Trump Considering Resuming Major Combat Operations Against Iran
The options are not good.
NYT (“Trump Weighs His Options in Carrying Out New Strikes in Iran“):
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.
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.
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’s 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.
And after weeks of declaring that an agreement was near, and then that the Iranians were “dangling” 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 “circumstances pertaining to the Government, and my love of the United States of America.”
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.
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’s leaders to relent. Mr. Trump frequently notes — accurately — that Iran’s 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.
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’s missile capability has been degraded, but not destroyed. And the Strait of Hormuz has fallen under Iran’s control, even as the U.S. Navy intercepts shipments headed into or out of Iranian ports.
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’s approval ratings have plummeted to around 37 percent.
Still, he remains under countervailing pressure not to give in. “Further pursuit of an agreement with Iran’s Islamist regime risks a perception of weakness,” Senator Roger Wicker, a Mississippi Republican and the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a statement on Friday. “We must finish what we started.”
CBS News (“U.S. prepares for new military strikes against Iran“):
The Trump administration was preparing Friday for a fresh round of military strikes against Iran, according to sources with direct knowledge of the planning, even as diplomacy continued.
No final decision on strikes had been reached as of Friday afternoon.
[…]
Some members of the U.S. military and intelligence community canceled their plans for the Memorial Day weekend in anticipation of possible strikes, several sources said.
Defense and intelligence officials began updating recall rosters for U.S. installations overseas as tranches of troops stationed in the Middle East rotate out of theater, part of an effort to reduce the American military footprint in the region amid concern about possible Iranian retaliation.
[…]
White House spokesperson Anna Kelly told CBS News that Mr. Trump has “made his redlines abundantly clear: Iran can never possess a nuclear weapon, and they cannot keep their enriched uranium.”
“The President always maintains all options at all times, and it is the job of the Pentagon to be ready to execute any decision the Commander-in-Chief could make,” Kelly said. “The President has been clear about the consequences if Iran fails to make a deal.”
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps warned Wednesday that any further strikes against the country from the United States or Israel could widen the conflict beyond the Middle East, promising “crushing blows … in places you cannot even imagine.”
The United States is in precisely the same position as it was when the ceasefire was announced six weeks ago, only worse.
Iran has no incentive to end its nuclear program or give up control of the Strait of Hormuz. They have absorbed the deaths of much of their senior leadership, the enormous destruction of their conventional military, and remain standing.
The United States and Israel hit all of the major military targets on their list and then some during the first phase of the conflict. The options now are to either hit dual-use infrastructure, notably energy facilities, that radically complicate postwar reconstruction, and/or sending in ground forces. The latter option, considered highly undesirable from the start, has been complicated by the fact that the Marines sent to execute that eventuality have been sitting idle aboard ships for an additional six weeks, becoming less fit and ready for a fight.
An excellent CSIS report by Mark F. Cancian and Chris H. Park details the magazine depth issue that has concerned analysts for some time. Their bottom line: “Analysis of seven key munitions shows that the United States has enough missiles to continue fighting this war under any plausible scenario. The risk—which will persist for many years—lies in future wars.” Still, critical interceptors, notably Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), Patriot, and Standard Missile 3 inventories are being stretched thin.
But President Trump is in a fraught political dilemma. The war is already unpopular. It appears to be the one issue Congressional Republicans are willing to defy him over. Restarting the war will only intensify the pressure. At the same time, ending it without achieving any of the stated goals from the outset of the conflict would be a humiliating defeat.
Given that decisions in this WH are based on mood rather than evidence, it is too much to expect a sober evaluation of the range of possible outcomes. He’s going to resume the bombing in a show of faux toughness and try to withdraw. The likely result is no change on the ground in Iran, with the Iranians responding by attacking infrastructure of our (former?) gulf allies.
It’s a good thing that the US doesn’t have an embassy in Tehran, we’ll be spared the images of diplomats being hauled up into helicopters.
You can trust El Taco to appraise all options, possible, impossible, and unpossible, and manage to steer unerringly to the one with the worst possible outcome.
Wow – Is it Friday after the stock market closes again so soon?
The level of incompetence being displayed by Fatso, on a daily basis, is stunning.
@Sleeping Dog: I’m not sure how much longer we can continue bombing, given the pace we are using up our ammunition stockpiles. Troops on the ground would be even worse for Trump.
And Iran knows this. They are playing the long game.
The GCC really really wants this not to happen, they are likely to close their airspace to try to head this off.
Iran has promised if bombing resumes they will take out the oil infrastructure and power plants in the GCC, they are not going to kid around.
@Tony W:
Troops on the ground will be deployed only after ammunition stocks are too low to provide them with effective air support.
