The Trump administration notified Israel it is sending dozens more refueling planes ahead of a potential expansion of military operations against Iran, three U.S. and Israeli officials said.
The U.S. currently has about 30 military refueling planes at Ben Gurion International Airport near Tel Aviv and around the same number at Ramon Airport in southern Israel, and Israeli officials said the U.S. wants to send several dozen more in the coming days.
After he was presented with several new military plans in a Situation Room meeting Tuesday, President Trump is considering a massive offensive in Iran that would be wider in scope than the current strikes around the Strait of Hormuz, U.S. and Israeli officials said.
"I can tell you only one thing, and I will say this to the leaders of Iran: Do not count on it being quiet if you attack us," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a Tuesday speech. "Do not count on a rerun. Because it will not be a rerun, and that was already powerful enough. This will be a different event, much more powerful."
On Thursday, the U.S. military conducted strikes against Iranian targets in the Strait of Hormuz and the southern coast of Iran for the fifth day in a row and bombed at least seven bridges around the city of Bandar Abbas, a U.S. official said.
Iran also escalated attacks targeting U.S. bases in Jordan, Qatar, Bahrain, Iraq and Kuwait, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps claimed it attacked an American base in Syria, although U.S. troops withdrew from the base several months ago.
The presence of the U.S. military refueling planes has clogged Ben Gurion International Airport, and with the airspace now open and Israelis going on summer vacations additional U.S. refueling planes operating from the airport could lead to mass flight cancellations; Israel's minister of transportation, Miri Regev, pressed for moving the planes or limiting their number and the Defense Ministry and IDF pushed back.
The Trump administration has asked the Israeli government to accommodate the additional refueling planes, and Netanyahu will have the final say on the issue.