As tensions continue to flare in the Middle East, rumors of US fighter-bombers streaking toward Iranian targets ricocheted across social media last night, but the Pentagon was quick to swat them down saying that they remain in a defensive posture and have not conducted strikes.
Alongside, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the USS Nimitz carrier strike group and additional air-defense batteries into the US Central Command theatre “to enhance our defensive posture.”
Privately, Pentagon planners concede the hardware also gives President Donald Trump leverage—visible proof the United States could join the fray if Iran retaliates too hard against Israel.
Is US joining?
The show of force coincided with Trump’s abrupt exit from the G7 summit in Alberta, spurring rumours of possible US participation in the war.
“IRAN CAN NOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON,” he blasted on Truth Social, urging civilians to “evacuate Tehran immediately.”
Elsewhere, China’s embassy in Tel Aviv has also told its citizens to “leave Israel immediately via land crossings into Jordan.”
White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt insisted the early departure was driven by “important matters” in Washington. Yet the optics were unmistakable: Air Force One departed Canada just as Secretary of State Marco Rubio abandoned his own G7 track to fly home with the president. 
Within hours of Trump’s posts, Sen. Bernie Sanders and seven Democratic colleagues reintroduced the No War Against Iran Act, which would freeze funding for any strike not expressly authorized by Congress.
“Another war in the Middle East could cost countless lives and trillions of dollars,” Sanders warned, reprising language first used when tensions spiked in 2020.
“Netanyahu’s reckless attacks violate international law and risk igniting a regional war,” Sanders argued, adding that US taxpayer dollars “should not be used to fund another open-ended conflict.”
The bill echoes a bipartisan powers clash that dogged previous administrations but has added urgency now that Israel’s five-day air war has killed at least 220 people in Iran and 24 in Israel, according to Reuters field counts.
Meanwhile, Israel’s strikes have taken out at least three senior IRGC commanders and inflicted visible damage on Iran’s Natanz enrichment plant, Iranian officials claim. US intelligence fears this could provoke a missile barrage overwhelming Israel’s multilayered defenses and placing US bases in Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait in the line of fire.
Or nuclear deal maybe?
Amid all of Trump’s posts about Iran supposedly not allowed to have a nuclear weapon, Axios reports that envoy Steve Witkoff may meet Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi this week to explore a ceasefire and a narrow nuclear deal. The proposal revives elements of an offer Witkoff floated in Oman last month: limited sanctions relief in exchange for halting 60% uranium enrichment and mothballing Fordow.
US officials argue the presence of the Nimitz gives those talks “teeth.”
The Iran crisis traces back to the unraveling of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Candidate-then-President Donald Trump branded the accord a “giant fiction,” quit it in 2018 after he won, and restored what he called “the highest level of economic sanctions” under a “maximum-pressure” campaign that also targeted Iran’s missile work and regional militias.
Tehran answered by breaching enrichment caps, edging to 60% purity—enough, Israeli intelligence says, to sprint for a bomb—while successive US and European attempts to revive a deal stalled.
Analysts now argue that the withdrawal left no diplomatic guardrail and pushed Iran’s program closer to the weapons threshold.
Former President Joe Biden spent three years trying—and failing—to glue the JCPOA back together. His team ran eight rounds of indirect Vienna talks, dangled phased sanctions relief and even green-lit a 2023 prisoner-swap cum $6 billion humanitarian escrow, but Tehran kept spinning to 60% and demanded guarantees no future president would re-exit.
Trump’s 2025 return saw the signing of an NSPM reviving “maximum pressure,” ended all Vienna back-channels, barred any enrichment above 3.67% as a new red-line, and threatened “overwhelming force” for violations—a posture accompanied by fresh Treasury blacklists and a maritime inspection regime in the Strait of Hormuz.
Israeli analysts concluded Tehran would race for a bomb before sanctions choked its economy and this assault on Iran is a coercive course of action to slam that deal shut.
For the US, the calculus runs deeper than alliance politics. A regional conflagration would imperil 20% of global oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz, kneecap recovering supply chains, and roil election year markets just as inflation has cooled.
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