Exclusive: The Trump-Netanyahu call that changed the Middle East

• It answers the question that lawmakers, MAGA skeptics and world leaders have all been asking since Saturday: why now?
• The answer: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his inner circle were irresistible targets of opportunity that neither Trump nor Netanyahu wanted to pass up.

Zoom in: Trump was already leaning toward striking Iran before learning the new intelligence about Khamenei. What he hadn't decided was when — until Netanyahu called.

• The Feb. 23 call was part of months of intensive coordination between the two leaders, who met twice and spoke by phone 15 times in the two months leading to the war, according to U.S. and Israeli officials.
• The U.S. and Israel had considered striking a week earlier than Saturday, but postponed for intelligence and operational reasons, including bad weather.

Inside the room: An initial CIA check, conducted at Trump's direction, confirmed the information about Khamenei gathered by Israeli military intelligence.

• Preparations accelerated as Trump told Netanyahu he would consider moving forward — but first came the president's State of the Union address the following night.
• U.S. officials said Trump made a "deliberate decision" not to focus excessively on Iran so as not to spook the ayatollah and drive him underground before the strike could be executed.

By Thursday, the CIA had fully "confirmed that these people were all going to be together, and we needed to take advantage of it," a source said.

• That same day, Trump's envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff called from Geneva after hours of talks with Iranian officials and delivered a blunt verdict: negotiations were going nowhere.
• "If you decide you want to do diplomacy, we will push and fight to get a deal. But these guys showed us they weren't willing to make the deal you will be satisfied with," a U.S. official with direct knowledge of the call said Trump was told.

Trump was now convinced of two things: the intelligence was solid, and diplomacy was dead. On Friday at 3:38 p.m. EST, he gave the final order.

• Eleven hours later, bombs fell on Tehran, Khamenei was killed and the war had begun.

Behind the scenes: Trump saw Netanyahu as a close partner and was genuinely open to his counsel on Iran — but he was also determined to exhaust diplomacy first.

• "One side of the house was negotiating and the other side of the house was doing joint military planning" with Israel, a U.S. official said. "He was assessing both things all the time."

Between the lines: Under fire for suggesting the U.S. had been dragged in by Israel, Secretary of State Marco Rubio insisted Tuesday that this operation "had to happen anyway," and that it was simply "a question of timing."

• "This weekend presented a unique opportunity to take joint action against this threat," he told reporters on Capitol Hill. "We wanted this to have maximum success."
• "Trump wanted to strike earlier — in early January. It was Bibi who asked to delay," one Israeli official said, stressing that the timing was "fully coordinated" with "the understanding that it would be carried out jointly."

The intrigue: The original plan called for a strike in late March or early April, giving the administration time to build public support. Netanyahu pushed to move faster, a U.S. official told Axios.

• The official said Netanyahu began "agitating" and warning that Iranian opposition leaders sheltering in safe houses were in danger of being killed by the regime.

The accelerated timeline left the administration flat-footed: Rather than spending weeks building the public case for war, the White House found itself justifying the strikes after the bombs had already fallen.

• "We didn't make the case in advance as well as we could have because the opportunity came on us so fast," the official said.
• Another official acknowledged there was muddled messaging from Rubio and from the White House, which started making the case for war after the attack, rather than before.

Friction point: Because Trump and Netanyahu disguised their Saturday attack, many U.S. citizens were caught completely unaware and stranded as Iran launched retaliatory strikes across the Gulf.

• Rubio's State Department scrambled to mount an emergency evacuation effort for more than 1,500 Americans who requested assistance getting out of the region.
• Asked by reporters Tuesday why there was no evacuation plan, Trump replied: "Well, because it happened all very quickly."

The other side: Israeli Ambassador to Washington Yechiel Leiter declined to comment on the specifics of the Feb. 23 call, but denied that Netanyahu was "agitating" or ever raised the threat to Iranian opposition leaders as a reason to accelerate.

• "Over the past year, we have worked more closely than ever with our partners in the United States regarding Iran, and we see eye to eye on the danger Iran poses to Israel, to the United States, and to the free world," Leiter told Axios.
• "Anyone who knows President Trump understands that he is a strong leader who cannot be steered," the ambassador said.

The bottom line: Trump was equally dismissive Tuesday of any suggestion that Netanyahu drove the decision.

• "We were having negotiations with these lunatics and it was my opinion that they were going to attack first. I felt strongly about that. If anything, I might have forced Israel's hand," he said.
• The White House did not dispute Axios' reporting and pointed to Trump's and Rubio's public comments Tuesday.