WASHINGTON: President Donald trumpWith two months remaining in office, he asked last week for options to attack Iran’s main nuclear site, but ultimately decided not to take the dramatic step, a US official said Monday.
Trump made the request during a Oval Office meeting Thursday with his top national security aides, including Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the new Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher miller and General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the official said.
Trump, who has refused to budge and is challenging the results of the November 3 presidential election, will hand over power to the Democratic president-elect. Joe biden January 20.
The official confirmed the account of the meeting in The New York Times, which reported that advisers persuaded Trump not to go ahead with a strike over the risk of a broader conflict.
“He asked for options. They gave him the scenarios and finally decided not to go ahead,” the official said.
The White House declined to comment.
Trump has spent the four years of his presidency engaging in an aggressive policy against Iran, withdrawing in 2018 from the Iran nuclear deal negotiated by his Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama, and imposing economic sanctions against a wide variety of Iranian targets.
Trump’s request for options came a day after a UN watchdog report showed Iran had finished moving a first cascade of advanced centrifuges from an above-ground plant at its main uranium enrichment site to an underground one, in a further violation of its 2015 nuclear deal with great powers.
Alireza Miryousefi, spokesperson for Iran’s mission to the United Nations in New York, said Iran’s nuclear program is purely for peaceful purposes and civilian use and that Trump’s policies have not changed that. “However, Iran has shown itself capable of using its legitimate military might to prevent or respond to any melancholy adventure by any aggressor,” he added.
Iran’s stocks of 2.4 tons of low-enriched uranium are now well above the 202.8 kg limit of the agreement. It produced 337.5 kg in the quarter, less than the more than 500 kg recorded in the previous two quarters by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
In January, Trump ordered a US drone strike that killed Iranian General Qassem Soleimani at the Baghdad airport. But he has walked away from the broader military conflicts and has sought to withdraw US troops from global hotspots in accordance with a promise to stop what he calls “endless wars.”
An attack on Iran’s main nuclear site in Natanz could spark a regional conflict and pose a serious foreign policy challenge for Biden.
Biden’s transition team, which has not had access to national security intelligence due to the Trump administration’s refusal to begin the transition, declined to comment.
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