JERUSALEM — An Iranian missile struck a large hospital in southern Israel on Thursday, causing widespread damage and injuring several patients, as President Donald Trump said he would decide “within the next two weeks” whether to join Israel’s bombing campaign against Iran to stop its nuclear program, according to the White House.

“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 said in a statement read aloud by the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, in a news conference.

The apparent pivot from Trump bought the American president time and space for further diplomacy to confront the war that has been raging since Friday, when Israel launched waves of strikes on Iran, including the capital, Tehran. Iran soon retaliated with missile and drone attacks on major Israeli cities, including Tel Aviv.

Trump’s comments also came as European officials planned to host a meeting with Iranian officials on Friday in Geneva in an effort to de-escalate the conflict. Israeli and U.S. officials were not expected to take part, leaving the Europeans under no illusions that the gathering would have an immediate effect on the war.

A spokesperson for Iran’s Foreign Ministry, Esmail Baghaei, said the talks would focus on “the nuclear issue and the latest developments in the region.”

Leavitt said Thursday that any deal with Iran would have to ban the country from enriching uranium and developing a nuclear weapon, something Trump has repeated often.

She also said that Steve Witkoff, the president’s special envoy to the Middle East, had maintained correspondence with Iranian officials, even though the government in Tehran had cut off formal talks with the United States over its nuclear program after Israel began its assault last week.

Since then, Trump has sent mixed signals about whether he wanted to take a diplomatic route or use U.S. military force to try to destroy Iran’s most heavily fortified nuclear site, Fordo.

“If there’s a chance for diplomacy, the president is always going to grab it,” Leavitt said. “But he’s not afraid to use strength as well.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he trusted that Trump would “do what’s best for America.”

“I can tell you that they’re already helping a lot,” Netanyahu said from the rubble and shattered glass around the Soroka Medical Center in Israel’s southern city of Beersheba.

“There was a massive boom and blast wave,” said Dr. Vadim Bankovich, head of the orthopedics department, whose office faces the floor of the old surgical building, which took a direct hit.

Large slabs of concrete were all that remained from what was once the top floor of the hospital building. Rubble and shattered glass blanketed the surrounding area, even hundreds of feet away. Melted plastic and burned wiring filled the air with a foul smell.

The surgical building that was struck had been evacuated in recent days, hospital officials said. Photos and videos shared by the Israeli fire and rescue service showed fires, broken glass and ceiling panels scattered on the floor.

It was the first Israeli hospital to be hit directly since Israel began attacking Iran on Friday.

The strike on the hospital complex demonstrated that Iran could still inflict serious damage in Israel, despite the Israeli military’s strikes on Iran’s missile launchers as well as Israel’s advanced air-defense systems, which have intercepted most incoming Iranian fire.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz blamed Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for Thursday’s barrage and said the military “has been instructed and knows that in order to achieve all of its goals, this man absolutely should not continue to exist.”

The Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said without providing evidence that the strike had “eliminated” an Israeli military command center and “the blast wave caused superficial damage to a small section of the nearby, and largely evacuated,” hospital. The Israeli military did not respond to a request for comment about the claim.

On Thursday, the Israeli military said it had launched another round of strikes on nuclear targets in Iran, including an inactive nuclear reactor at Arak, to prevent the production of material for nuclear weapons, and a “nuclear weapons development site” in the Natanz region.

Iranian state media confirmed that Israeli warplanes had struck nuclear facilities at Arak but said that there had been no serious damage. The United Nations’ nuclear watchdog said that a “heavy water research reactor, under construction, was hit” at Arak, but that it was “not operational and contained no nuclear material, so no radiological effects” were recorded.

Iran has long maintained its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes. But it is the only non-nuclear-weapon state to enrich uranium up to 60%, a short, technical step away from weapons-grade levels of 90%.

Israel is widely believed to be the only country with a nuclear weapons program in the Middle East but has never acknowledged the existence of its arsenal.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.