Gabbard did not attend a key meeting at Camp David, where Mr. Ratcliffe presented assessments about Iran’s nuclear program. Ms. Gabbard, according to officials, was on Army Reserve duty. Other people with knowledge of the matter have said she was not invited. (Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said Ms. Gabbard had met daily with Mr. Trump and his team.)

Then on Tuesday, Mr. Trump contradicted Ms. Gabbard in public. After the Israeli strikes began, a journalist on Air Force One asked Mr. Trump about Ms. Gabbard’s testimony in March that Iran had not decided to make a nuclear bomb.

“I don’t care what she said,” Mr. Trump said. “I think they were very close to having it.”

He made similar comments on Friday.

An official from Ms. Gabbard’s office said her position was not at odds with Mr. Trump’s. In her testimony, Ms. Gabbard reported the consensus opinion of the intelligence community: that Iran’s supreme leader had not authorized the country to build a nuclear weapon. But Ms. Gabbard had also noted Iran’s large stocks of enriched uranium and a shift in tone that was “likely emboldening nuclear weapons advocates within Iran’s decision-making apparatus.”

But Mr. Trump’s Air Force One remark came off as a rebuke.

To a certain extent, some officials said, courting Mr. Trump’s displeasure is a hazard of any intelligence job in his administration.

Mr. Trump believes the intelligence community undermined him in his first term, and his long-held skepticism that it is part of a disloyal deep state continues. Ms. Gabbard, when briefing Mr. Trump, presents a range of options and assessments. But it is difficult to talk about the findings of spy agencies and not raise Mr. Trump’s ire, the official said.

Ms. Gabbard’s most important job as director of national intelligence is overseeing, and delivering, the president’s daily intelligence brief. But the brief is actually produced a few miles from her office at the C.I.A., and many of those working on the document are detailed from the agency. Ms. Gabbard announced internally last month that she would physically move the production of the brief to her headquarters, known as Liberty Crossing.

Within the administration, several senior officials saw it as a way to try to enhance her own relevance at a time when Mr. Trump was questioning the relevance of the office. Others said it was an expensive decision that would be logistically difficult to carry out.

Ultimately, the White House put the move on pause, according to multiple people briefed on the matter.

Ms. Gabbard has influential defenders inside and outside the government. Mr. Vance, seen as the most senior voice for a less hawkish, more restrained foreign policy, issued a long social media post defending the administration’s support of Israel’s attack on Iran. He added to that a message supporting Ms. Gabbard. He also released a statement calling her a “patriot.”

Her supporters insist that she remains relevant and that, over time, her skepticism of American intervention in Ukraine and caution on military action against Iran will once more prevail. The possible delay of any decision by Mr. Trump to strike Iran represents an opportunity for diplomacy and critics of American military intervention to make the case for restraint, some of Ms. Gabbard’s supporters said.

Olivia C. Coleman, a spokeswoman for Ms. Gabbard’s office, dismissed the reports of dissatisfaction or tensions with the White House as “lies made up by bored, irrelevant anonymous sources with nothing better to do than sow fake division.”

“The director,” Ms. Coleman said, “remains focused on her mission: providing accurate and actionable intelligence to the president, cleaning up the deep state and keeping the American people safe, secure and free.”

There were no direct fatalities from the strikes on Friday in Israel, though 23 people were wounded in Haifa, according to Magen David Adom, Israel’s national emergency service, and dozens more in strikes across the country. A woman died after she had a heart attack in a shelter in northern Israel while sirens warning of incoming missiles were blaring, the service said.

In the Iranian capital, Tehran, large crowds took to the streets for a prayer march in support of the Iranian regime, while a resident interviewed by The Times described thinning traffic and closed shops amid ongoing Israeli strikes.

Iranian government websites remained inaccessible from outside the country on Friday and had not been updated, making it impossible to confirm the number of casualties there. The communication blackout was part of a countrywide internet shutdown now in its fourth day.

