A Chinese online outlet published claims that senior U.S. military and intelligence officials have begun discussing ways the United States might support an Israeli airstrike on Iran’s ballistic missile facilities. The piece says President Trump told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in December at Mar‑a‑Lago that he would back Israeli action if Washington could not strike a deal with Tehran.
The conversations inside the U.S. security apparatus, the report says, are not about whether Israel will act but about how the United States could assist. Options under consideration include aerial refuelling for Israeli jets and securing overflight permissions from third countries for U.S. or Israeli aircraft en route to Iranian targets.
Which countries would grant those permissions remains unclear. Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have publicly said they will not allow their airspace to be used for attacks on Iran or for Iranian attacks against other states, presenting an immediate diplomatic constraint on any strike that would require regional transit.
If Washington were to provide refuelling, intelligence, or other direct support for kinetic strikes against Iran, that assistance would represent a material escalation in U.S. involvement and raise the risk of reciprocal Iranian retaliation. Military planners also face hard logistical questions: the distances involved, the vulnerability of transit routes, and the legal and political consequences of using third‑party airspace.
The backdrop to these discussions is a long history of U.S. security cooperation with Israel and a highly charged regional environment. Tehran has invested heavily in ballistic missiles and proxy forces across the Middle East, and Israeli leaders view strikes on missile infrastructure as a way to blunt Iran’s capacity to threaten the region directly. For Washington, weighing support blends alliance commitments with calculations about escalation control and wider regional stability.
Regional capitals are signaling limits. Public refusals by Gulf partners highlight their desire to avoid direct confrontation with Iran while also managing domestic and regional political costs. Their stance reduces the number of practical transit corridors for a strike and complicates any plan that would rely on established basing or overflight agreements.
Beyond the immediate military calculus, facilitating an Israeli strike would have broad diplomatic and economic implications. A strike could trigger asymmetric Iranian responses — from attacks on shipping in the Gulf to strikes on U.S. or allied facilities and stepped‑up activity by Tehran’s proxies — with potential effects on global energy markets and international shipping.
The intelligence and defence deliberations reported by the Chinese outlet underscore a stark strategic choice: how to balance deterrence of Iran’s missile capability against the risk of a wider, costly conflict. The next steps by Washington and its regional partners will determine whether these discussions remain contingency planning or slip into action with far‑reaching consequences.