Washington (AFP) - US President Donald Trump said Wednesday he was still deciding whether to join Israel’s strikes on Iran, claiming Tehran now wants talks at the White House but may have waited too long.

Trump added that he would hold his second Situation Room meeting in two days with his national security team as he left the world guessing about whether he would order military action.

“I may do it, I may not do it. I mean, nobody knows what I’m going to do,” Trump told reporters at the unveiling of one of two giant new flagpoles at the White House.

“I can tell you this, that Iran’s got a lot of trouble, and they want to negotiate.”

He added that “the next week is going to be very big” when it comes to determining Iran’s fate.

Trump’s comments came after Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei rejected his demands for an unconditional surrender and warned the United States of “irreparable damage” if it intervenes.

But Republican Trump, who faces opposition from the isolationist wing of his support base to joining any more foreign wars, later insisted that he hadn’t yet made up his mind.

“I have ideas as to what to do, but I haven’t made a final (decision),” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “I like to make the final decision one second before it’s due, because things change. Especially with war.”

Trump appeared to be in no hurry to reach what would be one of the most consequential decisions of his presidency – spending more than an hour dealing with the installation of his new flagpoles.

Trump also had mixed messages for Iran’s leadership.

A day after saying Khamenei was an “easy target”, Trump told AFP in the Oval Office that a change of leadership in Tehran “could happen.”

- ‘Grovel at the gates’ -

He suggested he was losing patience with Iran and repeated his surrender call. “That means I’ve had it, okay? I’ve had it. I give up, no more. We go and blow up all the nuclear stuff.”

But at the same time, Trump said that Iran was reaching out to try to reach a deal on its nuclear program to end the conflict with US ally Israel.

“They want to come to the White House, I may do that,” Trump said. He added however that it was “very late to be talking…. There’s a big difference between now and a week ago.”

Iran denied it had offered to send officials to Washington.

“No Iranian official has ever asked to grovel at the gates of the White House,” Iran’s mission to the UN said in a post on X.

Trump had favored diplomatic route to end Iran’s nuclear program, seeking a deal to replace the agreement he tore up in his first term in 2018.

But since Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched strikes on Iran six days ago Trump has moved in behind the key US ally and is now weighing whether to use US military power against Tehran too.

Trump noted that the United States is the only country with “bunker buster” bombs capable of taking out Iran’s Fordow nuclear plant “but that doesn’t mean I’m going to do it at all.”

The US president said he had told Netahyahu to “keep going” with Israel’s offensive against Iran, adding that they were speaking every day.

Trump however rebuffed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s offer to mediate in the Israel-Iran conflict, saying Russia should end its own war in Ukraine first.

“He actually offered to help mediate, I said ‘do me a favor, mediate your own. Let’s mediate Russia first, okay? You can worry about this later,” Trump said.