http://archive.today/2026.03.01-151704/https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/02/28/trump-iran-decision-saudi-arabia-israel/

President Donald Trump launched Saturday’s wide-ranging attack on Iran after a weeks-long lobbying effort by an unusual pair of U.S. allies in the Middle East — Israel and Saudi Arabia — according to four people familiar with the matter, as Israeli and U.S. forces teamed to topple Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei after nearly four decades in power.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman made multiple private phone calls to Trump over the past month advocating a U.S. attack, despite his public support for a diplomatic solution, the four people said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, continued his long-running public campaign for U.S. strikes against what he views as an existential enemy of his country.

The attack came despite U.S. intelligence assessments that Iran’s forces were unlikely to pose an immediate threat to the U.S. mainland within the next decade.

In explaining his decision, Trump on Saturday reached all the way back to Iran’s 1979 revolution. He described the U.S. attacks as payback for decades of conflict with Iran. He cited the 52 Americans held hostage for more than a year after the 1979 takeover of the American Embassy in Tehran; the deaths of 241 U.S. service members in 1983 bombing of their barracks in Beirut by Iran-backed Hezbollah during a Lebanese civil war; and the 2000 attack on the USS Cole, a naval destroyer docked in a Yemen, which Trump said Iran “probably” was involved in, although the United States has long attributed the suicide bombing to al-Qaeda.

During both his first and second terms, Trump has said consistently there would be no American boots on the ground in military operations that he launched. Since taking office again, while launching air and missile attacks on seven countries — Nigeria, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Venezuela, Iraq and Iran — he largely has kept that promise.

The Saudi push for an attack came as presidential envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner pursued negotiations with Iranian leaders over the country’s nuclear and missile programs.

As those talks proceeded, Riyadh issued a statement, following a phone call between the crown prince and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, that Mohammed would not allow Saudi airspace or territory to be used in an attack on Iran.

The Saudi leader’s complicated position probably reflected his desire to avoid Iranian retaliation against his country’s vulnerable oil infrastructure, weighed against his view of Tehran as Riyadh’s ultimate foe in the region, said those familiar with his thinking. Iran, dominated by Shiite Muslims, and Saudi Arabia, led by Sunnis, have long had an intense rivalry that has generated proxy wars in the region.

Following the initial U.S. attack on Saturday, Iran did retaliate against Saudi Arabia. Riyadh issued a furious statement condemning the attack and calling on the international community to “take all necessary and decisive measures” to confront Iran.