The Israeli military said air force jets had struck military and nuclear sites in Tehran overnight. Iran’s state broadcaster reported early Friday morning that Israeli strikes had targeted an industrial complex in the Sefid-Rud area in the northern provinces along the Caspian Sea coast, and large blasts were also reported in the northern city of Rasht and north of Tehran.

Later on Friday, the Israeli military said it had struck missile storage and launch sites in the regions of Tabriz and Kermanshah, as well as surface-to-air missile batteries in southwestern Iran. Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz, said on Thursday that he had ordered the military to increase attacks on Iranian government targets to “destabilize the regime.”

The exchanges continued even as Iran’s top diplomat was meeting on Friday in Geneva with European foreign ministers for talks aimed at reaching a diplomatic compromise. The talks broke up without any evident breakthrough.

The talks followed President Trump’s announcement Thursday that he would delay a decision on whether to join Israel’s attacks, saying he would make up his mind “within the next two weeks.”

Farnaz Fassihi, Leily Nikounazar, Patrick Kingsley and Rawan Sheikh Ahmad contributed reporting.

Since his first campaign for president 10 years ago, Mr. Trump has excelled at appearing to favor both sides of the same issue, allowing supporters to hear what they want to hear, whether he’s talking about tariffs, TikTok, abortion, tax cuts or more.

But the prospect that the United States might join Israel in bombing Iran is testing his ability to embrace dueling positions with little to no political cost. Some of Mr. Trump’s most ardent supporters — those who defended him during multiple investigations and ultimately returned him to the White House — are ripping each other to shreds over the idea, and at times lashing out at Mr. Trump himself, as well.

The war in Iran is exactly the kind of Middle East entanglement that Mr. Trump’s anti-interventionist base believed he was bitterly opposed to, because he repeatedly said he was. But he is also the same president who, in his first term, authorized missile strikes in Syria after its leadership used chemical weapons on citizens, and the assassination of a top Iranian general, Qassim Suleimani — two actions he took pride in.

To Mr. Trump, the contradictions are not actually contradictions.

“I think I’m the one that decides that,” he told The Atlantic recently in response to criticism from one of his most vocal anti-interventionist supporters, Tucker Carlson, who said the president’s support for Israel’s fight in Iran ran against his “America First” message.

Mr. Trump was propelled to victory in the Republican primary in 2016 as an outsider, in part because he forcefully condemned the invasion of Iraq, authorized by the last Republican president more than a decade before, and the seemingly endless war that followed. Yet he said the United States should have taken the country’s oil, and ran radio ads saying he would “bomb the hell” out of the Islamic State.

He has said he wants to renew the tax cuts he put into effect in his first term, which saved some of the wealthiest earners millions, while also suggesting that congressional Republicans should implement a new tax on the wealthiest.

He has said he supports businesses and also wants to deport the immigrant work force that fuels parts of the economy. He wants to engage in mass deportation and also wants to sell visas for $5 million. He has celebrated the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade as a point of pride, while also condemning Republican governors who signed bills banning most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy.

He has both celebrated and criticized his own criminal justice reform bill of 2018.

Despite the contradictions, Republicans for years have been united in support of Mr. Trump and what he says he wants, giving him a benefit of the doubt that few if any career politicians have ever received. Even when most elected Republicans held Mr. Trump at a distance after the deadly attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob on Jan. 6, 2021, Mr. Trump still had a tight grip on Republican primary voters.

Mr. Trump, a celebrity known to the electorate for decades, has obscured longstanding and unresolved foreign policy divisions within the party dating back to the aftermath of President George W. Bush’s push to invade Iraq.

But as Mr. Trump decides whether to plunge the United States into the heart of the Israel-Iran conflict, his core supporters are splintering.

Mr. Trump’s announcement on Thursday that he could take up to two weeks to decide did not sit well with some of his most hawkish supporters. On social media, the Fox News host Mark Levin began a lengthy post by suggesting that the president was being pulled back from what he actually wants to do. “LET TRUMP BE TRUMP!” Mr. Levin wrote. “We got our answer. Iran says no unconditional surrender. Again. And again. And again. They cheat and lie and kill. They’re TERRORISTS!”

