According to Bill O’Reilly, who is in communication with President Trump, three things landed on Trump’s desk simultanerously and forced the decision. The CIA, NSA, and UN intelligence all converged at the same time. They had the same conclusion: Iran was close to assembling ten nuclear weapons, not one. And the mullahs had deliberately decentralized their nuclear capacity after the June strikes. They spread it out to survive the next attack.
Then Mossad delivered a gift. The Ayatollah and 25 senior regime figures were going to be in the same location on a specific Saturday morning. That window doesn’t stay open.
And then the Iranians themselves made the decision an easy one.
Additionally, after negotiations in Geneva, Iran’s foreign minister walked into the room and told Steve Witkoff, the U.S. chief negotiator, essentially, “We’re not stopping our nuclear program. Not for you. Not for anyone.”
You had the intelligence. You had the window. You had the answer from the other side. What else do you need?
O’Reilly explained the stakes. It’s a come to Jesus moment. If Trump dismantles Iran’s capacity to threaten the region and comes out of it with momentum going into negotiations with China, he locks in a legacy that nobody can take from him. If it goes sideways, Republicans pay for it in November.
That’s the calculation. Trump made it with eyes wide open.
The mullahs were given every off-ramp. They chose the wall.
If this is the case, the role Israel had was to share intel. President Trump made this decision because he saw an opportunity to rid the world of a certain threat.
— M.A. Rothman (@MichaelARothman) March 13, 2026