WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump concluded a meeting Wednesday with top advisers as he weighed whether to plunge the U.S. into the ongoing war between Israel and Iran, but the White House offered few clues about whether he had decided to join the offensive aimed at destroying Tehran’s nuclear program.

Before the meeting, Trump told reporters he had not yet made a final decision but again chastened Iranian leaders for being “late” to negotiate with him while reiterating his determination not to let the country obtain a nuclear weapon.

Trump earlier in the week approved a military attack plan targeting Iran but withheld the final authorization as he weighed whether Tehran would meet his demands, the Wall Street Journal reported.

“I have ideas as to what to do,” the president told reporters in the Oval Office. “I like to make the final decision one second before it’s due because things change, especially with war.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said in a social media post that his country remained “committed to diplomacy” and had never sought and would never seek nuclear weapons. But that may not be enough to deter Trump against an attack, even after the U.S. president for weeks said he preferred a diplomatic solution.

The position the U.S. has conveyed privately to allies has generally matched Trump’s public rhetoric, threatening to join strikes if Iran does not surrender, according to two officials from Western governments. Potential action could come within the next 24 hours, even as soon as Wednesday evening, the officials said on condition of anonymity.

Asked earlier in the day if he was moving closer to bombing Iran, Trump said “I may do it. I may not do it.”

Trump claimed Iranian officials had offered to travel to Washington to engage in nuclear talks, though questioned whether they would be able to make the trip. He said Iran was “a few weeks away” from having a nuclear weapon, a timeline that is more definitive than some U.S. intelligence agencies’ findings.

“They should have made that deal,” Trump said of Iran’s leaders. “In the end, they decided not to do it. And now they wish they did it.”

Iran had been in negotiations with the U.S. over its nuclear program for weeks, and had a further meeting scheduled, when Israel attacked Friday. The two Mideast nations have since traded missile strikes and escalating rhetoric — Israeli leaders threatening to topple the Islamic Republic, and their Iranian counterparts vowing defiance and retaliation — while the Trump administration weighs how deeply to get involved in its ally’s war.

Trump’s ambiguous comments add a new layer of tension to the deepening Israel-Iran clash. The president, who has campaigned for a decade in opposition to American wars in the Middle East, also faces a tense divide among his supporters over whether the US should enter the fray. America has so far limited its participation to helping Israel defend itself against Iranian missile and drone launches.

Trump said he encouraged Benjamin Netanyahu in a call Tuesday to “keep going” with his offensive operations, adding that he gave the Israeli premier no indication that U.S. forces would participate in the attacks.

But the U.S. is seen as being able to provide military firepower necessary to destroy Iran’s underground enrichment facility at Fordow, which analysts say Israel is unable to do alone. Iran has warned it can hit American bases across the region, where tens of thousands of troops are stationed, if the U.S. joins the Israeli attack.

Since Israel’s strikes started, Iran has fired 400 ballistic missiles and hundreds of drones at Israel, killing 24 people and injuring more than 800, according to the Israeli government. At least 224 Iranians have been killed by Israel’s attacks.

Israeli jets hit more than 20 military targets in Tehran in the past few hours, including nuclear and missile production sites, Israel’s military said in a statement Wednesday. Internet access in Iran appeared to be crippled on Wednesday and into early Thursday, as the government said it was enforcing “temporary” restrictions in response to attacks targeting the country’s digital infrastructure. Authorities didn’t disclose specifics on the scope of the restrictions, but many Iranians appeared to be cut off from major social media platforms for hours starting Wednesday evening.

Iran has hit targets in Israel including a key oil refinery in the port of Haifa that was forced to shut down.

“The Americans should know that the Iranian nation is not one to surrender,” Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a statement published on his official website Wednesday. “Any military incursion by the United States will undoubtedly result in irreparable damage.”

Out of patience

“Good luck,” Trump said when asked for his response. “We cannot let Iran get a nuclear weapon. I’ve been saying it for a long time. I mean it more now than I ever mentioned.”

Dennis Ross, who served as President Bill Clinton’s Middle East envoy and just returned from a trip to the region, said the Iranian regime is likely looking for an off-ramp from the current conflict despite the bellicose comments from Khamenei.

Its top priority is survival, followed by avoiding a direct conflict with the U.S., said Ross, who’s now a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “When they feel profoundly threatened, they will make concessions. They certainly feel vulnerable and threatened right now.”

Iran’s missile and drone launches against Israel appeared to be subsiding Wednesday evening, although the reason wasn’t immediately clear. While the Israeli army earlier said it had destroyed around one-third of Iran’s missile launchers, Tehran still possesses thousands of ballistic missiles that can reach Israel, national security adviser Tzachi Hanegbi said Monday.

U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee announced Wednesday that the embassy is organizing evacuations of Americans in Israel who want to leave. Embassy personnel have already begun to depart the country, a spokesperson said. The announcements came a day after the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem said it would be closed Wednesday through Friday.

Trump said the Iranian government had contacted the U.S. about the conflict and even proposed a White House meeting to settle the matter, yet he said his patience with the Islamic Republic had “already run out.” Iran’s mission to the United Nations denied that claim in an X post Wednesday, saying “No Iranian official has ever asked to grovel at the gates of the White House.”

The question of whether to strike Iran has the potential to cause domestic political headaches for Trump, whose base is split between isolationists and traditional conservative interventionists. Supporters of both political parties oppose the U.S. joining Israel’s attack on Iran by clear majorities, a YouGov survey found.

Trump said his bottom line remains that “Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon” and “it’s not a question of anything else.” During his first term, Trump withdrew from an agreement aimed at curtailing Iran’s atomic program, which the U.S. and other world powers had spent years negotiating.

Republican hawks have been supportive of military action against Iran, but Trump has faced pressure from some of his isolationist supporters to take a more measured approach. “We have all been very vocal for days now urging, ‘Let’s be America First. Let’s stay out,” Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene said Tuesday on CNN.

During a breakfast Wednesday hosted by the Christian Science Monitor, longtime Trump ally Steve Bannon said Trump’s supporters want him to focus on issues most important to his base, like cracking down on immigration. But Bannon said that if the president has more information that backs the case for intervention “and makes that case to the American people, the MAGA movement will support President Trump.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, appearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Wednesday, declined to answer directly whether Trump had asked the Pentagon to provide options for striking Iran.

Hegseth said that “maximum force protection at all times is being maintained” for U.S. troops stationed in the region, and said that “the president has options and is informed of what those options might be, and what the ramifications of those options might be.”

The U.S. has continued building its military presence in the region. The USS Ford carrier strike group is set to depart next week on a regularly scheduled deployment, initially in the European theater, according to a US official.

Meanwhile, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said the location of Iran’s near-bomb-grade stockpile of enriched uranium cannot currently be verified.

IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said Wednesday the whereabouts of the material are now unclear, given Tehran warned him the stockpile could be moved in the event of an Israeli attack. The agency continues to see no indication of significant damage to Iran’s Fordow nuclear site, he added.

Foreign ministers from the UK, France and Germany are planning to hold nuclear talks with their Iranian counterpart on Friday in Geneva, according to a person familiar with the matter. Reuters reported earlier on the meeting.

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(With assistance from Alex Wickham, Alberto Nardelli, Donato Paolo Mancini, Arsalan Shahla, Skylar Woodhouse, Akayla Gardner, Courtney McBride and Eric Martin.)

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