His anti-interventionist supporters, meanwhile, have been equally alarmed by what he might decide to do. “Anyone slobbering for the U.S. to become fully involved in the Israel/Iran war is not America First/MAGA,” Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia posted on social media over the weekend.

Mr. Trump’s advisers say that, on the Israel-Iran conflict in particular, the president is dealing with a fast-moving, complicated situation that does not lend itself to simple, black-and-white solutions, despite the fact that he has consistently campaigned that way.

“President Trump considers the nuances of every issue, but ultimately takes decisive action to directly benefit American families,” said Anna Kelly, a White House spokeswoman. “The American people trust this president to make the right decisions,” she said, adding that he “started the Make America Great Again movement because he represents a new leadership that puts Americans first.”

Mr. Trump’s inconsistencies were clear in 2011, the year he gave his debut speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

Up until then, the most vocal opponent of the Iraq war among Republican presidential prospects was Representative Ron Paul of Texas, a libertarian who had a relatively small but persistent and noisy following.

Mr. Trump gave a nod to Mr. Paul in his remarks as he positioned himself as the person who could best succeed with a similar anti-establishment message.

“I like Ron Paul, I think he is a good guy, but honestly he has just zero chance of getting elected,” Mr. Trump said. “You have to win an election.” Two months later, Mr. Trump suggested a form of aggression that would be acceptable, telling an interviewer that the United States should “take the oil” in Iraq as payment for its own efforts there.

At the time, Mr. Paul was a fringe figure whose main media attention came from coverage of him as a gadfly. Mr. Trump, able to command seemingly endless media attention, absorbed Mr. Paul’s support base and was able to reshape the Republican Party in the process.

But in 2025, Mr. Trump is not the only one who can command media attention.

Mr. Carlson is no longer on Fox News, but he has a show that streams on the website X, and is a leading voice among foreign policy “restrainers” who have argued that Mr. Trump would be acting against his own movement should he strike Iran.

Stephen K. Bannon, an adviser who was exiled from the White House in the first year of Mr. Trump’s first term, has become one of the dominant voices among the MAGA faithful with his “War Room” podcast, delivering the same message as Mr. Carlson.

Yet Mr. Trump has found that many of his allies will ultimately come back to him, despite unhappiness with some of his decisions.

Mr. Bannon’s split with Mr. Trump healed in 2020. And Mr. Trump has frustrated Mr. Carlson before, particularly after the Suleimani assassination in January 2020.

At the time, Mr. Carlson condemned the killing. But by the time Mr. Trump was again the nominee in 2024, Mr. Carlson was one of his vocal supporters.

The protests unfolded as Israel and Iran continued to trade fire despite a renewed diplomatic push in Geneva, where European leaders met with Iran’s foreign minister to present a proposal aimed at de-escalating the conflict. Earlier on Friday, Israel said it had carried out overnight strikes on missile factories and a research center linked to Iran’s nuclear program. Hours later, Iran launched a fresh barrage of missiles toward Israeli cities.

In Iraq, thousands gathered on Friday in Baghdad’s Sadr City district — a stronghold of the powerful Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, who has at times resisted Iranian influence — to denounce Israel and express solidarity with Iran. Under the blistering sun, many protesters wore white burial shrouds, a Shiite symbol of martyrdom, and some burned Israeli and American flags.

In Basra and Najaf, two other Shiite-majority cities in Iraq, crowds echoed similarly defiant sentiments.

In the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital, Beirut, where the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah holds sway, supporters also staged rallies, marching amid the rubble of neighborhoods heavily damaged during Hezbollah’s recent war with Israel.

People in the crowds pumped their fists as they pledged support for Mr. Khamenei, an ally of Hezbollah’s former leader, Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike last year.

