Almost a week after Israel launched an unprovoked military offensive against Iran, the Trump administration is on the verge of sending U.S. aircraft to join the fight directly. Speaking on Wednesday morning to reporters at the White House, in response to a question about whether the U.S. was preparing its own strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities in support of Israel, President Trump replied, “I may do it, I may not do it. I mean, nobody knows what I’m going to do.”

On Wednesday afternoon, Trump repeated to reporters in the Oval Office that he hadn’t made a decision on striking Iran—repeating the claim, contradicted by U.S. intelligence assessments, that Iran is weeks away from a nuclear weapon.

The Israeli government has demanded U.S. assistance in destroying Iran’s fortified nuclear facility at Fordow. On Friday, Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter told Fox News that “the entire operation… really has to be completed with the elimination of Fordow.” Israeli officials have argued that only the U.S. military has munitions capable of targeting effectively, particularly the 30,000 lb. Massive Ordinance Penetrator (MOP) bomb. The Iranians also maintain another major nuclear facility at Natanz which has already been hit by Israeli strikes, but which is less fortified than Fordow. The MOP bunker buster bombs are even larger than MOABs—which Trump bragged about using in Afghanistan in 2017 to target a tunnel complex allegedly used by ISIS.

Israel has framed the U.S. entering the fray as a way to bring its conflict with Iran to a quick conclusion. But, absent an immediate Iranian diplomatic capitulation, a U.S. attack would likely only be a prelude to a much longer and drawn-out military engagement with Iran. A U.S. war with Iran focused on stopping Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, rather than beginning and ending with the destruction of Fordow, would need to extend to a much broader campaign of searching for and destroying new and undisclosed nuclear sites across the country, particularly as Iran is likely to respond to an attack by diverting nuclear equipment to other sites across its vast territory.

Iran has built a sprawling civilian nuclear program with thousands of scientists and a large number of critical sites. A war aimed at stopping a nuclear weapon would need to be long and expansive, potentially even including a ground component to search for undisclosed sites and verify the level of damage from air attacks. In addition to internal pressure from Iranian elites to rework the program to develop a bomb following the Israeli assault, the country is also now facing public pressure to do the same in response to attacks believed to have killed hundreds of civilians.

Despite their statements about the nuclear program and desire for U.S. help in addressing it, Israeli officials have been open that their own objectives are much broader. In recent days, Israeli officials have suggested that their real aim is U.S.-supported “regime change” in Iran, or even the wholesale partition and destruction of the country itself, for which Tel Aviv would require U.S. military assistance over an extended period. The campaign is the culmination of a decades-long effort by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the neoconservative movement and would succeed in pinning the U.S. into a conflict with Iran that is opposed by the non-interventionist faction of Trump’s MAGA base.

“There are many people who claim a U.S. attack against Iran’s nuclear program would be quick and easy, but a lot of this is Israeli propaganda, as they would love to see America stay in the region in a forever war that helps underwrite their expansionism,” said Sina Toosi, a senior nonresident fellow at the Center for International Policy focused on Iran. “Even if the U.S. carries out a round of strikes and Natanz is destroyed, and Fordow is heavily damaged, Iran already has stockpiles of uranium and centrifuges elsewhere, as well as a massive nuclear program consisting of thousands of people. You would need to verify that they do not have a covert program, and other facilities where they can dash for a bomb. This would become a forever war.”

In the days and weeks prior to Israel’s attacks, senior Iranian officials stated publicly that threats against their program could result in Iran withdrawing from international monitoring agreements and moving their enriched uranium to undisclosed sites. On June 12, a day before the current war began, Iran also announced that it had already prepared to activate a new nuclear enrichment facility, which they said was “already built, prepared, and located in a secure and invulnerable place.”

In his statements on Wednesday, Trump claimed that the Iranians had reached out to negotiate since the war began, including by potentially sending officials to the White House, a claim that Iranian officials furiously denied on social media, stating that, “no Iranian official has ever asked to grovel at the gates of the White House.” Instead, Iran’s Supreme Leader said this morning, Iran would inflict “irreparable destruction” in response to a U.S. attack on Iran—a possible reference to expected Iranian retaliation against U.S. naval assets and military bases in nearby Middle Eastern countries.

