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2 Mar 2026, 03:10

According to Axios, senior officials from the U.S. and Israel say that Washington and Tel Aviv initially intended to attack the Islamic Republic a week earlier, but the operation was postponed for operational and intelligence reasons.

This delay gave Donald Trump another week to make a final decision between two parallel paths of "diplomacy" and "war," which he had been pursuing simultaneously for nearly two months. After the second round of negotiations between the U.S. and Iran ended on February 17 without significant progress, military planning for the attacks was underway to begin on February 21, but the final order was not issued. One of the main reasons cited was the adverse weather conditions in the region. However, some officials emphasized that the issue was not just the weather, and further coordination with the Israeli military also played a role in the decision-making.

In the initial plan, the target of the opening attack was Ali Khamenei and his sons, along with several meetings of senior officials of the Islamic Republic, including the weekly meeting typically held on Saturdays. The Israeli ambassador to the U.S. also claimed that two separate meetings focused on responding to the wave of domestic protests were targeted.

In the week between the initial attack date and the new date, intelligence concerns increased that Khamenei might be moved to a bunker. According to an Israeli intelligence official, the U.S. and Israel tried to convey the message that an attack was not imminent so that Islamic Republic officials would feel secure and remain in open locations.

Axios reports that simultaneously, this delay allowed for another round of negotiations in Geneva. There is disagreement about the true purpose of this meeting. Some view it as a tactical move to buy time until the new attack date, while U.S. officials say the negotiations were genuine, and if serious progress had been made, there was a possibility of further postponing the attack.

Ultimately, the negotiations did not yield results. According to U.S. officials, following reports from envoys to Trump, the process of executing the military operation began.
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