After the United States refrained from striking Iran overnight Friday-Saturday for the first time in two weeks, Hebrew media reported Saturday that Jerusalem had been prepared for a major escalation in the war over the weekend, which never came. Despite the pause, Israeli leaders still estimated that US President Donald Trump would soon be compelled to step up military action, the reports said.

After the quiet night in Iran, there were also no reports on Saturday of attacks by Iran on its Gulf neighbors, which have been taking place daily as well.

Trump himself ordered the US military not to strike Iran on Friday and Saturday, Axios reported, citing two sources with knowledge of the directive.

Kan reported that the Israeli military had prepared for a significant escalation in the conflict. Channel 12’s diplomatic corespondent Yaron Avraham reported the same, while Barak Ravid, who reports for both Channel 12 and US outlet Axios, said that according to his information, the strikes the US military had planned for Friday night, before Trump nixed them, had been no different in scale than those it had carried out over the previous 13 nights.

Multiple outlets, including Axios and Kan, cited sources as saying that the US was still intending a major expansion of the fighting, but that Trump was now favoring allowing more time for negotiations.

Kan reported that the US military has continued to send significant forces to Israel, including dozens of warplanes, refueling planes, air defenses and munitions. It said some 90 refuelers had arrived over the past few weeks and were stationed at Ben Gurion Airport and the Ramon and Ovda airbases — a similar deployment to the one that took place just before the US-Israeli war against Iran was launched in late February.

A senior Israeli official told Channel 12 that “the chances of reaching an agreement between the United States and Iran are virtually nonexistent,” calling an eventual escalation in the conflict “inevitable.”

Sources cited by Channel 13 and Ynet similarly predicted that diplomacy would fail and that Trump, who prefers negotiations, would eventually have “no choice” but to order a major attack.

Trump has threatened in recent days to widen the range of targets to include Iran’s energy plants and bridges, send ground forces to seize its........

© The Times of Israel