The current war has already been highly destructive, even before the U.S. may become a direct party to the fighting. Damage from Iranian attacks is subject to suppression by Israel’s military censor, and the Israeli government has launched a wide crackdown on reporting of the attacks. But images on Israeli Telegram channels have shown damage to some critical military and intelligence sites, as well as infrastructure like refineries and potentially anti-missile air defense batteries.

The Israeli government has so far confirmed at least 24 deaths from Iranian attacks. Inside Iran, the toll has been far more severe. Death toll estimates range from 224 to over 600 according to human rights groups, with the Iranian Ministry of Health and Medical Education also reporting 1,481 wounded.

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In a particularly shocking incident, on Monday the Iranian state broadcaster was hit while live on air in an attack that killed two people. The attack forced television anchors to flee mid-broadcast though they returned later in the day to continue their program. The Israeli government claimed responsibility for the attack, with Israeli defense minister Israel Katz saying that they had hit the “propaganda and incitement broadcasting authority of the Iranian regime.”

Israeli attacks have also hit Iranian military positions outside of major cities, including ballistic missile bases and airfields. But most of the dead in Tehran are reported to be civilians.

Zahra Masoudi, a 40-year-old public relations officer at the University of Tehran, was among those who lost her loved ones in the first wave of Israeli strikes. Masoudi lived in a 14-story residential building near Nobonyad Square in northeast Tehran with her elderly parents. Around 3:30 a.m. on Saturday, while she was out with friends, she got news on her phone that an Israeli airstrike had hit her apartment building.

“Even in war, I never thought the bombing would reach my home… my mother, my father,” she said in a phone interview, her voice choked with sobs, recounting her arrival at the scene after the attacks.

The bodies of her parents were not recovered from the wreckage of their home until 9:00 a.m. the following morning.

After moving in with her aunt in eastern Tehran, Masoudi, like many Tehran residents, is now considering moving to the relative safety of the northern Iranian city of Gilan. Grief and shock over the attacks has already thrown her future into question. “How does one go about this?,” she said. “How do I go about my day without my mother’s presence or my father’s voice?”

“Unconditional Surrender”

In recent days, U.S. officials, including President Trump, have suggested that they may kill Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, or otherwise target ruling officials of the country in a manner aiming to force a change in Iran’s government, or simply to cause ungoverned chaos inside Iran.

After weeks of conflicted messaging about the topic, Trump himself has embraced a consistently aggressive message towards Tehran in recent days, demanding “unconditional surrender” from Iran on repeated occasions.

Trump has also pushed back against the conclusions of his own officials who have stated that no imminent risk of an Iranian nuclear weapon exists. Asked this week by reporters aboard Air Force One about Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s testimony in March that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon, Trump replied, “I don’t care what she said. I think they were very close.”

Iranians living inside the country have responded to the attacks and Trump’s threats with a mixture of defiance and uncertainty over what the future may hold for their country as it stares down the possibility of a full-blown war led by the U.S. in the days and weeks ahead.

“There is a lot of fear and tension, but people have also come together and are supporting each other. This includes the many liberal people who were involved in anti-government protests two years ago, as well as more religious people,” said Ali Ahmadi, an economist living in Tehran, who says that he had also taken part in demonstrations two years ago sparked by the death of a young Iranian woman who died in custody after being arrested on charges of improperly wearing her hijab. “People are seeing images on social media of the victims of these attacks, including children and young women. They are seeing photos on social media of three-year-old, and even two-month-old children who have been killed.”

The onset of the war, and the shock of the initial attacks on densely populated residential areas of Tehran, triggered small public demonstrations in Tehran by some protestors who demanded that the government actually develop a nuclear weapon to defend the country from future attacks.

While it is unclear how popular such sentiments may be at the moment, Ahmadi says that it reflects a broader perception among Iranians that the government had done too little to defend them against foreign threats, whether through ineptitude or indecision, and that more drastic measures need to be taken in future to defend their country.

