ANALYSIS — Donald Trump resorted to his familiar time frame of two weeks in opting to give Iran more time to negotiate over its nuclear program, but the move left several Republican allies hanging and capped off a week during which the president had sounded like a hawk one moment and a dove the next.
Trump convened several Situation Room meetings over whether to order U.S. military strikes on Iranian targets and convened another in the Oval Office on Friday as Israel and Iran continue to trade fire with no signs of their weeklong conflict de-escalating. Trump told reporters several times Tuesday afternoon that he would be meeting that evening with his war council, teasing the possibility that an Iran decision could be reached.
But by Thursday, during a rare White House news briefing on a federal holiday, his top spokesperson revealed the president would do the opposite.
