With an ongoing attack on high-profile targets in Iran that began on Thursday, Israel has presented President Donald Trump with his most significant foreign policy crisis yet. Trump now has to decide how — and whether — to prevent an all-out war across the Middle East that could spiral, endangering millions of people, drawing in US forces and worsening the global economic slowdown fuelled by Trump’s trade policies.

Israeli jets have already struck more than 100 sites, including in the Iranian capital of Tehran, killing at least three military commanders and two nuclear scientists, as well as civilians including children, according to Iranian state media. Israeli officials have told their US counterparts they plan to continue strikes for “several days or up to two weeks,” a US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told HuffPost.

Israeli officials call their offensive “preemptive,” noting that Iran, a longtime foe of Tel Aviv, is closer than ever to being able to develop a nuclear weapon. There was no sign of an imminent Iranian attack on Israel, however, and Iran denied it intends to build a bomb.

For months, Washington and Tehran have been discussing a possible agreement to limit Iranian nuclear development in exchange for easing sanctions on the country.

On Friday morning, Trump appeared to call for diplomacy on his social media platform Truth Social: “There is still time to make this slaughter, with the next already planned attacks being even more brutal, come to an end. Iran must make a deal, before there is nothing left.”

The Trump administration may struggle to shape what comes next, given its limited policy-making circle, the president’s unpredictability and its hollowing out of government expertise. The administration recently slashed staff at the National Security Council at the White House, has urged thousands of professional diplomats to resign and plans to fire hundreds more as early as next week, and top positions at the Pentagon and State Department are lying empty.

Still, some leading officials, like White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and Vice President JD Vance, have previously........

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