Report: Trump Senior Advisors Want to Induce Iran to Attack Americans to Justify War

Senior advisers to President Donald Trump would prefer Israel strike Iran before the United States launches an assault on the country, according to two people familiar with ongoing discussions.

These Trump administration officials are privately arguing that an Israeli attack would trigger Iran to retaliate, helping muster support from American voters for a U.S. strike.

The calculus is a political one — that more Americans would stomach a war with Iran if the United States or an ally were attacked first. Recent polling shows that Americans, and Republicans in particular, support regime change in Iran, but are unwilling to risk any U.S. casualties to achieve it. That means Trump’s team is considering the optics of how an attack is conducted in addition to other justifications — such as Iran’s nuclear program.

“There’s thinking in and around the administration that the politics are a lot better if the Israelis go first and alone and the Iranians retaliate against us, and give us more reason to take action,” said one of the people familiar with discussions. Both individuals were granted anonymity to describe private conversations.

[...] “If we’re talking about a regime-change scale attack, Iran is very likely to retaliate with everything they’ve got. We have a lot of assets in the region and every one of those is a potential target,” said the first person familiar with discussions. “And they’re not under the Iron Dome. So there’s a high likelihood of American casualties. And that comes with lots of political risk.”

in this rather amazing article two senior US officials are cited saying the Trump-Epstein regime wants Israel to attack Iran first so that Iran retaliates against Israel and the US and kills Americans, which will then be a good excuse for the US to get directly involved in the… https://t.co/pKBCm4kTZH pic.twitter.com/46PGluIH87

— ☀️👀 (@zei_squirrel) February 26, 2026