Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump would not say Wednes­day whether he has de­cid­ed to or­der a U.S. strike on Iran, a move that Tehran warned anew would be greet­ed with stiff re­tal­i­a­tion if it hap­pens.

“I may do it, I may not do it,” Trump said in an ex­change with re­porters at the White House . “I mean, no­body knows what I’m go­ing to do.”

Trump added that it’s not “too late” for Iran to give up its nu­clear pro­gram as he con­tin­ues to weigh di­rect U.S. in­volve­ment in Is­rael’s mil­i­tary op­er­a­tions aimed at crush­ing Tehran’s nu­clear pro­gram.

“Noth­ing’s too late,” Trump said. “I can tell you this. Iran’s got a lot of trou­ble.”

“Noth­ing is fin­ished un­til it is fin­ished,” Trump added. But “the next week is go­ing to be very big— maybe less than a week.”

Trump al­so of­fered a terse re­sponse to Iran Supreme Leader Ay­a­tol­lah Ali Khamenei’s re­fusal to heed to his call for Iran to sub­mit to an un­con­di­tion­al sur­ren­der.

“I say good luck,” Trump said.

Khamenei ear­li­er Wednes­day warned that any Unit­ed States strikes tar­get­ing the Is­lam­ic Re­pub­lic will “re­sult in ir­repara­ble dam­age for them” and that his coun­try would not bow to Trump’s call for sur­ren­der.

Mean­while, De­fense Sec­re­tary Pe­te Hegseth told law­mak­ers Wednes­day that the Pen­ta­gon was pro­vid­ing pos­si­ble op­tions to Trump as he de­cides next steps on Iran.

Trump said Tues­day the U.S. knows where Khamenei is hid­ing but doesn’t want him killed — “for now.”

“He is an easy tar­get but is safe there - We are not go­ing to take him out (kill!), at least not for now,” Trump said.

Trump’s in­creas­ing­ly mus­cu­lar com­ments to­ward the Iran­ian gov­ern­ment fol­low him urg­ing Tehran’s 9.5 mil­lion res­i­dents to flee for their lives as he cut short his par­tic­i­pa­tion in an in­ter­na­tion­al sum­mit ear­li­er this week to re­turn to Wash­ing­ton for ur­gent talks with his na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty team.

Trump said that the Iran­ian of­fi­cials con­tin­ue to reach out to the White House as they’re “get­ting the hell beat­en out of them” by Is­rael. But he added there’s a “big dif­fer­ence be­tween now and a week ago” in Tehran’s ne­go­ti­at­ing po­si­tion.

“They’ve sug­gest­ed that they come to the White House— that’s, you know, coura­geous,” Trump said.

Iran’s mis­sion to the Unit­ed Na­tions re­fut­ed Trump’s claim in a state­ment on so­cial me­dia. “No Iran­ian of­fi­cial has ever asked to grov­el at the gates of the White House. The on­ly thing more de­spi­ca­ble than his lies is his cow­ard­ly threat to ‘take out’ Iran’s Supreme Leader. ”

The U.S. pres­i­dent said ear­li­er this week Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin of­fered to serve as a me­di­a­tor with Iran. But Trump said he told Putin to keep fo­cused on find­ing an endgame to his own con­flict with Ukraine.

“I said, ‘Do me a favour, me­di­ate your own,’” Trump said he told Putin. “I said, ‘Vladimir, let’s me­di­ate Rus­sia first. You can wor­ry about this lat­er.’”

The com­ments were a shift from Trump who ear­li­er this week said he was “open” to Putin’s of­fer to me­di­ate.

Rus­sia’s Deputy For­eign Min­is­ter Sergei Ryabkov said ear­li­er Wednes­day that Moscow has cau­tioned Wash­ing­ton against of­fer­ing di­rect mil­i­tary as­sis­tance to Is­rael.

“We are warn­ing Wash­ing­ton against even spec­u­la­tive, hy­po­thet­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tions of the sort,” Ryabkov said, ac­cord­ing to the In­ter­fax news agency. “That would be a step dras­ti­cal­ly desta­bi­liz­ing the sit­u­a­tion as a whole.”

The Rus­sia-Iran re­la­tion­ship has deep­ened since Putin launched a war on Ukraine in Feb­ru­ary 2022, with Tehran pro­vid­ing Moscow with drones, bal­lis­tic mis­siles, and oth­er sup­port, ac­cord­ing to U.S. in­tel­li­gence find­ings.

Trump is al­so fac­ing deep scep­ti­cism about deep­en­ing U.S. in­volve­ment in the Mideast cri­sis from some of his most ar­dent sup­port­ers. Trump dur­ing his 2024 run for the White House promised vot­ers he would quick­ly end the wars in Ukraine and Gaza and keep the U.S. out of cost­ly con­flicts.

Steve Ban­non, who served as a se­nior ad­vis­er to Trump dur­ing his first ad­min­is­tra­tion, on Wednes­day said the ad­min­is­tra­tion should tread care­ful­ly.

“This is one of the most an­cient civ­i­liza­tions in the world, ok?” Ban­non told re­porters at an event spon­sored by the Chris­t­ian Sci­ence Mon­i­tor. “With 92 mil­lion peo­ple. This is not some­thing you play around with. You have to think this through. And the Amer­i­can peo­ple have to be on board. You can’t just dump it on them.”

Ban­non and oth­er Trump al­lies, in­clud­ing Turn­ing Point USA’s Char­lie Kirk and con­ser­v­a­tive pun­dit Tuck­er Carl­son, have raised con­cerns that di­rect U.S. in­volve­ment in the con­flict could be seen as a be­tray­al to some mem­bers of Trump’s coali­tion and po­ten­tial­ly cause a schism in MA­GA world.

Trump pushed back at the no­tion that deep­en­ing U.S. in­volve­ment could im­pact his stand­ing with bis base.

“My sup­port­ers are more in love with me to­day, and I’m in love with them more than they were even at elec­tion time when we had a to­tal land­slide,” Trump said. —WASH­ING­TON (AP)

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Sto­ry by AAMER MAD­HANI | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

As­so­ci­at­ed Press writ­ers Tara Copp, David Klep­per and Chris Megerian con­tributed re­port­ing.