President Donald Trump has met with military leaders in recent days to discuss a return to full-out war against Iran, according to a new report.
Trump has reviewed options with Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Trump is letting the peace process — despite its stops, starts, and snares — play out for now, the outlet reported.
The Wall Street Journal said that discussions about a return to major attacks are referred to as “finishing the job” the U.S. began on Feb. 28 along with Israel.
Trump has told his aides he thinks that major attacks could lead him away from his goal of ensuring Iran does not have a nuclear weapon.
Further, a return to war would be a clear admission that Trump’s celebrated deal with Iran failed.
However, the report said, he has no qualms about attacks that respond to Iranian breaches of the existing ceasefire.
Trump has put an optimistic spin on the talks.
“They’re agreeing to everything that I want, and they have to,” he said last week. “Otherwise, we just go back and do what we have to do.”
Vice President J.D. Vance said Tuesday that “what the president has told us is, work the problem, see where the negotiation is going to lead.”
“And if it doesn’t lead to a successful resolution on the diplomatic side, we still have a lot of optionality, and we still accomplished a whole lot for the American people,” he added.
However, issues related to control over the Strait of Hormuz have dogged the talks.
“Iran has not been cooperative at all yet,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright said Tuesday. “With or without Iran, we will ensure energy flows through the Strait of Hormuz. Of course, better with their cooperation. We want to put an end to their nuclear program.”
Trump can pressure Iran in non-military ways, Suzanne Maloney, an Iran expert and vice president for foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution, said, suggesting that unfreezing Iranian assets is conditional on cooperation.
“This middle ground strategy has real limitations,” she said. “But the combination of predictable U.S. reprisals and conditioning economic incentives on compliance could persuade Tehran not to overplay its hand.”
Conservative commentators believe a military solution is in the offing, according to Mediaite.
“I think it’s coming, I think it’s coming,” Bill O’Reilly said, predicting an attack would come after the Fourth of July. “He can’t let these people run roughshod much longer. He knows it.”
“And I [am] just very sad that civilians are going to die over there,” he said. “But it’s going to happen, unless the lord intervenes or Allah says to these mullahs, ‘Knock it off.’”
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