Still reeling from its recent war with Israel, Hezbollah — Iran’s most powerful regional ally — has for now indicated privately that it does not intend to intervene in Iran’s conflict with Israel, according to senior Lebanese officials and Western diplomats.

Leily Nikounazar contributed reporting.

For days, Israeli officials hoped that Mr. Trump would send American warplanes armed with the only munitions in the world that are deemed powerful enough to destroy Fordo.

Now, Mr. Trump says he will wait up to two weeks before deciding whether to make such an intervention — a delay that imposes a dilemma on Israel.

The longer Israel waits for Mr. Trump, the greater the strain on its air defense system. To keep out Iran’s ballistic missile barrages, Israel is burning through its stocks of missile interceptors, forcing it to prioritize the protection of some areas over others. As time goes on, that raises the risk of more missiles hitting both civilian neighborhoods and strategic security sites.

With Israel’s airspace closed and much of its economic life suspended, the war’s protraction will also come at an economic cost. The sooner the war ends, the faster commercial flights will return and businesses can resume full operations.

Rather than wait for American help, Israel could decide to attack Fordo alone — taking a chance with the planes and munitions it has at its disposal. Some analysts say that Israel could even send commandos to enter and sabotage the site. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hinted at going it alone on Thursday, saying in a television interview that Israel would “achieve all of our objectives, all of their nuclear facilities. We have the power to do so.”

But experts say that this route is fraught with risk and that its effect may be limited. “It probably won’t be on the scale of what the U.S. can achieve,” said Itamar Rabinovich, a former Israeli ambassador to Washington. “If we could do what the U.S. can, we would have already done it.”

Another option is for Israel to wind down the war unilaterally, without attacking Fordo. But that approach would leave at least a significant part of Iran’s nuclear enrichment program intact, leaving open the possibility that Iran might create a nuclear bomb that could be used against Israel.

For now, Israel does not seem set to take that route. Israel’s political leadership has begun to speak explicitly about prompting the collapse of the Iranian regime and assassinating its leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Even if Israel has no real way of toppling his government, the tone of the comments suggest that Israel, at the very least, intends to continue with its strikes for several days.

The tone of the Israeli news media on Friday also indicated continued domestic support for the Israeli campaign, as did new opinion polling. After Israel’s attack on Iran, Mr. Netanyahu’s party is in its strongest polling position since October 2023, when Hamas carried out the deadliest attack in Israel’s history.

Lia Lapidot contributed reporting from Tel Aviv.

Iran’s autocratic clerical leadership, which has ruled for nearly half a century since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, has proved its staying power, even in the face of multiple domestic uprisings. Demolishing Fordo, the enrichment site buried deep in a mountain, may not obliterate Iran’s nuclear program and could lead the country to broaden the war or accelerate that program.

Here are some ways it could play out if the United States enters the war.

Iran could negotiate

Before Israel launched a surprise attack on Iran’s nuclear program and other targets last week, Iran and the United States were discussing limits on Iran’s uranium enrichment program. It was rapidly producing fuel close to the levels needed for nuclear weapons, and in exchange for new limits on the program, Iran would win relief from economic sanctions.

The two sides were nowhere near a final agreement, but signs of a possible compromise had emerged by early June. When Israel attacked Iran, the negotiations collapsed.

Yet Iran has signaled that it remains willing to talk, and even a strike on Fordo would not necessarily wipe out prospects of a return to the negotiating table.

If the Trump administration follows an attack on Iran with an enticing offer, such as large-scale sanctions relief or peace guarantees, there is still a chance that Iran would consider making concessions, said Vali Nasr, an Iran expert and a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

“Is there an offer on the table that the Iranian people in this moment can actually rally around?” he said. “If it’s only a stick, then they’re going to fight.”

So far, Mr. Trump has not extended many carrots.

He called in a social media post on Tuesday for Iran’s “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER.”

