President Donald Trump launched military strikes against Iran earlier than planned after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged immediate action during a phone call, according to a report.
The Trump administration had originally planned to strike Iran in late March or early April to allow time to build public support, a U.S. official told Axios. But Netanyahu pressed Trump to act sooner, presenting intelligence that suggested a rare opportunity to topple Iran’s leadership.
The revelation comes as lawmakers, world leaders, and some of Trump’s own supporters question the timing of the military operation, launched over the weekend.
According to Axios, citing three sources briefed on the discussion, Netanyahu called Trump on February 23 with the tip that Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and several of his top advisers were expected to gather in a single location in Tehran on Saturday morning.
That meeting, Netanyahu told Trump and his team, could allow them to eliminate Iran’s leadership in one devastating airstrike, according to the sources.
Netanyahu also warned that Iranian opposition figures sheltering in safe houses were at risk of being killed by the regime, the report said. Israeli officials had already been lobbying the Trump administration for weeks to strike Iran, according to earlier reporting by The New York Times and The Washington Post.
Trump had already been leaning toward authorizing military action, Axios reported. Netanyahu’s phone call made that decision for him, the sources said.
U.S. and Israeli forces subsequently carried out coordinated strikes that killed Khamenei, who had ruled Iran for nearly four decades, along with top Iranian officials.
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
Tehran responded with retaliatory strikes, including attacks in Kuwait that killed six U.S. service members. More than 1,000 people in Iran have died since the conflict began, according to the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Wednesday the campaign was still in its “early” days.
“As President Trump said, more and larger waves are coming,” Hegseth told reporters. “We are just getting started. We are accelerating, not decelerating.”
Hegseth said the next phase of operations would aim to give U.S. and Israeli forces “complete control of Iranian skies,” a goal he said could be achieved within a week.
“This was never meant to be a fair fight, and it is not a fair fight,” Hegseth added. “We are punching them while they’re down, which is exactly how it should be.”
The strikes were the second U.S. attack on Iran in the past year, following a June 2025 operation targeting Iranian nuclear facilities.
Trump has offered shifting explanations for the decision to strike Iran. He initially said Tehran was preparing to strike U.S. bases. However, Trump administration officials later told congressional staffers in closed-door briefings that there was no intelligence pointing toward imminent Iranian strikes.
