White House official: Iran suggests it's open to talks and Trump says he's 'eventually' willing

WASHINGTON (AP) — A senior White House official said Sunday that Iran's “new potential leadership” has suggested it is open to talks with the United States after American and Israeli forces , killing the country's supreme leader and other high-ranking officials.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal administration deliberations, said President Donald Trump says he is “eventually” willing to talk but that for now The official did not say who the potential new Iranian leaders are or how they made their alleged willingness to talk known.

Trump told The Atlantic on Sunday that he planned to speak with Iran’s new leadership.

“They want to talk, and I have agreed to talk, so I will be talking to them,” he said, declining comment on the timing.

The potential future diplomatic opening comes as new details are emerging about the U.S.-Israeli strikes and some of the targets that were hit in Iran.

U.S. Central Command said that B-2 stealth bombers struck Iran’s ballistic missile facilities with 2,000-pound bombs. That mirrors the approach that the military took in June, when Trump agreed to deploy to attack three key Iranian nuclear sites.

Trump claimed in his last week that Iran had been building ballistic missiles that could reach the U.S. homeland — a justification he repeated again Saturday as he announced that the bombardment of Iran was underway.

Iran has not acknowledged that it is building or seeking to build intercontinental ballistic missiles. The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, however, said in an last year that Iran could develop a militarily viable intercontinental ballistic missile by 2035 “should Tehran decide to pursue the capability.”

Before the attacks, the CIA had for months tracked the movements of senior Iranian leaders, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, according to a person familiar with the operation.

The intelligence was shared with Israeli officials, and the timing of the strikes was adjusted in part because of that information about the Iranian leaders’ location, according to the person, who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The intelligence sharing between U.S. and Israel reflects the preparation that went into the strikes, which continued for a second day Sunday after threw the future of into and raised the risk of escalating regional conflict.

The New York Times earlier reported about the CIA’s efforts before the Israeli-U.S. strikes.

Sen. Tom Cotton, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, declined to discuss details Sunday when asked on CBS’ “Face the Nation” about intelligence sharing with Israel. But he said tracking the movements of the supreme leader and the heads of other adversarial nations “is obviously one of the highest priorities of our intelligence community.”

“Clearly, this operation is driven by intelligence collected by Israel and the United States that has once again proven that our nations have capabilities that no other nation on Earth has,” said Cotton, R-Ark.

The U.S. regularly shares intelligence with allies including Israel. Those partnerships, and the accuracy of the intelligence they yield, is often critical not only to the success of a military operation but also to the .

Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the senior Democrat on the committee, told The Associated Press that historically, “our working relationship with the Mossad and Israel is really strong.” Mossad is the Israeli spy agency.

Warner said he has serious concerns about the justification for the strikes, Trump’s long-term plans for the conflict and the risks that U.S. service members will face. The military announced Sunday that three American troops had been killed and five were seriously wounded in the Iran operation.

“No tears will be shed over their leadership being eliminated but always the question is: OK, what next?” Warner said.

___

Associated Press writer Ben Finley contributed to this report.