If there was a moment when President Donald Trump’s carefully crafted diplomatic initiative was derailed and Iran’s fate was sealed, it was on June 4, when Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, rejected a nuclear deal proposed by the United States.

Khamenei, 86, who has the final word on everything in Iran, called the key demand, that Iran give up enriching uranium, “nonsense” and “100%” against Tehran’s interests.

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“A nuclear industry without enrichment capabilities is useless because we would then be dependent on others to obtain fuel for our power plants,” Khamenei said.

Up until that point, Trump believed his negotiating team, headed by a billionaire real estate executive, had crafted an artful compromise. Iran could keep its nuclear reactors for generating electricity, but the uranium would eventually be enriched outside Iran by a regional consortium that would include Iran, the U.S., and some Gulf states.

Three weeks earlier, in Doha, Qatar, Trump seemed almost giddy that he’d pulled off a diplomatic triumph, far superior to the 2015 agreement negotiated by former President Barack Obama, which Trump tore up in 2018.

“Iran has sort of agreed to the terms. They’re not going to make, what I call it in a friendly way, ‘nuclear dust,’” Trump said, referring to highly enriched uranium needed for nuclear weapons. “I think we’re getting close to maybe doing a deal.”

Trump’s message to Iran has been consistent since he initiated negotiations by sending a “beautiful” letter to Khamenei in March.

“I want them to end up being a great country, frankly, but they can’t have a nuclear weapon, that’s the only thing,” Trump said. “There are two steps: a very, very nice step and there’s a violent step, violence like people haven’t seen before.”

Trump was giving Iranian leaders what they said they wanted, a “peaceful” energy program, and Khamenei was scoffing at Trump’s threat of “big bombing.”

“Iran could have civilian nuclear power without enrichment, but Iran rejected that,” Vice President JD Vance said on X. “Meanwhile, they’ve enriched uranium far above the level necessary for any civilian purpose. It’s one thing to want civilian nuclear energy. It’s another thing to demand sophisticated enrichment capacity.”

At the same time that the Iran negotiations suddenly seemed to be going nowhere, Trump was also fighting another battle behind the scenes — with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Twice, in February and again in April, Netanyahu visited Trump at the White House to plead his case that only military action would halt Iran’s nuclear ambitions and to request America’s 30,000-pound “bunker-busting,” deep-penetrating bombs to take out Iran’s deeply buried nuclear facilities at Natanz and Fordow.

Both times, Trump rebuffed Netanyahu while warning him not to strike Iran while negotiations were ongoing.

Then came a fateful June 8 meeting at Camp David, the presidential retreat outside Washington.

According to an account in the New York Times, at the meeting, CIA Director John Ratcliffe briefed Trump on the latest U.S. intelligence that Israel was preparing to attack Iran within days, while Gen. Dan Caine, the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, laid out in charts and maps how the U.S. expected the operation to unfold.

According to the intelligence, the New York Times reported that Netanyahu was planning “not just a limited strike on the nuclear facilities, but a far more expansive attack that could imperil the Iranian regime itself — and that he was prepared to go it alone.”

“The next day, any remaining doubts are dispelled,” Jonathan Swan, the paper’s White House reporter, said in a podcast interview. “Trump has a phone call with Netanyahu, and Netanyahu is unequivocal. They’re doing it. The mission is a go. And he gives Trump a pretty high-level overview of what they’re doing, talks about some of the aspects of the military campaign.”

This time, Trump, while not endorsing the plan, did not push back.

Netanyahu forced his hand, and Khamenei gave Netanyahu the opening, not just by being recalcitrant in the negotiations but by being openly defiant.

Netanyahu accused Iran of producing enough highly enriched uranium for nine nuclear bombs, and of taking unprecedented steps to weaponize it.

“IAEA issued a report, a very comprehensive report, and they found Iran to be an egregious failure to live up to its nonproliferation commitments,” said Brett McGurk, former White House coordinator for the Middle East under Obama. “The first time in 20 years. What did Iran do? It announced escalations of its program, including in that Fordow site. So Iran has made terrible choices.”

Trump said later that he gave Iran 60 days to reach an agreement and that the 61st day was June 12, when Israel struck.

“That was one hell of a hit,” Trump would say later. “Not sustainable, to be honest. That’s where it ended. It ended on the first night. I don’t know how much longer it’s going to go on. I mean, they’re totally defenseless, they have no air defense whatsoever.”

But in the first hours of the attack, Trump was strangely silent, as if he were waiting to see how things played out.

It was left to Secretary of State Marco Rubio to issue a statement, which voiced no support for Israel and distanced the U.S. from the air assault.

“We are not involved in strikes against Iran, and our top priority is protecting American forces in the region,” the statement reads.

But by the next morning, when the extent of Israel’s spectacular success was evident, Trump weighed in on Truth Social, crediting American weapons for giving Israel the decisive edge.

“The United States makes the best and most lethal military equipment anywhere in the World, BY FAR, and that Israel has a lot of it,” he posted, blaming the Iranians for not taking his warnings seriously. “I told them it would be much worse than anything they know, anticipated, or were told.”

“I gave Iran chance after chance to make a deal,” Trump said. “I told them, in the strongest of words, to ‘just do it,’ but no matter how hard they tried, no matter how close they got, they just couldn’t get it done.”

Initially, Trump seemed to hope the devastating Israeli strikes, which took down most of Iran’s air defenses, destroyed half of their missile launchers, and killed more than 20 of its senior military leaders and nuclear scientists, would force Iran back to the table.

But by Day Five of the war, Trump said he was no longer in the “mood” to negotiate, and by the sixth day, he was instead calling for Iran’s “unconditional surrender,” threatening Khamenei with assassination, and weighing whether to help Israel destroy Iran’s two main nuclear facilities.

On Wednesday, Trump claimed Iran was begging to get back to the negotiating table. “I said, ‘It’s very late, you know?’ I said, ‘It’s very late to be talking.'”

“And I said, ‘Why didn’t you negotiate with me before? All this death and destruction. Why didn’t you?’”

At the same time, Khamenei was on Iranian TV vowing never to surrender, while his deputy foreign minister, Majid Takht-Ravanchi, was on CNN saying, “If the Americans decide to get involved militarily, we have no choice but to retaliate.”

As of this writing, Trump has said, “nobody knows what I’m going to do,” not even him. “I like to make the final decision one second before it’s due. You know, because things change. I mean, especially with war.”

And while he’s reportedly approved conceptual plans for  U.S. participation, Trump has not ruled out a deal if Iran capitulates to all his demands.

“For that to happen, it must stop sponsoring terror, halt its bloody proxy wars, and permanently and verifiably cease its pursuit of nuclear weapons,” Trump has said.

“When does your patience run out?” a reporter asked at a recent White House event.

“It’s already run out, that’s why we are doing what we are doing,” Trump replied. “They had 60 days, plenty of time. And they made a mistake, honestly, they made a mistake. Their country is in ruins, so many people are dead that shouldn’t be dead. It’s a very sad thing.”

KHAMENEI REJECTS TRUMP’S CALL FOR SURRENDER, ISSUES WARNING IF US INTERVENES

“Mr. President, what do you have to say to the supreme leader of Iran, who says that they will not surrender?” another reporter asked.

“I say, ‘Good luck.’”