New intelligence suggests Israel is preparing possible strike on Iranian nuclear facilities, U.S. officials say

FILE - A Saturday, Jan. 15, 2011 file photo, shows Iran's heavy water nuclear facilities near the central city of Arak. (AP Photo/ISNA,Hamid Foroutan, File) (Hamid Foroutan/The Associated Press)

The U.S. has obtained new intelligence suggesting that Israel is making preparations to strike Iranian nuclear facilities, even as the Trump administration has been pursing a diplomatic deal with Tehran, multiple U.S. officials familiar with the latest intelligence told CNN.

Such a strike would be a brazen break with President Donald Trump, U.S. officials said. It could also risk tipping off a broader regional conflict in the Middle East — something the U.S. has sought to avoid since the war in Gaza inflamed tensions beginning in 2023.

Officials caution it’s not clear that Israeli leaders have made a final decision, and that in fact, there is deep disagreement within the U.S. government about the likelihood that Israel will ultimately act. Whether and how Israel strikes will likely depend on what it thinks of the U.S. negotiations with Tehran over its nuclear program.

But “the chance of an Israeli strike on an Iranian nuclear facility has gone up significantly in recent months,” said another person familiar with U.S. intelligence on the issue. “And the prospect of a Trump-negotiated U.S.-Iran deal that doesn’t remove all of Iran’s uranium makes the chance of a strike more likely.”

The heightened worries stem not only from public and private messaging from senior Israeli officials that it is considering such a move, but also from intercepted Israeli communications and observations of Israeli military movements that could suggest an imminent strike, multiple sources familiar with the intelligence said.

Among the military preparations the U.S. has observed are the movement of air munitions and the completion of an air exercise, two of the sources said.

But those same indicators could also simply be Israel trying to pressure Iran to abandon key tenets of its nuclear program by signaling the consequences if it doesn’t — underscoring the ever-shifting complexities the White House is navigating.

CNN has asked the National Security Council and the Israeli prime minister’s office for comment. The Israeli Embassy in Washington did not comment.

Trump has publicly threatened military action against Iran if his administration’s efforts to negotiate a new nuclear deal to limit or eliminate Tehran’s nuclear program fail. But Trump also set a limit on how long the U.S. would engage in diplomatic efforts.

In a letter to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in mid-March, Trump set a 60-day deadline for those efforts to succeed, according to a source familiar with the communication. It has now been more than 60 days since that letter was delivered, and 38 days since the first round ofv talks began.

A senior Western diplomat who met with the president earlier this month said that Trump communicated the U.S. would give those negotiations only weeks to succeed before resorting to military strikes. But for now, the White House policy is one of diplomacy.

That has put Israel “between a rock and a hard place,” said Jonathan Panikoff, a former senior intelligence official specializing in the region. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is under pressure both to avoid a U.S.-Iran deal that Israel doesn’t view as satisfactory, while also not alienating Trump — who has already broken with the Israeli prime minister on key security issues in the region.

“At the end of the day, the Israeli decision-making is going to be predicated on U.S. policy determinations and actions, and what agreements President Trump does or does not come to with Iran,” Panikoff said, who added that he did not believe Netanyahu would be willing to risk entirely fracturing the U.S. relationship by launching a strike without at least tacit U.S. approval.

Iran at its weakest in decades

Iran is in its weakest military position in decades, after Israel bombed its missile production facilities and air defenses in October, combined with an economy weakened by sanctions and Israel’s decimation of its most powerful regional proxies. Israel, U.S. officials say, sees a window of opportunity.

The U.S. is stepping up intelligence collection to be prepared to assist if Israeli leaders decide to strike, one senior U.S. official told CNN. But a source familiar with the Trump administration’s thinking told CNN the U.S. is unlikely to help Israel carry out strikes on Iranian nuclear sites at this moment, short of some major provocation by Tehran.

Israel does not have the capacity to destroy Iran’s nuclear program without American assistance, including midair refueling and the bombs required to penetrate the facilities deep underground, a need that is also reflected in previous U.S. intelligence reports, according to a source familiar with the matter.

An Israeli source told CNN that Israel would be prepared to carry out military action on its own if the U.S. were to negotiate what this source described as a “bad deal” with Iran that Israel cannot accept.

“I think it’s more likely they strike to try and get the deal to fall apart if they think Trump is going to settle for a ‘bad deal,’” said the other person familiar with U.S. intelligence. “The Israelis have not been shy about signaling that to us … both publicly and privately.”

A U.S. intelligence assessment from February suggested Israel could use either military aircraft or long-range missiles to capitalize on Iran’s degraded air defense capabilities, CNN previously reported.

But the same assessment also described how such strikes would only minimally set the Iranian nuclear program back and wouldn’t be a cure-all.

“It’s a real challenge for Netanyahu,” Panikoff said.

For now, the U.S. talks with Iran are stuck on a demand that Tehran not enrich uranium, a process which can enable weaponization, but which is also necessary to produce nuclear power for civilian purposes.

Special envoy Steve Witkoff, who is leading the U.S. delegation, told ABC News over the weekend that Washington “cannot allow even 1% of an enrichment capability” under an agreement. “We’ve delivered a proposal to the Iranians that we think addresses some of this without disrespecting them,” he said.

Khamenei said on Tuesday that he does not expect negotiations with the United States over Tehran’s nuclear program to “reach a conclusion,” calling the U.S. demand that Iran not enrich uranium a “big mistake.” Iran insists it has a right to enrich under the United Nations’ Treaty on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and says it will not relinquish that right under any circumstances.

Another round of talks may take place in Europe this week, according to Witkoff. Both the U.S. and Iran have put proposals on the table, but after more than a month of the talks facilitated by Oman, there is no current U.S. proposal with Trump’s sign-off, sources said.

U.S. intelligence agencies in February issued warnings that Israel will likely attempt to strike facilities key to Iran’s nuclear program this year, CNN previously reported.

It has “consistently been the Israeli position that the military option is the only option to stopping Iran’s military nuclear program,” one U.S. official noted.

CNN’s Kylie Atwood, Zachary Cohen, Alex Marquardt and Oren Liebermann contributed to this report.