According to the report, four officials and regional sources familiar with the matter told the media outlet that President Donald Trump launched Saturday’s wide-ranging attack on Iran after several weeks worth of lobbying campaign from Israel and Saudi Arabia.

While it was no secret that Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, publicly pushed for strikes against Iran, Saudi Arabia’s role appeared to be somewhat more complex.

In January 2026, Riyadh released a statement that Saudi Arabia would not allow any military action against Iran using its airspace or territorial waters.

However, according to the Washington Post, the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman reportedly made several private phone calls to Trump over the past month, pushing for an attack despite publicly endorsing a diplomatic solution.

On Saturday, Trump told Axios that this attack on Iran, named Operation Epic Fury, was launched for two reasons:

The first being the breakdown of the US-Iran nuclear talks in Geneva, led by his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and his close real estate mogul friend, Steve Witkoff — his official envoys.

“The Iranians got close and then pulled back — close and then pulled back. I understood from that that they don’t really want a deal,” Trump told Axios, as per their reporting.

However, Omani Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi, who is the primary mediator for the talks, expressed dismay on X, stating that “active and serious negotiations” were still underway and had been “undermined” by the strikes. He claimed a breakthrough was “within reach” just before the attack.

The second reason Trump told Axios for his decision to commence the attacks is Iran’s conduct over the last several decades. While writing his speech on Friday announcing the attack, he asked his team to compile every Iranian-linked attack around the world over the past 25 years.

Trump also told Axios that the Iranian regime had begun to rebuild the nuclear facilities that had been struck during the Israel-Iran war in June of last year.

However, the Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi repeatedly stated that Iran was “willing to talk” and interested in de-escalation. He described previous rounds as “constructive” and “serious,” though he noted that the U.S. had not made a request for new negotiations in the immediate days preceding the strikes.

Omani mediators have reportedly expressed a significant willingness to denuclearise by agreeing to never stockpile enriched uranium.

Apart from Trump’s Saturday statements once the attack already started, the president has devoted little time to publicly justifying or explaining the war with Iran, which is a break from the previous practice of U.S. leaders. Especially that he admitted in his Truth Social post in the early hours of Saturday morning at 2:00 am that he expected US citizens to die in the war he just started.

This grim admission by the president did not prevent him from attending a MAGA fundraiser party scheduled at Mar-a-Lago — Trump’s private beach resort. In videos going viral online, Trump is seen dancing during the party to “God Bless the USA” in his trademark dance. At the end of his dance, he turned to the person filming and said, “We gotta go work. I gotta go to work!”

At the time of this reporting, no U.S. casualties have been reported in the region. However, Reuters reported that 201 people were killed and 747 were wounded in the attacks, according to Iranian media that cited Red Crescent, a humanitarian group working in the region.