President Donald Trump refused to say explicitly Wednesday whether he would order U.S. forces to attack Iran’s nuclear sites, suggesting the possibility that he had not yet decided whether to join in the war between Iran and Israel.

“I may do it,” he told reporters on the White House lawn. “I may not do it. I mean, nobody knows what I’m going to do.”

Trump’s cryptic remarks were being watched closely for clues about his intentions. The prospect of direct U.S. involvement in the war has added to fears of a wider conflagration in the Middle East, and led to rifts among the president’s Republican allies and supporters.

Hours earlier, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had dismissed threats Trump had made a day earlier and rejected his call for an “unconditional surrender.”

“Intelligent people who know Iran, the nation and the history of Iran will never speak to this nation in the language of threats, because the Iranian nation cannot be surrendered,” Khamenei said in a televised statement, according to Iranian state media. “The Americans should know that any U.S. military intervention will undoubtedly be accompanied by irreparable damage.”

As Israel’s strikes on Iran continued for a sixth consecutive day, and Iran fired missiles in response, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, issued an “urgent notice” to U.S. citizens wanting to leave Israel. He said the embassy in Jerusalem was working on “evacuation flights & cruise ship departures” for those interested; Israel, meanwhile, was doing the same to bring home citizens who had been caught abroad when the fighting began.

Trump told reporters in Washington that Iran wanted to negotiate and that it was not too late for talks, but criticized the leadership in Iran for not acting sooner.

“Why didn’t you negotiate with me two weeks ago? You could have done fine,” he said, ominously concluding, “You would have had a country.”

In fact, Iran had entered into negotiations with the United States about the future of its nuclear program, but it put those talks on hold after Israel began its bombing campaign. Iran’s mission to the United Nations on Wednesday rejected Trump’s claim that Iran was now seeking to resume talks, saying “no Iranian official has ever asked to grovel at the gates of the White House.”

What Else to Know:

• Next steps: Israel has been pressing for the United States to assist in the effort to destroy Iran’s nuclear program and in particular to use its largest bunker-busting bombs — which Israel does not have, nor the planes capable of delivering them — against Iranian nuclear facilities deep underground.
• Threat of retaliation: Iranian officials have said that if the United States enters the war, Iran will attack U.S. bases in the region. Iran has prepared missiles for these possible strikes, according to U.S. officials who have reviewed intelligence reports.
• Shift in strategy: In Iran, Israel is carrying out the kind of broad and brazen attack that it long threatened but never dared to enact. The campaign reflects an extraordinary shift in Israeli military doctrine since Hamas, Iran’s ally in the Gaza Strip, attacked the country in October 2023. That change has redrawn the power dynamics in the Middle East, unraveled Iran’s regional alliance and enshrined Israel as the dominant military force in the region.
• Internet disrupted: Amid severe disruptions to internet services in Iran, the country’s state broadcaster urged people to remove WhatsApp from their phones, claiming that the messaging app was collecting user information and sending it to Israel. WhatsApp has rejected the allegations.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Isabel Kershner, David E. Sanger, Ephrat Livni and Richard Pérez-Peña/Avishag Shaar-Yashuv
c. 2025 The New York Times Company