After hour-long consultations with National Security Council, President Trump speaks with Israeli Prime Minister by phone, as US mulls entry into Iran war
President Donald Trump spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by phone overnight, following a high-level meeting with security officials on the ongoing war in Iran.
The White House confirmed that the two leaders spoke overnight, but declined to offer details of the content of their conversation.
The telephone call took place after Trump met with the National Security Council in the White House Situation Room for over an hour on Tuesday, after the president cut short his appearance at the Group of Seven (G7) summit in Alberta, Canada.
Israeli leaders hope the United States will ultimately join in the airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, launched last Friday under the codename Operation Rising Lion.
“We are waiting for the decision of the president,” an Israeli official told CNN.
The CNN report cited two Israeli sources who said that Netanyahu did not explicitly request the U.S. strike Iran, though the Israeli leader hopes Trump will in fact decide to do so.
“The whole operation is premised on the fact that the U.S. will join at some point,” one senior official was quoted as saying.
While Israel has inflicted significant damage on Iran’s air defense network, the regime’s military leadership, its ballistic missile launching capabilities, as well as several key nuclear sites – including the uranium enrichment facility at Natanz – the IDF has yet to cause significant damage to Fordow, a heavily fortified underground enrichment facility.
Built half a mile underneath a mountain, Fordow is considered to be impenetrable by most conventional aerial ordnance, with Israel’s air force likely only able to cut off access to the site by causing a cave-in at the primary entrance, without actually destroying the enrichment facility itself.
U.S. entry into the war would significantly increase the likelihood that the Fordow site could be destroyed, given the wider range of bunker-buster bombs in the American arsenal.
While the bunker-busters used by Israel – including the GBU-28 and BLU-109 – can penetrate up to 20 feet of reinforced concrete, the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator can deliver a 30,000-pound warhead through more than 200 feet of earth or 70 feet of reinforced concrete.
Deployable by the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber, the MOP bunker-buster could potentially be used in repeated strikes to effectively drill down to the Fordow facility and destroy it.
CBS News reported Tuesday that President Trump is mulling U.S. Air Force strikes on Iranian nuclear sites, in particular Fordow.
The president said Tuesday that he wants a “real end” to Iran’s uranium enrich efforts, as opposed to a ceasefire.
PHOTO and VIDEO: Use according to Section 27 A