President Trump has stepped back from bombing Iran, giving Tehran up to two weeks to negotiate an end to the conflict with Israel.

Trump is looking for an “off-ramp” after advisers became concerned at Iran’s ability to hit United States bases across the Middle East and kill American troops in retaliation for any military intervention, such as the targeting of nuclear facilities with bunker-busting bombs, The Times understands. On Wednesday, Tehran wreaked considerable damage against targets in Israel, including by using hypersonic missiles to evade Israel’s Arrow interceptor system.

Trump’s spokeswoman, Karoline Leavitt, quoted the president as saying: “Based on the fact that there’s a substantial chance of negotiations that may or may not take place with Iran in the near future, I will make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks.”

Trump’s spokeswoman said the president would “grab” a diplomatic solution to the Iran conflict

Talks are due to take place Friday in Geneva between the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, and European counterparts including David Lammy, the foreign secretary, who was also talking to the US secretary of state Marco Rubio on Thursday night.

• Iran-Israel live: follow the latest news

Early on Friday local time, the Israeli military issued an evacuation warning to residents of an Iranian village northwest of Tehran.

The warning for Kolesh Taleshan, a largely industrial area, apparently came as the Israel Defence Forces prepared to strike targets in Iran for a seventh night in a row.

It was reported on Wednesday that Trump had approved plans to strike Iran but was withholding his final go-ahead. Leavitt told a White House news conference on Thursday: “The president is always interested in a diplomatic solution. He is a peacemaker-in-chief. He is the ‘peace through strength’ president.

“And so if there’s a chance for diplomacy, the president’s always going to grab it. But he’s not afraid to use strength as well, I will add.”

Missiles used by Iran are among the fastest ever used in warfare at up to five times the speed of sound and can manoeuvre mid-flight, enabling them to evade Israel’s Arrow defences.

Abbas Araghchi is making demands

IRAN’S MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Trump’s trusted negotiator, Steve Witkoff, is in near daily phone contact with Araghchi, who is refusing to join further nuclear talks while his country is under attack from Israel.

On Thursday evening, Lammy said: “The situation in the Middle East remains perilous. We are determined that Iran must never have a nuclear weapon.” He added that in a meeting with Rubio and Witkoff, “we discussed how Iran must make a deal to avoid a deepening conflict. A window now exists within the next two weeks to achieve a diplomatic solution.”

David Lammy said escalation in the Middle East would “benefit no one”

JAIMI JOY/REUTERS

Lammy said: “Tomorrow, I will be heading to Geneva to meet with the Iranian foreign minister alongside my French, German and EU counterparts. Now is the time to put a stop to the grave scenes in the Middle East and prevent a regional escalation that would benefit no one.”

Araghchi has raised another stumbling block, telling Witkoff that Iran wants a third party at the negotiating table and suggesting this could be China, The Times has learnt. Iran has indicated that it does not trust the nations presenting themselves as interlocutors for talks — the US, Britain and Germany — because of their hostile language about the regime in Tehran.

Both sides are believed to have made offers: the US, that Iran would be allowed access to low-enriched uranium — up to 3.67 per cent purity — for civilian purposes provided by a dedicated facility run by an international consortium outside the country.

That was rejected by Iran, which demands the right to have its own enrichment facility. But it reportedly made a counter-offer that this facility could have similar international consortium involvement.

Those proposals still breach the red lines set by each side — Iran that it must be able to carry out enrichment on its soil, and Israel’s insistence that it must not.

Iran’s deployment of its Fattah-1 and Khorramshahr rockets against Israel this week would be the first confirmed use in any conflict of a hypersonic missile — defined as one flying at Mach 5, five times the speed of sound, or more. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps also claims to possess Fattah-2 missiles which fly at Mach 15, and are more manoeuvrable.

Iran releases video said to show rockets being launched at Israel

A third new type of missile, the Sejjil, is believed to have hit the Soroka hospital in the Israeli town of Beersheba overnight, injuring 240 people. The same type of missile has also been used in strikes around Tel Aviv.

In return, Israel’s bombardment of Iran continued Thursday, including a strike on the Arak heavy water reactor, a part of Iran’s civilian nuclear power grid that had been built but not commissioned.

