President Donald Trump has told advisers he wants any U.S. military strike in Iran to deliver a swift and decisive blow to the regime rather than trigger a prolonged conflict, NBC News reported on Thursday.
Citing a U.S. official and people familiar with internal discussions, NBC said Trump’s national security team has not assured him that Tehran’s government would quickly collapse following an American strike, raising concerns about Iranian retaliation and limited U.S. assets in the region.
“If he does something, he wants it to be definitive,” one of the sources said.
Trump has told Iran he does not intend to launch military strikes against the country, Iran’s ambassador to Pakistan said Thursday.
Ambassador Reza Amiri Moghaddam told a Pakistani news website that Trump conveyed the message late Wednesday, around 10 p.m. Israel time, while urging Tehran to exercise restraint. The claim, first reported by Al Jazeera, could not be independently verified, and the U.S. has not commented.
The NBC report said Trump is weighing more limited military options while keeping the possibility of escalation on the table. During a visit to Detroit earlier this week, he told Iranian protesters that “help is on its way” and called the situation in Iran “fragile.”
Asked about the deliberations, a White House official told NBC that “all options are at President Trump’s disposal” regarding Iran, pointing to past military actions as evidence that he “means what he says.”
Trump told reporters at the White House on Wednesday that he was told that “the killing in Iran is stopping” and that “there are no plans for an execution or executions,” saying he has been told “on good authority,” following reports that Iranian protester Erfan Soltani was arrested and sentenced to death.
Soltani has not been sentenced to death, the country’s judiciary said on Thursday, according to Reuters. State media quoted officials as saying the 26-year-old remains in custody at Karaj’s central prison and faces charges of “colluding against national security” and “spreading propaganda against the regime.” The judiciary added that the charges, if confirmed by a court, do not carry the death penalty.
Asked to elaborate on who told Trump’s team that the killing has stopped, the president answered that “we have been informed by very important sources on the other side and they’ve said that the killing has stopped. The executions won’t take place. There was supposed to be a lot of executions today and that the executions won’t take place and we’re going to find out.”
Trump suggested that military action is still on the table in response to another reporter’s question, saying that “we’re going to watch it and see what the process is, but we were given a very good statement by people that are aware of what’s going on.”
Estimates on the number of people killed in anti-regime protests that began on Dec. 28 have ranged from 2,000 to 20,000, with the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency reporting on Wednesday that 2,615 deaths have been confirmed, including 2,435 protesters. In addition, 2,054 people with severe injuries have been reported and 18,470 have been detained with 105 cases of forced confessions broadcast on television, according to the rights monitor.
The largest protests in three years have spread across the country.
Demonstrators have filled the streets of Tehran, Mashhad and other cities amid nationwide protests over soaring inflation and the collapse of the rial—which has plunged to about 1.46 million to the dollar.
What began as anger over prices and a sinking currency has widened into open calls to end clerical rule, with strikes shuttering markets and businesses in several commercial hubs.
