President Donald Trump is weighing whether to order the U.S. military to get directly involved in Israel’s war against Iran, though experts warn it is unclear if the United States’s most powerful bomb would be capable of destroying Iran’s most hardened nuclear enrichment facility.

The Defense Department has rushed additional weapons and personnel to the Middle East this week as Israel and Iran continue to exchange volleys of airstrikes and missile attacks. So far, U.S. forces have only aided Israel in defending itself from incoming Iranian-fired projectiles, though Israel is hoping for the U.S. to join it in offensive operations.

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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth directed the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group to the Middle East region, which will join the USS Carl Vinson carrier strike group, a U.S. defense official told the Washington Examiner on Monday.

Israeli leaders want to see the U.S. get involved in the war because the American military has “bunker-busting” bombs that may be able to penetrate Iran’s underground nuclear facilities, which the Israeli do not possess.

There are questions, however, about whether the U.S.’s Massive Ordnance Penetrator, its bunker bomb, would be able to take out Iran’s Fordow facility, which is deeply embedded within the Kūh-e Dāgh Ghū’ī mountain.

Alex Plitsas, an expert with the Atlantic Council, predicted that Israel will eventually target Fordow, which it largely has not done so far, with or without U.S. participation.

“There’s a real consideration to taking it out,” he told the Washington Examiner. “This is not something you leave halfway. If you’re going to commit to doing this, you’ve got to see it all the way through, and the Israelis, at least to date, are not known to have the capability to hit the very facility at Fordow by themselves.”

Iran has never been weaker and, without its air defense systems, is more at risk of having its nuclear program destroyed than in decades.

“The reason I oppose it most fundamentally is that we cannot destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities with air power alone,” Rosemary Kelanic, the director of the Middle East program at Defense Priorities, told the Washington Examiner. “I am very, very confident of that.”

Even if the U.S. deploys multiple bunker-busting bombs, it still may not be enough to destroy Fordow given its fortifications underground, which raises the question of what the president could turn to if the U.S. gets involved but airstrikes are not enough to destroy specific facilities.

“So even with bunker-busters, when you’re talking about sites like Fordow that are half a mile under mountains, there’s no certainty that the U.S. can actually completely destroy the stuff,” she added. “And so where does that lead you? Well, if the U.S. bombs them, and we’re not certain whether or not it will actually destroy its sites, or we’re not certain that we’ve gotten all the stockpiles. … If we leave it only partly disabled, that gives Iran every incentive to run for a bomb.”

Israel’s military may be able to destroy those facilities without U.S. support, though it would likely take either repeated strikes with smaller payloads or deploying special forces.

Kelanic predicted that U.S. involvement in offensive operations would ultimately result in U.S. presence to “finish the job that [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu started.”

Neither the GBU-57 bunker-busters, which are carried by B-2 bombers, nor Israel’s options “guarantees that Fordow can be destroyed,” according to a new report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The Israelis have largely destroyed Iran’s air defense systems and have achieved air superiority in western Iran, which would allow U.S. aircraft to fly into Iranian airspace with a much lower risk than before the Israeli operation.

But, Iran has still been able to carry out retaliatory ballistic missile attacks at Israel, and while their attacks seem to be lessening daily as Israel inflicts repeated damage on their arsenal, they could retaliate on U.S. involvement by targeting U.S. bases in the region.

“There have been no direct hits on any U.S. facilities, and we have received no reports of U.S. citizen casualties,” a White House official told the Washington Examiner on Monday, though the Embassy in Jerusalem was damaged over the weekend in one of Iran’s missile barrages.

Retired Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. Central Command from 2008 to 2010, said on Fox News that his troops “developed a plan to destroy the Iran nuclear program,” and said he was “confident” at the time that “we could execute” that plan.

“We could, in fact, accomplish the mission when it comes to Fordow, and frankly, the other sites as well,” he added. “But there are, again, there are always uncertainties. There are always unexpected developments.”

Trump has said for years that Iran cannot acquire a nuclear weapon and has warned over the last several weeks, as Washington and Tehran carried out negotiations, that if they do not come to an agreement regarding its nuclear enrichment program, the U.S. would have to stop it from obtaining one kinetically.

From a domestic perspective, there is a stark divide among both parties of people who believe the U.S. should or should not get involved in another conflict in the Middle East. There are proponents who believe the U.S. should seize the opportunity and aid Israel in its effort to end Iran’s nuclear program and possibly topple the regime, and others who view it as a contradiction to the president’s “America First” agenda.

The debate among the president’s base hit such a fevered pitch that both Trump and Vice President JD Vance weighed in.

“Meanwhile, the president has shown remarkable restraint in keeping our military’s focus on protecting our troops and protecting our citizens,” Vance said Tuesday. “He may decide he needs to take further action to end Iranian enrichment. That decision ultimately belongs to the president. And of course, people are right to be worried about foreign entanglement after the last 25 years of idiotic foreign policy. But I believe the president has earned some trust on this issue.”

Trump campaigned ahead of the 2024 election on reducing America’s foreign entanglements, and he tried to end the U.S. war in Afghanistan during his first administration.

Both Trump and Netanyahu have indicated that the assassination of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei could be on the table. Netanyahu did not list it as one of the primary objectives for the war, though he also said regime change “could certainly be the result” of the conflict.

Trump said Tuesday that “we know exactly where the so-called ‘Supreme Leader’ is hiding” and called him an “easy target,” though he said he is safe “for now.”

If Israeli forces assassinate Khamenei, as they did with the leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah in Gaza and Lebanon, it is unclear who would lead Iran in the aftermath of the conflict. With a succession plan unclear, it is impossible to know whether the following leader would embark on a different path than the current regime. Crown Prince Reza Pehlavi, the son of the last Iranian shah, appears to be making moves to consolidate a role in a future transitional government

Retired Gen. Frank McKenzie, the previous commander of U.S. Central Command, said Monday that he believes “regime change is on the table in Tel Aviv,” but he warned that expanding their goals due to early success introduces more risk into meeting those goals.

“I do believe that regime change is on the table in Tel Aviv, and I think that represents a thing we should be very familiar with in the United States, mission creep,” he said. “Mission creep is where you have astonishing initial success, and so your goals tend to expand as the horizon opens ahead of you. So I think perhaps when they went into this, they were looking at a more narrowly targeted campaign.”

McKenzie oversaw the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 as the head of U.S. Central Command. The U.S. ended its 20-year war in Afghanistan with the Taliban in charge of Afghanistan, as it had been when the war began in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

ISRAEL LOOKS TO US TO HIT IRAN’S FORDOW NUCLEAR FACILITY

His warning about “mission creep” has been echoed by those in the president’s party who are opposed to U.S. involvement in the war.

Without a clear plan for postwar Iran, should the Israelis topple the regime, the country could become a failed state. Israel has not publicized a clear plan for postwar Gaza, and that conflict has gone on for about 20 months.