Many analysts agree that the last round of fighting between Israel and Iran last June was not the final conflict the two regional powers will face.
Despite President Trump having declared that the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program had been completely obliterated in the US knock-out strikes against three nuclear facilities which came at the end of the 12-day war, Israel suspects the Iranians are still conducting nuclear development activity in secret, and are busy reconstituting and expanding their ballistic missile arsenal.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is due to visit the United States yet again, from December 28 to January 4, and will meet with President Trump at the Mar-a-Lago estate. Netanyahu will reportedly lobby the president to take more military action against Tehran.
NBC reports Saturday, “Israeli officials have grown increasingly concerned that Iran is expanding production of its ballistic missile program, which was damaged by Israeli military strikes earlier this year, and are preparing to brief President Donald Trump about options for attacking it again, according to a person with direct knowledge of the plans and four former U.S. officials briefed on the plans.”
“Israeli officials also are concerned that Iran is reconstituting nuclear enrichment sites the U.S. bombed in June, the sources said,” the report continues. “But, they added, the officials view Iran’s efforts to rebuild facilities where they produce the ballistic missiles and to repair its crippled air defense systems as more immediate concerns.”
But the timing of potential new Pentagon action against Iran couldn’t be worse, given the concentration of American military assets currently in the southern Caribbean at a moment the US is threating regime change actions against Venezuela’s President Maduro and cartels in Latin America.
The USS Gerald R. Ford carrier group was even recently moved from the Mediterranean, where it was closer to the Middle East and CENTCOM region, to join operations threatening Venezuela in the Caribbean.
However, the Pentagon has just this week engaged in new ‘counter ISIS’ strikes in Syria, and so presumably would have enough or limited support assets in the region if it chose to assist with some new Israeli anti-Iran operation.
Still, all of these unprovoked attacks on foreign powers and adventurism abroad could grow increasingly unpopular with the American people, and certainly there’s a large chunk of the MAGA base which is dead set against the US entering new wars and conflicts, also at a time the Ukraine proxy war shows no signs of slowing.
The Trump administration is still standing by its assessment that Iran’s nuclear capabilities have been destroyed. “The International Atomic Energy Agency and Iranian government corroborated the United States government’s assessment that Operation Midnight Hammer totally obliterated Iran’s nuclear capabilities,” White House spokesperson Anna Kelly has said in a statement.
There’s widespread acknowledgement that Iran’s ballistic missile capability is among the most advanced in the broader region, and that it did real damage against Israel in the June war:
Iran has not just developed one of the most advanced ICBMs in the world
— Patarames (@Pataramesh) December 20, 2025
(New video on the Qaem ICBM has just been released on the DDD YT-Channel)
➡️ Israeli sources now claim that Iran was close to mastering what no other country has ever masted:
Purse-Fusion nuclear weapons… https://t.co/qvq1nnLW46 pic.twitter.com/bUrnOIvB0X
She further warned: “As President Trump has said, if Iran pursued a nuclear weapon, that site would be attacked and would be wiped out before they even got close.” So while Trump might be open to mulling new action, the official US stance is that there’s no need to at this point.
Reprinted with permission from ZeroHedge.
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