“If Iran builds an ICBM after this war I would not be surprised if they name it the ‘Rayyan’ after the name of a boy named Rayyan Qassem who was killed in these attacks,” said Ahmadi.

Initial hopes that the conflict would remain limited to military targets, as it had largely been in previous exchanges of fire between the two countries, has given way to a widespread belief that Israel along with the U.S. is potentially aiming for the wholesale destruction of the country. In recent days, in addition to attacks against police stations, refineries, and factories, reports have emerged of hacking attacks against banking institutions and internet providers, alongside other measures aimed at potentially dissolving Iran’s critical infrastructure.

Iran has promised that it will continue to retaliate to Israeli attacks, and has fired salvos of ballistic missiles each night in barrages that have decreased in size since the start of the fighting. The decreases may be attributable to increased difficulty for Iranians to fire back while under attack by Israeli aircraft, or an attempt to conserve resources for what they may expect to become a long war of attrition with Tel Aviv and its allies. Israel is also reportedly running low on missile interceptors, a factor that may constrain their ability to continue fighting Iran without direct U.S. assistance.

A looming intervention by the U.S. would change the face of the conflict. The U.S. military has bases across the Persian Gulf, many of which U.S. military planners believe that Iran may target in the event of a full-blown conflict. Iran’s missile forces include a large number of shorter-range ballistic missiles specifically intended to strike at Gulf Arab states, as well as U.S. bases located nearby, and these missiles are believed to have higher accuracy than the long-range models being fired at Israel.

Despite the loss of numerous senior IRGC officials in Israeli attacks, alongside widespread destruction targeting military facilities, and even core areas of the capital, Iranian officials have remained defiant in the face of escalating threats and vowed to resist a further U.S. onslaught. “Our enemies should know that they cannot reach a solution with military attacks on us and will not be able to force their will on the Iranian people,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Aragchi said in a statement issued Monday.

“The War Came and Stole Everything”

Despite the escalating war with a major state power in the region and the prospect of another protracted and bloody conflict, the U.S. and several European Union countries have signaled that they are solidly behind Israel in its assault on Iran. During an interview at the G7 summit in Canada this week, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz told German radio that Israel was doing the “dirty work,” of the international community by attacking Iran. “I can only say I have the greatest respect for the fact that the Israeli army and the Israeli government had the courage to do this,” Merz said.

Though France has publicly supported the Israeli attack, on the sidelines of the same summit French President Emmanuel Macron expressed some worry about the possibility of another war in the Middle East aimed at toppling a government, stating that “the biggest mistake today would be to try to do a regime change in Iran through military means because that would lead to chaos. Macron added, “no one can say what comes next.”

A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers has begun pushing for legislation to block the U.S. from becoming directly involved in the fighting. Republican Senator Josh Hawley also offered a word of caution, telling a reporter, “I don’t want us fighting a war. I don’t want another Mideast war…. I’m a little concerned about our sudden military buildup in the region.”

Despite these misgivings, at present, there is no sign of an off-ramp to a war that may only be in its early stages.

While leaders trade reciprocal threats and gear up for further escalation, for ordinary Iranians like Ali Masoud, the cost of the war has already become deeply personal. Masoud lost his fiancée, the Arabic language professor at the University of Tehran, in the same building where Zahra Masoudi lived. She had been living in one of the upper-floor apartments, preparing for their wedding.

“I was counting down the days until we could start our life together. Now… I don’t know what’s left,” he said. Ali had just finished furnishing a small apartment for them. Every evening, she would call to share details of her day. On the night of the attack, the phone never rang.

After the Israeli attacks hit, he reached the site and stood frozen before the mangled wreckage of what had once been a large apartment complex. Smoke rose from the rubble, thick with dust and the smell of concrete and fire.

“I was dreaming of children, of ordinary mornings,” he said. “But the war came and stole everything.”

Mahmoud Shaban contributed reporting from Tehran. This article is published in collaboration with Egab.