President Trump was in the Oval Office on Friday morning with his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, in what appeared to be a review of military options for potentially resuming the bombing campaign against Iran.<\/p>\n
The existence of the meeting was revealed by Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, during a graduation ceremony at the Naval Academy. While he said nothing about the substance of the meeting, the timing was notable, as negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program and its blockage of the Strait of Hormuz appear to have hit a dead end.<\/p>\n
There is no shortage of targets, should Mr. Trump, in coordination with Israel, decide to resume the assault on Iran that paused on April 8. There are energy facilities left untouched after about 38 days of bombing, the deep underground nuclear storage site at Isfahan where Iran\u2019s supply of near-bomb-grade uranium is already under rubble, and missile sites that were attacked back in March but appear to have been dug out.<\/p>\n
And after weeks of declaring that an agreement was near, and then that the Iranians were \u201cdangling\u201d him, negotiations seem to be at a standstill. Mr. Trump announced on Friday that he was skipping the wedding this weekend of his son and namesake, Donald Trump Jr., because of \u201ccircumstances pertaining to the Government, and my love of the United States of America.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Mr. Trump, the risks of resuming combat operations appear far greater now than they were in late February, when he ordered the first strikes in Operation Epic Fury, in coordination with Israel.<\/p>\n
Now he has to deal with the reality that after five weeks of war and six weeks of cease-fire, he has failed to force Iran\u2019s leaders to relent. Mr. Trump frequently notes \u2014 accurately \u2014 that Iran\u2019s navy has been sunk and its air force destroyed, and that many of its missile sites and military bases have been reduced to rubble or badly damaged. But the destruction has not translated into victory.<\/p>\n
Crucially, the near-bomb-grade nuclear uranium remains where it has been since Mr. Trump ordered a bombing raid on three nuclear sites nearly a year ago, deep underground at Isfahan. Iran\u2019s missile capability has been degraded, but not destroyed. And the Strait of Hormuz has fallen under Iran\u2019s control, even as the U.S. Navy intercepts shipments headed into or out of Iranian ports.<\/p>\n
If Mr. Trump orders new combat operations, the political risks are high. Already gas prices are over five dollars a gallon in some parts of the country, and renewed military activity could send them even higher. Popular sentiment is clearly against the war, a range of public opinion polls show, and Mr. Trump\u2019s approval ratings have plummeted to around 37 percent.<\/p>\n
Still, he remains under countervailing pressure not to give in. \u201cFurther pursuit of an agreement with Iran\u2019s Islamist regime risks a perception of weakness,\u201d Senator Roger Wicker, a Mississippi Republican and the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a statement on Friday. \u201cWe must finish what we started.\u201d<\/p>\n
Here is what renewed action might look like, and the risks:<\/p>\n
The Energy Sector<\/p>\n
One clear option is to pick up where American airstrikes left off when the cease-fire took effect on April 8 by ramping up attacks against power plants, desalination stations, oil wells, roads, bridges and other infrastructure.<\/p>\n
If Mr. Trump chose that route, it would mark a return to the strategy he considered in April, just before the pause. It was then that he warned, in a startling Truth Social post, that \u201ca whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.\u201d<\/p>\n
The reaction was harsh. Many of Mr. Trump\u2019s critics noted that striking largely civilian targets could constitute a war crime and mimic the kinds of attacks on Ukraine that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia began in 2022. Pentagon officials say that military lawyers have reviewed hundreds of such targets and approved targeting only those with clear ties to Iran\u2019s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, to weaken and disrupt that pivotal pillar of power in Iran\u2019s leadership hierarchy.<\/p>\n
Bombing legitimate targets linked to the Revolutionary Guards, the administration\u2019s thinking goes, would force the Iranian power brokers to make deeper concessions at the bargaining table.<\/p>\n
The legal argument about what constitutes a legitimate target and an illegal one is complex. But there is no question that destroying power plants, bridges and desalination facilities could cause widespread suffering among the country\u2019s population of 93 million. And it carries no guarantee that the Iranian government, known for its own brutal suppression of its people, would crack under the pressure.<\/p>\n
Missile Sites<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s military planners have weighed an intensive bombing campaign along the Strait of Hormuz to loosen Iran\u2019s hold on the waterway, which carried roughly a fifth of the world\u2019s daily oil supply before the war.<\/p>\n
U.S. forces struck targets along the strait earlier in the war, but Pentagon planners faced hard trade-offs over which munitions to use. Senior military officials have privately raised alarm about critically low American reserves of long-range missiles and other heavy ordnance \u2014 the very weapons needed to destroy Iran\u2019s hardened underground missile sites.<\/p>\n
Instead of pursuing full destruction, the Pentagon opted for lighter munitions intended to seal off the entrances to those sites. But even that more modest objective has slipped out of reach. Classified U.S. intelligence assessments from earlier this month found Iran had regained access to 30 of the 33 missile sites<\/a> it operates along the strait.<\/p>\n The picture beyond the waterway is no better. Intelligence reporting indicates that roughly 90 percent of Iran\u2019s underground missile storage and launch facilities nationwide are now \u201cpartially or fully operational.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Trump angrily refused to discuss those intelligence reports when questioned about them on Air Force One last week, as he returned from China. Yet as he weighs whether to reopen the war, Trump must decide whether to draw further from America\u2019s thinning stockpiles in pursuit of more lasting damage to Iran\u2019s missile program.<\/p>\n Highly Enriched Uranium<\/p>\n Among the military options Mr. Trump is weighing is whether to attempt a direct strike on Iran\u2019s stockpile of highly enriched uranium, which as recently as this week he has said should leave the country, bound for the United States or another nation.<\/p>\n \u201cWe will get it,\u201d Mr. Trump vowed to reporters on Thursday. \u201cWe don\u2019t need it, we don\u2019t want it. We\u2019ll probably destroy it after we get it, but we\u2019re not going to let them have it.\u201d<\/p>\n But behind closed doors, officials say, he is debating another, less risky option than trying to seize the material: using massive bombs to destroy the stockpile, deep underground at a major nuclear site near the city of Isfahan, or to bury it further.<\/p>\n