The plans were reported two days after dozens of Israeli fighter jets flew to Iran's border on 19 October, a sortie some US officials believe was meant to draw Iranian fire. Iran's Revolutionary Guards say they are preparing to unveil a "father of all bombs", and Israelis vote on 27 October.
US and Israeli military planners have drawn up plans to resume strikes on Iran after the 3 November US midterm elections, the New York Times reported on 21 October, citing US officials and others briefed on the discussions. The plans call for a short, intense operation against Iran's nuclear and energy facilities and its missile and drone systems, and some US planners believe three days of strikes could do enough economic damage to change the Iranian government's position. Two days earlier, on 19 October, Pete Hegseth, the US defence secretary, met Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Ovda air base in southern Israel, and dozens of Israeli fighter jets and refuelling tankers flew about 1,300 km (800 miles) to Iran's border and back. Some US officials had the impression that Israel hoped Iranian air defences would fire on the jets and hand it a reason to strike.
Israel told the US in advance that the flight was an exercise to deter Iran from attacking before Israel's election on 27 October, a week before the US vote. The decision on new strikes rests with Trump, who has vetoed plans to return to major combat several times this year. A White House official said the administration does not comment on military plans "that may or may not exist".
Trump wrote on Truth Social on 8 October: "We will not be attacking Iran at any time prior to the Midterm Elections to be held in the United States on November 3rd." On 21 October he told reporters the United States was not negotiating with Iran and that something would happen "fairly soon". "Most people seem to think it's after the election, we're gonna see what happens," he said.
The plan
US and Israeli forces have stepped up drills, including flights over Iraq to rehearse strike manoeuvres, and Hegseth discussed new strikes with Netanyahu during his visit, US officials said. Some officials want refineries left off the target list to keep gasoline prices from rising. The plans could include an attack on Pickaxe Mountain, a deeply buried nuclear-related site near Natanz.
The US force for the operation includes three aircraft carriers, thousands of Marines, fighter jets and special operations units, and will be fully in place in early November, as the hours of darkness over Iran lengthen. US officials expect another major round to push Iran's economy toward collapse and force diplomatic concessions after nearly eight months of war.
US strike packages against Iranian energy and nuclear sites include possible use of the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb, known as the "mother of all bombs", against Pickaxe Mountain, officials told CNN on 15 October. One official said the weapon was "definitely not designed as a deep penetration warhead." Trump told Newsmax that evening: "Now we're looking at Pickaxe Mountain. We may have to go there. We'll take a shot at that one."
The US military has cut troop numbers at bases in Jordan, Qatar and Kuwait in recent days, in reductions similar to those made before the war began in February, and the State Department planned to move some diplomats and their families out of Saudi Arabia, citing the risk of renewed fighting with the Houthis in Yemen, US officials said.
Iran's warnings
Hossein Mohebbi, spokesman for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, spoke on 21 October, six days after the US bomb plans were reported. "We are in the stage of preparing to unveil the 'father of all bombs'. This is something new for the enemy," Mohebbi said, without describing the weapon. On the same day he said Iran would launch offensive operations against any country that attacked it.
Maj Gen Ali Abdollahi, chief of staff of Iran's armed forces, said on 20 October that "the outbreak of any new war against Iran would inevitably spread its fire to engulf everyone", and that Iran would answer with cheap drones and other "asymmetric equipment" against US and Israeli systems. Esmaeil Baghaei, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, said the same day that Iran would answer any US attack with equal or greater force.
Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, named the targets on 22 October. Undersea cables, data centres and artificial intelligence facilities linked to the US across the Gulf could be destroyed if war breaks out, he told Press TV, putting more than US$2 trillion of US-linked technology infrastructure at risk. "We have not yet included these assets among our targets," Rezaei said. Mohebbi had said on 19 October that "seven major internet cables run beneath the Strait of Hormuz".
The Guards threatened on 22 October to strike US bases across the region if the US Navy keeps escorting ships through the strait. "The US military must know that if this trend continues, the conflict will extend to its bases in the region," the Guards said on their Sepah News website. They said they had struck four ships transferring oil between vessels in the northern-central Gulf overnight and that three other vessels hit mines west of the strait, caught fire and stopped. The Guards offered no evidence beyond their statement.
Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on 21 October that the strait, through which one-fifth of the world's oil passed before the war, would stay closed to some shipping until the US accepted Iran's terms. "Until an agreement or understanding is reached regarding this strait, it will not be open to everyone," Araghchi said, adding that indirect talks continued through Pakistan and Qatar. "Every possibility exists in the future, including the possibility that the Americans and the Zionist regime will launch another war against Iran," he said.
The 10 October offensive
Netanyahu ordered the Israeli military to prepare a multi-day bombing campaign for the weekend of 10 October, the Financial Times reported on 21 October, citing three people familiar with the plans. The targets were nuclear facilities, power plants, other civilian infrastructure and sites linked to the Iranian government, and the campaign was to be more intense than the one the US and Israel began in February. Trump stopped it because he opposed restarting the war before the midterms, the people said. "There will either be a deal or an attack," one of them said.
Trump's Truth Social post ruling out an attack went up on 8 October, two days before the weekend Israel had set. Anna Kelly, the White House deputy press secretary, repeated the pledge and said Iran faced severe economic and military difficulties.
"This report is not true. I'm not going to get into correcting this biased report," Netanyahu said in an interview published on 22 October, without saying which part he disputed. In the same interview he said he had instructed the military and the Mossad to bring down the Iranian government.