A baby is evacuated from the site of a direct hit from an Iranian missile strike in Ramat Gan, Israel

AP/ODED BALILTY

The Iranians claim their continuing missile strength gives them the upper hand in a straight exchange with Israel, despite the IDF’s claim to be taking out more and more of their launchers.

Araghchi has warned Witkoff that Iran has the capability to take out every American base in the region, saying that if they can hit Israel they can hit Kuwait, Iraq and Qatar with overwhelming force, according to a source close to the US team.

• How close is Iran to actually building a nuclear bomb?

Privately, the US fears that if it attacks Iran, not only will American bases be struck but Iran could also resort to mining the Persian Gulf, endangering the USS Carl Vinson, a US aircraft carrier stationed there. A second US aircraft carrier, the USS Nimitz, is en route to the Gulf.

Trump has applied maximum rhetorical power this week, suggesting that Iran’s supreme leader could be assassinated, that he is fully prepared to launch US bombers and demanding nothing short of “complete and total victory”.

But dramatic rhetoric is a Trump tactic well-known to the Iranians — and one they also use. Behind it, Trump is keeping dialogue open through Witkoff and repeatedly asking advisers whether America’s huge massive ordnance penetrator (MOP) bombs, the weapon that would be deployed to take out Iran’s Fordow nuclear site buried deep within a mountainside south of Tehran, will actually do the job.

• How US military could destroy Iran’s Fordow nuclear site

Wesley Clark, a former supreme Allied commander Europe of Nato, has cautioned there is no guarantee the Mop bombs would obliterate the main Iranian Fordow underground plant. The only way to know for sure would be to send in special-forces troops followed by specialist nuclear clean-up personnel, he said.

Wesley Clark, a former supreme Allied commander Europe of Nato

REUTERS/OLEG POPOV

“We’ve obviously done testing on what the bomb is, but unless we’ve got the exact plans and know the composition of the earth that’s over that bunker, you can’t be positive of anything,” Clark told CNN. “You hear stories that it’s 200ft underground, other stories it’s 300ft underground, that it’s got reinforced concrete. You don’t know what’s actually in it, [you’re not] positive of anything.”

“If you really want to get rid of this Iran nuclear program, you’ve got to clean up these sites,” he continued. “It’s not just this [Fordow] site, but it’s the Natanz site — and there’s probably a dozen or two dozen other sites where material, centrifuges have been made, bomb parts have been fabricated, plans are there.

“There may be unenriched uranium. All that stuff’s got to be policed up, some of it very carefully handled. It’s got to be extricated and that’s after the bombing, because otherwise the regime, if it stays in power, could go back and reconstitute.”

Trump is surrounding himself in the situation room with trusted figures who belong to the more hawkish camp on Iran and excluding Tulsi Gabbard, his director of national intelligence, who has a record of opposing military intervention in the Middle East.

His inexperienced defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, is also said not to be included in his “tier one” team, consisting of JD Vance, the vice-president; General Dan Caine, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff; Rubio; and John Ratcliffe, the CIA director.

Trump’s apparent decision to hold off from an immediate strike gives a breathing space to Sir Keir Starmer, who has to weigh whether to allow American bombers to take off from UK or joint US-UK bases, like Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.

The Times has been told the legal advice from Lord Hermer, the attorney-general, states that allowing the US to mount a bombing campaign would be a breach of international law. A government source said that it was ultimately a “political” decision for Starmer as to whether he accepted the advice.

Starmer urged Trump to keep a “cool head” as he pressed all sides to pursue negotiation instead of escalating the conflict further.

He is also weighing the possibility of providing further military support to the US, in the event that President Trump does decide to bomb Iran.

But he said that there was a “real risk of escalation” and that the best way to deal with Iran’s nuclear threat was “by way of negotiation” rather than “conflict”.

The prime minister’s spokesman said: “The continuation of the current situation is in no one’s interest. We want to see cool heads and a return to diplomacy because that is the best route forward.”

Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, told the Times’s CEO summit that the economic fallout from the conflict between Israel and Iran has “so far been broadly contained” but said that the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which separates the Persian Gulf from the Gulf of Oman, could have an impact.