@Tony W:
That may be a consideration for a forward thinking administration, the felon is trying to get out of this mess and he doesn’t care about Taiwan or east Asia. He’ll expend more weapons if he believes that it will help him in the short term. (it won’t)
This is a great example of toxic masculinity. All that Boomer action movie, Clint Eastwood, Charles Bronson, never apologize, I ain’t got time to bleed, do you feel lucky punk, bullshit. Add in the steroid-ripped Marvel punch-punch-quip-quip crap. When you find yourself in a hole, keep digging because muscles and guns and penises and square jaws and grimly-determined Alpha male stares, blah blah blah. Christ.
In an action movie the bold, aggressive, damn-the-torpedoes approach always works. But action movies are created by flabby Hollywood writers who’ve never done anything braver than pop Molly at a Dave Matthews concert. Writers and directors not warriors.
The whole macho-élan-esprit-determination conquers all thing should have died in Flanders when it turned out machine guns beat manly courage every time. The funny thing is the US military knows this. The US military trains and trains and trains because they know manliness alone doesn’t stop bullets. But the draft dodger and his idiot buddy, Colin Jost, don’t and never will. It’s all about striking the right pose and making terse statements about things you don’t understand.
These fuckwits weren’t outplayed by Iran, they were defeated by their own epic stupidity. They lost this war before they fired the first missile, and now what? Double down and keep doubling down as the US drags the world into recession and bond market collapse and starvation in the poorest countries, while strengthening China and bringing eight decades of Pax Americana to a humiliating, shameful end.
Look, the man needs an excuse to not go to his son’s wedding — bombing Iran or at least talking about it is his excuse.
Can’t go to the kid’s wedding, it’s a really important time, sacrifices have to be made and so on.
Trying to analyze Trump’s thinking may be chasing a fata morgana. Does he know what he is going to think tomorrow?
Can any conceivable destruction of Iran’s military prevent their use of drones to throttle the Straits of Hormuz? Ukraine is able to produce enough drones to even sell some for export despite years of war. Of course, US military might is a lot greater than Russia’s, but let’s not forget that our war in Afghanistan was not a whole lot more successful than Russia’s.
Can we destroy Iran’s uranium? It takes 50 kg of uranium to make a single bomb which is a grapefruit sized ball. Iran is estimated to have enough uranium for ten or so bombs. Iran is about the size of Alaska with a substantial mountainous topography. I would think that hiding ten grapefruits is easy.
What if we undertake a punitive approach and turn Tehran, Isfahan, Tabiz, etc into Gaza? The world would surely be shocked. The Iranian regime showed during the Iran/Iraq war that a couple of hundred thousand casualties would get shrugged off. What would the American public do?
@Slugger:
They don’t actually have usable uranium for even one bomb. For one thing, none of it is enriched to the degree required. For another, most is probably in the form of gaseous uranium hexafluoride. They can hide the tanks containing it easily enough, but not the installations needed for further enrichment.
Unless, that is, intelligence data and estimates are wrong or incomplete. In the two decades or so they’ve been working on the matter, they might have secured enough for one or two bomb cores.
@Michael Reynolds: perhaps if Trump brings about the end of the world his poll numbers will actually slip into the low 30s. /sigh
Trump made his political bed and he, as well as his entire party, ought to have to lie in it.
But, in the case of Iran, Trump’s political problems are America’s foreign policy nightmares. Whether Trump chooses more destruction or an exit spun as a win, the die has already been cast.
Iran no longer needs to make a nuclear bomb as a deterrence against aggression from other nuclear powers. It simply needs to reinforce its ability to credibly threaten safe use of The Strait of Hormuz. Trump’s Folly has shown them the way.
Allegedly there is a deal in the offing. Which will be not as strong as the JCPOA or solve any of the stated goals of our hugely inflated gas prices.
And will likely fall apart by the opening of the market on Monday.
Another Fatso failure. Only local weathermen are worse at their jobs.
@Daryl: according to the Guardian:
So… another fake deal. I’m a little surprised that lying about a deal over and over does anything good for Trump, but he’s way better at Trumping than I would be*, so who knows?
*: conscience, vague sense of shame and not having that much audacity would hold me back.
@Michael Reynolds:
Spare us that woke claptrap about “toxic masculinity.” Dumb ivory tower folks shoving phrases down our throats — it’s as bad as LatinX or “white privilege”or “people experiencing homelessness”
(People experiencing white privilege?)
My reading of the tea leaves is that the Islamic states have had enough of Trump’s performative antics. It’s all well and good for Trump to mock Iran’s financial woes but the Gulf States are losing billions of dollars a day in export revenue.
