It is not a question of will US attack Iran, but a question of when

US military is prepared to attack Iran this weekend at the earliest, but US president Donald Trump has not decided yet.

The White House has been briefed that the military could be ready for an attack by the weekend, after a significant buildup in recent days of air and naval assets in the Middle East, the sources said, CNN reported.

But one source cautioned that Trump has privately argued both for and against military action and polled advisers and allies on what the best course of action is.

“He is spending a lot of time thinking about this,” one source said.

Meanwhile Iran has been negotiating with the US.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Wednesday that Iran was expected to provide more details on its negotiating position “in the next couple of weeks,” but she wouldn’t say whether Trump would hold off on military action within that timespan.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio is expected to travel to Israel on February 28 to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and update him on the Iran talks, a State Department official told CNN Wednesday.

“I’m not going to set deadlines on behalf of the president of the United States,” Leavitt said.

She added that while “diplomacy is always his first option,” military action remains on the table.

“There’s many reasons and arguments that one could make for a strike against Iran,” she said, adding Trump was relying on counsel from his national security team “first and foremost.”

The US military has repositioned aircraft and naval assets to sites near Iran since mid-January with an additional carrier strike group heading to the region as of Feb 18, 2026.

Iran is fortifying several of its nuclear facilities, using concrete and large amounts of soil to bury key sites amid US military pressure, according to new satellite imagery and analysis from the Institute for Science and International Security.