WASHINGTON (TNND) — The United States military’s consideration of using a massive “mother of all bombs” against Iran is a sign of potential escalation in the conflict with peace talks stalled out and little progress in reining in Tehran’s nuclear ambitions or reopening the Strait of Hormuz.
The war with Iran has spread into a regional conflict as Tehran targets neighboring countries, energy facilities and continues to fire at tankers trying to get through the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial passage for roughly 20% of the world’s oil supply. Several rounds of peace talks have fallen through over the last several months, leaving the White House to figure out what steps to take next to bring an end to a conflict that was only supposed to last weeks.
CNN reported on Thursday that the military has developed new strike plans that may include the so-called “mother of all bombs,” a 21,600-pound weapon that is the largest non-nuclear bomb in the United States’ arsenal. It has not been deployed against Iran since the war started in February and hasn’t been used since 2017.
The White House has reportedly been weighing whether to ramp up strikes on Iranian nuclear sites, including Pickaxe Mountain, along with Iranian energy infrastructure.
The bomb is designed to create an enormous blast over a wide area but may not be able to penetrate targets buried deeply underground like the kind of munitions the U.S. has previously used against Iran’s nuclear sites.
While it is only part of a series of options that may be presented to President Donald Trump as the Pentagon weighs its next steps in the war, the potential use of the bomb would mark a significant escalation in a conflict that has dragged into an eighth month and spread across the Middle East. But it also raises questions about whether another escalation would yield a different result after months of military strikes, economic pressure and diplomatic efforts have not significantly shifted Tehran’s positions.
What it will take to get Iran to agree to terms that the U.S. sees as worthwhile is unclear. Despite being battered by American strikes, having its economy crushed by sanctions and a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and the deaths of many of its leaders, Tehran has vowed to continue fighting and refused to budge on U.S. demands.
Several rounds of peace discussions have stalled out amid disagreements between Washington and Tehran about the future of its nuclear program. Iran has also tried to assert control over the Strait of Hormuz, a nonstarter for the U.S. and its allies. Mediators have been unsuccessful in recent weeks in making progress in bridging the gap, leaving both sides preparing for the conflict to escalate again.
Some analysts said the threat of more intense bombing could be a strategy to force the Iranian regime, which has become more hardline after many of its more moderate figures were killed, back to the negotiating table.
“This is a is a little bit of strategic messaging to try to tell the Islamic regime, ‘look what we can do,’” said Mark Chandler, former director of Defense Intelligence Agency’s Middle East and Africa Center and professor at Coastal Carolina University. “It’s intended to try to push them to the negotiating table, but until you use military force, they’re not going to negotiate sincerely.”
But the escalation also comes with risks, as renewed fighting could provoke another wave of retaliatory strikes at energy infrastructure and tankers in the region and bring more economic pain.
A top Iranian official said in a televised speech on Wednesday that the country has to prepare for war even as it engages in diplomacy. Tehran has been trying to harden its defenses of sensitive military and energy sites amid renewed threats of returning to bombing that has largely been on hold.
Trump is under mounting political pressure to find a resolution to the war, which has pushed gasoline and diesel prices higher and become increasingly unpopular among Americans. The president has said the war would soon but also that military action will resume after the midterm elections on Nov. 3.
“We’re going to have that war done very quickly, and oil will be coming down, and they will never have a nuclear weapon. It was all about the nuclear weapon, they will never have a nuclear weapon,” Trump told NBC Montana during a trip to rally for the midterms on Wednesday.
During the rally, Trump said he isn’t sure who the U.S. has left to negotiate with after dozens of Iranian leaders were killed in the opening weeks of the war.
“They don’t have a navy. They don’t have an air force. Their army is decimated. Their leaders are gone,” the president said. “I should have probably left their leaders because I don’t know who the hell we’re negotiating with.”
There are also questions about whether the earlier decision to halt the bombing campaign against Iran when a short-lived ceasefire was reached this summer and backing off strikes in the run-up to the midterms allowed Tehran to regroup without solving the underlying issues of the conflict.
“If you’re going to go to war, then you you’ve got to go all in, and I don’t think we did,” Chandler said. “Whatever motivation this administration had to stop at that time, some false belief Iran would negotiate some or whatever it was, we left work undone — and in leaving that work undone, it has allowed the Iranians to continue to rebuild and refurbish what was destroyed.”