Trump Reveals Who Will Really Decide When the Iran War Ends

The U.S. will only pull out of Iran when Israel decides it’s time to call it quits.

That’s according to Donald Trump, who told The Times of Israel on Sunday that the decision to end the Iran war will be a “mutual” decision he makes with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“I think it’s mutual … a little bit. We’ve been talking,” Trump said when asked if he alone would make the decision to end the war. “I’ll make a decision at the right time, but everything’s going to be taken into account.”

He dismissed the idea that Israel could continue its own campaign against Iran even after the U.S. pulls back, telling the Times of Israel, “I don’t think it’s going to be necessary.”

“Iran was going to destroy Israel and everything else around it.… We’ve worked together. We’ve destroyed a country that wanted to destroy Israel,” Trump told the paper.

Trump’s deference to Israel stands in stark contrast to where he supposedly stood on the issue on Friday, when White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that the decision to end the war would be solely up to the U.S. president’s discretion.

State Secretary Marco Rubio gave away the game on the rationale for U.S. involvement in the war last week. Speaking to a press huddle, Rubio explained that Israel had forced Trump’s hand in the matter by heedlessly barging forward with its war plans against Iran. That prompted U.S. military assets to strike first, a decision that Rubio chalked up to intel that indicated Iran would retaliate with force against American interests if Israel initiated an attack.

Hours later, Trump decided that messaging was unacceptable, publicly disagreeing with his secretary of state’s interpretation of events.

That required Rubio to reemerge before reporters the following day, frantically backpedalling on the explanation he had offered. Mike Waltz, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, claimed later the same day that Rubio’s point-blank comments had been “taken out of context.”

Talk of escalating the conflict with Iran has ramped up in recent days amongst chief White House officials, at times doing so in a remarkably disaffected way. The president declared on Friday that he wants “unconditional surrender” from Iran, and would not negotiate a peace deal without it.

Trump and his Republican allies are privately warming to the idea of a U.S. ground invasion in Iran. Meanwhile, Iranian officials have already said they are “confident” the country could counter a U.S. ground invasion.

So far, seven U.S. soldiers have been killed in the conflict, as have more than 20 Iranian officials, including Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Eighteen American soldiers have also been seriously injured. More than 1,200 Iranian civilians have been killed, including dozens of children at a girls’ school in the country’s south. A U.S. assessment report found that the strike was “likely” the fault of American forces.