Rubio denies nuclear strike on Iran is close after Carlson claim

The US Secretary of State said Trump had not decided on new strikes and preferred diplomacy, as Israel's UN ambassador also rejected the report. Trump said negotiations with Iran were going fine.

The American commentator Tucker Carlson wrote on Saturday on X, the social media platform, that, in the words of an unnamed "informed observer" he quoted, the Trump administration may be within days of launching a nuclear strike on Iran under pressure from the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Trump had not decided on fresh strikes and preferred a diplomatic solution, and Israel's UN ambassador, Danny Danon, denied any pressure.

On Al Arabiya English's W News he said: "Prime Minister Netanyahu is not pressing President Trump". He added that it was "not the first time" Carlson had spread lies about Israel, and called the report itself disputed.

The sourcing behind Carlson's claim is thin. He has offered no documents, no named sources and no independent evidence, pointing only to a single anonymous "informed observer": "I wouldn't use nuclear. We don't have to." Separately, Axios, an American news website, reported, citing Israeli and American sources, that Trump and Netanyahu held a tense phone call on Saturday. In that call, according to the report, Netanyahu pressed for a strike on Iran immediately after Tuesday's midterms, while Trump wanted negotiations to play out.

Speaking to reporters at Mar-a-Lago on Saturday, Trump struck a different note. The United States had largely destroyed Iran's nuclear and military capabilities, he said, and negotiations were going fine. He was not in much of a hurry. He named Pickaxe Mountain, about 1.5 km south of the Natanz nuclear complex, as a remaining site that could be dealt with in 10 minutes. It is roughly 220 km south of Tehran. Any deep-strike campaign would face practical limits. The Center for Strategic and International Studies, an American research group, reported that the 30,000-pound MOP bomb can penetrate up to 200 feet, about 60 metres, of material, but stocks are estimated in the low single digits. A large campaign would need multi-year replenishment.

It would not be the first Carlson claim to run into denial. In March, he reported that Israel had demanded the initial American strikes on Iran; Trump said the decision was his own, and Rubio put the timing down to the president's own analysis.