REPORT: Trump Stops US Ally’s Planned Strikes Against Iran As Regime Sets Red Lines For Peace Talks

President Donald Trump opposed a new round of Israeli strikes on Iran before the Nov. 3 midterm elections, holding up an operation that sources said would have been more intense than February’s assault, the Financial Times reported Wednesday.

Israeli forces were prepared to attack during the weekend of Oct. 10, according to three people familiar with the matter who spoke to the newspaper. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu planned to proceed, but Trump did not want to restart the fighting before Americans voted, the sources said.

The pause may be temporary. One source told the Financial Times that renewed strikes in the weeks after the U.S. and Israeli elections were “not an unreasonable scenario.”

“There will either be a deal or an attack,” one source told the newspaper.

Netanyahu faces a tough reelection battle in Israel’s parliamentary election next Tuesday. His office has denied that he was seeking to launch a war with Iran before the elections, following a Channel 12 report last week that he had urged Trump to renew the fighting before both countries voted.

The Financial Times report described preparations for a broad assault targeting Iranian nuclear facilities, regime sites and civilian infrastructure, including energy plants.

One source said Israel had drawn up a new target list that included civilian infrastructure not previously struck. The sources said the proposed operation would have exceeded the intensity of the attacks carried out by the United States and Israel in February.

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Whether U.S. forces would have joined the operation or left Israel to carry it out alone was unclear, the newspaper reported.

Another source cautioned that the Israeli preparations could have been a negotiating tactic and said the decision to resume fighting rested with Trump.

“Everything is on the table,” another source said. “Nothing would surprise me.”

Trump had said publicly Oct. 9 that Washington would not attack Iran before the midterms. The prospect of renewed fighting has also raised questions about whether Israel’s election could go forward as scheduled.

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Days before Trump’s remarks, a report said Israeli military chief Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir had told American counterparts that an attack could lead to the Israeli vote being postponed. Israeli officials reportedly expect Iran to respond to an American strike with massive missile fire against Israel.

Critics have argued that a push by Netanyahu to start a war before the elections would be politically motivated. Israeli security officials told Channel 12 that there had been no change in their intelligence assessment of Iran that would justify a joint Israeli-American operation in the next two to three weeks.

The Financial Times report came two days after U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth secretly visited Israel and met with Netanyahu to discuss “threats in the region.”

The Pentagon did not comment to the newspaper.

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