Iran may lean into nuclear activity

All eyes are on Fordo. But it is possible that Iran has secret nuclear sites aimed at producing weapons that the United States and Israel do not know about, though no public evidence has emerged of such places.

If they do exist, Iran could use whatever it has left to try to accelerate its nuclear program in the wake of an American attack.

With the damage Israeli airstrikes have done to nuclear facilities and the killings of top nuclear scientists, Iran probably lacks the capacity to build a nuclear weapon quickly, analysts said. Still, it could move in that direction and would have fresh incentive to do so.

“You would begin to see that broader escalation that they’ve held back on,” said Sanam Vakil, the director of the Middle East and North Africa Program at Chatham House. After all, Iran would have few other options left for deterring future attacks, she added.

Iran’s Parliament has publicly discussed a withdrawal from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. The treaty, of which Israel is not a signatory, currently requires Iran to submit to oversight by the International Atomic Energy Agency and other transparency obligations and to commit to not building a nuclear bomb.

So far, the government has reiterated its longstanding insistence that Iran’s nuclear program is solely for peaceful purposes. But Iran has firmly refused to capitulate to a central American demand that it give up uranium enrichment, saying it has the right to a civilian nuclear program.

The war could get bigger and messier

Over the past week, Iran has avoided striking American troops or other targets that could pull the United States into the war.

Its leaders may still be hoping to make a deal with the Trump administration to end the conflict and wary of taking on the U.S. military on top of Israel’s.

Though Iran has responded to Israeli attacks with missiles and threats of its own, it has refrained from hitting American troops or bases in the Middle East. It has also not struck Arab countries allied with the United States, such as Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates.

Nor has it sent global oil prices soaring by sealing off or harassing traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, a vital oil shipping channel to Iran’s south. But at least one Iranian official has warned that Iran could do so if the United States enters the war.

And Iran’s allied militias in the region, including the Houthis in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon and armed groups in Iraq, have not joined the fight. Many of them have been seriously weakened over the past two years.

But those Iranian allies could still join the fray if the Trump administration decides to strike.

If the United States tries to force Iran to capitulate, “Iran will keep hitting until the end of the missile capabilities,” said Ellie Geranmayeh, an Iran expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

Talk of regime change

Mr. Trump said on social media this week that the United States is weighing whether to kill Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but had decided “not for now.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said in a Fox News interview this week that changing Iran’s regime “could certainly be the result” of this war.

Even if the United States assassinates Mr. Khamenei, however, the religious-military establishment that has tightly held power in Iran for nearly five decades may not fall.

With a war raging, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the most powerful branch of Iran’s military, could seize control of the country, said Mr. Nasr, the professor.

They might put in place a more Western-friendly government, or, more likely, replace Mr. Khamenei with a more extreme figure who would dig in for a long fight, Mr. Nasr added.

If the military does not assert itself quickly, some analysts fear that Iran could plunge into chaos or civil war as different factions struggle for control.

But they see little chance for Iran’s liberal opposition, which has been weakened and brutally repressed by the regime, to prevail.

Iran’s people could rise up again

Mr. Netanyahu encouraged the Iranian people last week to capitalize on Israel’s attacks on their government and “rise up” against their “evil and oppressive regime.”

Iranians have staged mass protests against clerical rule several times in recent history, most recently with the “Women, Life, Freedom” demonstrations of late 2022. Each time, the opposition has faced a harsh crackdown by government security forces.

Some Iranians so despise the clerical leaders that they have at times looked to Israel as an ally and openly hoped for the United States to install new leadership.

Some Iranian opponents of the regime cheered Israel’s initial attacks on Iran, which they saw as more evidence of their government’s incompetence and mismanagement. But the growing death toll, the attacks on civilian infrastructure and the panic gripping Iranian cities are hardening many in the country against Israel.

Iranian social media platforms have been full of patriotic posts in recent days, expressing unity against foreign intervention, if not exactly support for the regime.

Leily Nikounazar and Parin Behrooz contributed reporting.