Senior members of US President Donald Trump's national security team discussed the next steps in the Iran war and a possible Saudi operation against the Houthis in Yemen at an unannounced meeting at Camp David on Friday. According to Khabaronline, citing Axios, the meeting was chaired by Vice President J.D. Vance.
The hours-long meeting was attended by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, White House special envoy Steve Witkoff, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine. Axios described the meeting as "very unusual" and wrote that the Trump administration had not announced it in advance. According to the report, a similar meeting was last held in June 2025, just days before Israel went to war against Iran. A US official said that at the meeting "decisions were made on some issues, or at least they were discussed extensively" regarding the crisis in the Middle East; the White House did not comment.
The meeting took place as talks between Tehran and Washington have stalled and Trump is weighing the option of restarting a large-scale military operation. Speaking about the negotiations on Thursday, Trump said: "Now I have to make a decision: either Iran signs the deal or it won't exist anymore." Asked by reporters about his next step against Iran while his advisers were meeting at Camp David, Trump replied: "If I told you, you'd have a big story. But you'll see. Everything is going very well. Iran is not doing well."
At the same time, Saudi Arabia is trying to bring the United States into its planned operation against the Houthis in Yemen; according to Axios, citing US officials, Riyadh asked Trump to carry out airstrikes on Houthi positions. Trump has so far kept his distance from direct involvement, but officials say this stance could change. In an interview with Time magazine on Oct. 1, Trump also did not rule out the possibility that strikes on Iran could resume after the midterm elections, and said Tehran would ultimately have to back down and accept Washington's nuclear terms.
How the Persian press covered it
The moderate conservative Khabaronline ran the story as a straightforward relay of Axios's details without changes. The opposition, diaspora outlet Iran International presented the same story under a framing of "the next steps in the Iran war" and gave comparatively more space to the secrecy of the meeting, the June 2025 precedent and Trump's remark that "Iran is not doing well." Neither outlet could confirm what decisions were made at the meeting.
Context
About 16 months earlier, in June 2025, Israel launched a war against Iran immediately after a similar Camp David meeting; the new meeting is therefore being read in Washington as a possible turning point. The meeting coincided with the days when the United States was sending a third aircraft carrier to the region (see US troop deployment to the Middle East). Saudi Arabia's planned operation against the Houthis in Yemen also constitutes a separate front and was covered earlier on Farsçadan (see Saudi Arabia's Bab el-Mandeb preparations).
Correction (October 4, 2026): The original version said the June 2025 meeting took place "exactly a year earlier"; it was about 16 months earlier.
