WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump, two months into his tenure, last week called for features to attack Iran’s main nuclear site, but in the end did not take this dramatic step, a U. S. official said Monday.
Trump made the request at an Oval Office assembly Thursday with his most sensitive national security aides, adding Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, new Interim Defense Secretary Chrismost sensibleher Miller, and General Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the official said.
Trump, who has refused to give in and is challenging the effects of the November 3 presidential election, will hand over the force to Democratic President-elect Joe Biden on January 20.
The official showed the minutes of the assembly in the New York Times, which reported that advisers had persuaded Trump to go on strike because of the threat of a broader conflict.
“He asked for options. He was given the stage and he nevertheless made the decision not to get ahead of himself,” the official said.
The White House declined to comment.
Trump has spent four years of his presidency participating in a competitive policy opposed to Iran, fleeing the Iran nuclear deal negotiated through his Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama, in 2018 and applying economic sanctions opposed to a wide range of Iranian targets.
Trump’s request for functions came a day after a UN surveillance report showed that Iran had finished moving a first cascade of complex centrifuges from an air plant from its main uranium enrichment to an underground plant, in an additional violation of its 2015 nuclear agreement with powers.
Alireza Miryousefi, spokesman for Iran’s project to the United Nations in New York, said Iran’s nuclear program was purely for civilian and nonviolent purposes, and that Trump’s policies had not replaced him. “However, Iran has proven itself capable of its valid military force to save you or respond to any melancholy adventure of an aggressor,” he added.
Iran’s stock of 2. 4 tons of low-enriched uranium is now well above the 202. 8 kg limit of the agreement and produced 337. 5 kg in the quarter, less than the 500 kg recorded in the last two quarters through the International Atomic Energy Agency.
In January, Trump ordered an attack by U. S. drones that killed Iranian General Qassem Soleimani at Baghdad Airport, but has moved away from broader military conflicts and tried to remove U. S. troops from global hotspots in line with the promise of ending what he called “endless. “wars. “
An attack on Iran’s main nuclear plant in Natanz can lead to regional shock and pose a serious foreign policy challenge for Biden.
Biden’s transition team, which had no national security intelligence due to the Trump administration’s refusal to start the transition, declined to comment.
(Information through Steve Holland; Additional information through Michael Martina and Michelle Nichols; Edited through Mary Milliken, Cynthia Osterman, Leslie Adler and Lincoln Feast).
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