As Israel’s attacks on Iran continued into their fifth day June 17, the United States — and President Donald Trump — faced a potentially momentous decision. Should the U.S. actively participate in Israeli efforts to bomb Iran’s second-largest nuclear complex?
Over the first five days of Israel’s campaign, Iran experienced major losses — in leadership, military assets and nuclear facilities. Analysts said the attacks left the nation’s Islamic government at its weakest point in decades. Israel’s earlier attacks had already weakened Iran’s proxies Hamas, in Gaza, and Hezbollah, in Lebanon.
But a key goal of Israel’s attacks is to eliminate, to the furthest degree possible, Iran’s nuclear capabilities. Making Iran nuclear-weapons-free is a high priority for Israel because just a few Iranian nuclear blasts could eliminate the main population centers in Israel, a country the size of New Jersey.
Since launching airstrikes June 13, Israel set back Iran’s nuclear capabilities by damaging a uranium enrichment plant at Natanz, its main nuclear facility located about 200 miles south of Tehran, and cutting off its power supply, and bombing a site at Parchin, about 35 miles southeast of Tehran, where modeling was done for building nuclear weapons.
But analysts say that thoroughly curtailing Iran’s nuclear potential likely requires Israel to neutralize the heavily reinforced facilities at Ford (sometimes spelled Fordow), where Iran’s most important uranium enrichment facility is buried deep under mountains. Fordo is the name of a village about 125 miles south of Tehran.
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And Fordo, analysts say, is a site that Israel cannot damage on its own. It would need help from the U.S., which possesses the required military hardware Israel needs to accomplish that aim.
The U.S. role would most likely come from “carpet bombing by B-52s, specialized, ground-penetrating bombs dropped by B-2s, or a modified ‘Mother of All Bombs,’ dropped from a cargo plane,” said Cameron University military historian Lance Janda. “Those weapons might not entirely wipe out structures that are buried hundreds of meters underground, either, but the shock waves would be devastating.”
On June 17, The New York Times reported that Trump “is seriously considering sending American military aircraft in to help refuel Israeli combat jets and to try to take out Iran’s deep-underground nuclear site at Fordo with 30,000-pound bombs — a step that would mark a stunning turnabout from his opposition just two months ago to any military action while there was still a chance of a diplomatic solution.”
Smoke rises from the building of Iran’s state-run television after an Israeli strike in Tehran on June 16, 2025. (AP)
Whether the U.S. will take an active, offensive role in Fordo’s bombing is a question laden with strategic and geopolitical import. A specific offensive military action against a sovereign state by the United States — either through an offensive military collaboration with Israel, or with the U.S. acting alone against Iran for Israel’s benefit — would break with decades of precedent in the U.S.-Israel relationship.
Past collaborations between the U.S. and Israel have involved a layer of distance and plausible deniability. “We have had a delicate dance with the Israelis historically,” Janda said.
Since Israel’s founding in 1948, the U.S. has been a reliable ally, offering bipartisan rhetorical support, diplomatic cover, financial assistance, weapons, intelligence and — most recently — defensive support, including assistance with anti-missile technology as Iran has retaliated for Israeli attacks by sending barrages of missiles toward Israeli cities.
“The Biden administration collaborated with Israel, and other regional powers, in thwarting Iranian attacks” after Israel moved into Gaza after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks in Israel, said Boaz Atzili, a professor of foreign policy and global security at American University. “Both Biden and Trump assisted against missiles launched from Yemen, and Trump even acted offensively against Yemen, before signing a separate agreement that precluded Israel.”
Mark F. Cancian, a senior adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank, said he knows of many instances in which the U.S. provided indirect support for offensive Israeli operations.
“However, I cannot think of any example where the United States and Israel launched an offensive operation together,” he said.
“If the U.S. attacks Iran, it will be joining the war,” said Steven Cook, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
As of 5 p.m. ET June 17, Trump had not publicly announced what the U.S. will do regarding Fordo. But on Truth Social earlier that day, he touted the U.S.’ military power and intelligence gathering.
“We now have complete and total control of the skies over Iran,” Trump posted at 11:55 a.m. ET. “Iran had good sky trackers and other defensive equipment, and plenty of it, but it doesn’t compare to American made, conceived, and manufactured ‘stuff.’ Nobody does it better than the good ol’ USA.”
Twenty-four minutes later, Trump posted“We know exactly where the so-called ‘Supreme Leader’ is hiding. He is an easy target, but is safe there. We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now. But we don’t want missiles shot at civilians, or American soldiers. Our patience is wearing thin. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
The most obvious takeaways from Trump’s posts were his warnings to Iran. But a more subtle message may have been buried within the pronouns Trump used in his posts: No fewer than four times in the two messages did Trump use the word “we.”
Such an open U.S. military role with Israel — especially in opposition to a sovereign country — obliterated the usual, and careful, U.S. posturing about its role in participating in Israeli military offensives.
None of this means that the U.S. is guaranteed to get involved directly with an attack on Fordo, experts said. And even if the U.S. did get involved in an attack, it might not trigger the backlash from neighboring Arab countries that the long history of U.S. distance from Israeli military offensives was originally designed to prevent, Janda said. Iran is predominantly Shia, a branch of Islam that’s separate from the Sunni branch that predominates in most of the rest of the region. Some other conflicts split Sunni nations, but Shia Iran is widely viewed as a geopolitical rival in the Sunni world, Janda said.
A downside of direct U.S. involvement in attacks against Iran is that it could put U.S. troops in the region at a higher risk than before, and heighten the dangers for civilian targets in Europe and the U.S., Janda said.
“As we have so sadly learned, wars have their own logic and once started are very difficult to stop,” said Barbara Slavin, a fellow at the Stimson Center, a Washington foreign-policy think tank and a lecturer at George Washington University.