Israeli military sources told the Jerusalem Post that the military was not preparing to strike Iran on 10 October. They suggested the leak was designed to sway Israel's election and said it was unusual for Lt Gen Eyal Zamir, the military chief of staff, to be left out of Netanyahu's meeting with Hegseth. Netanyahu had urged Trump to restart the war before Israel's election and the US midterms, according to an Israeli Channel 12 report in mid-October.
Jets at the border
Israeli fighter jets and tankers crossed Syrian and Iraqi airspace on 19 October along a route consistent with a strike on Iran and turned back as they approached the border. Israel knew Iranian air defences would detect the aircraft, US officials said, and several officials suspected some in the Israeli government hoped Iran would fire to provide a justification for an attack.
Other Israeli and US officials called the sortie routine deterrence while acknowledging it could have led to a miscalculation and restarted the war. Israeli officials had warned for weeks of exactly that risk, then sent dozens of aircraft more than 1,000 km toward the Iranian border knowing Iranian radar would see them.
Netanyahu released a video the same day of a telephone call with Trump, apparently filmed at an air base. "Donald, we have a job to finish [in Iran]…and we'll finish it together. We'll finish it, and no one else will do it," Netanyahu said. "You're a great warrior, and we'll prove that very soon," Trump said.
Israel's vote
Senior US officers told Zamir in early October that White House officials and the Pentagon had instructed them to prepare for a massive attack on Iran within three weeks, a window ending shortly before the midterms. Zamir told them an attack before 27 October could force Israel to postpone its election, because Israeli officials assess Iran would answer a US strike with heavy missile fire on Israeli cities. Trump posted his pledge not to attack before the midterms on 8 October, the day the warning became public.
Zamir repeated the warning to Gen Dan Caine, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Israeli security officials and opposition figures have urged him to oppose any Israeli attack before the vote unless there is a real military need. Security officials fear statements by Netanyahu and Defence Minister Israel Katz could prompt Iran to strike Israel first.
Postponing the vote would require a law passed by at least 80 of the Knesset's 120 members under section 9A of Basic Law: The Knesset, and only when special circumstances prevent an election. The threshold would ordinarily require votes from both the governing coalition and the opposition. The Knesset last postponed an election in 1973, moving it from 30 October to 31 December after Egyptian and Syrian forces attacked on 6 October.
Trump endorsed Netanyahu on 18 October, nine days before the vote, after withholding his support for months. He threatened to "soon finish the job" against Iran "unless they change their ways, rapidly", said he might not want to if Netanyahu lost and warned that the US could be left to face Iran alone. Hegseth's visit, the call video and the border flight came the next day. On 20 October Netanyahu said: "We must complete the elimination of the Iranian regime, that is the primary objective."
Gadi Eisenkot, a former military chief of staff who leads the Yashar party, is Netanyahu's main challenger. A Channel 13 poll on 23 September gave Yashar 22 seats to Likud's 18 and Netanyahu's coalition 51 seats to the opposition's 52, short of the 61 needed to govern, and an average of eight pollsters in mid-October put Netanyahu's bloc at about 54 seats. If no bloc reaches 61, Netanyahu stays on as caretaker prime minister during coalition talks, with legal authority to order military action.
Katz said on 22 October that Israel's enemies may plan attacks to influence the vote, citing "information in our possession", and that any future attack would be the responsibility of opposition leaders Yair Lapid, Naftali Bennett and Yair Golan. He offered no evidence. "Based on the information I am familiar with, there is no reason to attack there or anywhere else before the election," Lapid said.
The war so far
The US and Israel began striking Iran on 28 February, and the opening attack killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader. US and Israeli strikes killed at least 3,636 people in Iran by 7 April, including 1,701 civilians, at least 254 of them children, and 1,221 military personnel, according to Human Rights Activists in Iran, a US-based group. Iran's Health Ministry counted at least 2,362 civilian deaths over the same period.
Iran fired missiles and drones at Israel and at Gulf states hosting US forces. An Iranian missile killed nine Israeli civilians in a residential area of Beit Shemesh on 1 March. By August, 19 US soldiers had been killed in the war, many of them in Iranian strikes on Gulf bases. The first phase, from February to April, drove up energy prices and inflation and strained US stocks of missile interceptors.
An interim truce between the US and Iran broke down on 8 July after Iran struck commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz. The US naval blockade of Iran remains in full force, Trump wrote on 8 October.
The law
Section 40 of Basic Law: The Government allows Israel to begin a war, or a significant military action likely to lead to war, only by a decision of the government, which may delegate the power to the security cabinet. The cabinet's decisions and minutes for 1 to 10 October would show whether it authorised the offensive Netanyahu is said to have ordered. The Israeli Air Force's orders for the 19 October flight and the advance notice Israel sent US Central Command would show whether the sortie was planned as deterrence or to draw Iranian fire. Zamir's correspondence with Caine and the US and Israeli readouts of the Ovda meeting would show what the two militaries agreed about timing.
Six days, two votes
Israelis vote on 27 October and US voters on 3 November. The US force for the strikes is due to be complete in early November, after both ballots close. A Netanyahu who falls short on 27 October would still hold, as caretaker, the power to send Israeli jets back toward Iran while a new coalition is negotiated. Trump has ruled out strikes before 3 November and said he might not want to finish the job if Netanyahu loses. Rezaei has named US-linked cables, data centres and AI facilities across the Gulf as targets if war resumes, and the Guards say they are preparing to unveil a weapon they call the "father of all bombs".