It appears Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Pakistan, Türkiye, Egypt, Jordan and Bahrain have put together one of those “framework agreements” Trump loves. As charontwo suggested, they may well tell Trump if he doesn’t accept it, he can forget about using their bases or airspace to resume his pointless war.
It’s significant that Rubio seems to have replaced Vance, Witkoff and Kushner as the US negotiator. He might actually understand the finer points of the situation and the limited options that remain open to America.
@Gustopher:
People don’t experience being homeless, they experience being unhoused. Try to keep up, Gus.
What do we figure, does Iran get to keep the uranium or the strait or both?
@Michael Reynolds:
“… should have died in Flanders …”
Maternal grandfather was with the KSLI on the Somme.
His opinion was that artillery beats courage 9 times out of 10.
Paternal grandfather was at Megiddo, and concurred.
This war is an utterly epic f@ckup.
There was a reason why every previous president since Carter looked at the problem and went “nope”.
Because of Hormuz, even before drones were a factor, actully defeating Iran, as opposed to limited strikes as a part of “coercive diplomacy”, requires major land operations.
So, either you understand that, and commit to that, or don’t do it at all.
Go big, or go home.
There is no magical shortcut to victory.
@Ken_L:
It’s not just export revenue.
The bulk of GCC food imports come in via the Straits, and there is no viable substitute route.
Saudi Arabia might get by via the Red Sea ports; but the transport capacity from there to the Gulf can’t sustain the Emirates/Kuwait/Bahrain/Qatar.
The grain storage capacity in the region is surprisingly large, I thought, after doing a bit of searching.
But after about 6 months max it’s gone (assuming it was at max stock when the war began).
However, there is another side to all this: the US is not the only actor with agency vis a vis Iran.
Few others are happy about an outcome that gives Iran a lock on the Straits and a surcharge on all imports and exports.
Iran can close the Straits and screw the GCC; but similarly, the GCC can close the Straits and screw Iran.
@Slugger:
@Kathy:
My understanding is that the uranium is mostly in uranium hexaflouride powder form that sublimates to gas at over 56°C at atmospheric pressure.
(And gas U-hex is not your friend.)
The info we have indicates the U-hex was at about 60% enriched.
Weaponization requires 90% and (crucially) reconversion to metallic form from U-hex.
There are reports that most of the enriched U-hex was buried in last years strikes.
My guess would be that the Israelis have reasonably solid information on the location and status.
And if it ever goes to 90% and metallization, at that point the IDF will, imho, commence nuclear strikes.
The ironic outcome of all this is that the US formerly had an effective lock via predominant naval power on global flows of hydrocarbons and fertilizers/fertilizer precursors.
Now every country that can do so is moving to energy and fertilizer autarky asap.
This can’t be done overnight, but it is proceeding, and accelerating.
Along with tariffs and so forth, Trump is rapidly burning up the US position as “benign hegemon” over a global open trading and financial system and alliance network.
Which might be sensible if done as a war emergency; it’s rather stupid as a bout of performative braggadocio that achieves sod all.
@JohnSF:
What’s more fun than invading a country the size of Alaska that’s about 90% mountains, and the capital is way the fuck inland? I’m always saying that our next war should be Afghanistan but bigger and with drones.
@JohnSF:
Has anyone in Hegseth’s Pentagon gamed out removing the uranium? Do they realize we’re talking bulldozers and probably weeks of some poor bastards being surrounded by bad guys with missiles and drones? Dien Bien Phu? Frozen Chosin? Surrounded and cut off while doing excavation is not ideal.
@JohnSF:
I’d no idea it was a powder. I’d assumed it would be gaseous at all times. I did know in gaseous form it’s very corrosive and hard to handle safely. Thanks for the info.
@JohnSF: “Iran can close the Straits and screw the GCC; but similarly, the GCC can close the Straits and screw Iran.”
Right now, we are at that point, except that the US is doing the latter closing.
Here are links, not sure how credible:
https://open.substack.com/pub/no1sdailydigest/p/daily-digest-2026-05-24?r=2jh99&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web
https://eriktownsend.substack.com/p/saturday-night-musings-on-crude-and
https://x.com/ErikSTownsend/status/2058358046351659464?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
https://x.com/Mark4XX/status/2058441809697620314?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
@charontwo:
Easy! Conclude a “framework” agreement that means bugger-all but allows both sides to claim total and complete victory.
@Barry_D:
While that’s true, they would be screwing themselves in the process. It’s become clear that the main pressure on Trump to end this fiasco and get the Strait open again is coming from his buddies in the Gulf States.