Military advisers warn of dwindling munitions in proposed two-week campaign
President Trump on Friday said he plans to resume heavy military strikes against Iran to force the regime to come to the negotiating table, vowing to hit the country “very hard” and predicting that the hard-line regime would eventually “peter out.”
His comments, made during a televised cabinet meeting at the Camp David presidential retreat, were in contrast to his insistence earlier this week that “very friendly negotiations” were under way, enabling a pause on military operations. Since then, Iran launched a surprise attack on troops in Jordan, triggering a U.S. retaliatory attack on Wednesday.
“We will be hitting them very hard,” Trump said Friday. “And you know at some point, they’re going to say, ‘We just can’t take it anymore.’”
For weeks behind closed doors, Trump has been telling aides that the Iranians are “crazy,” according to U.S. officials. He also has complained to confidants that the interim peace deal was ultimately meaningless, officials said, and that he always knew it was not going to work. His frustration was on full display during the meeting when the president accused Iranian diplomats of being “very dishonorable” to deal with and suggested more violent military strikes were needed to break Tehran’s will.
“Well, they always want to talk, but they break their words so often,” Trump said, later adding, “All they do is make me angry.”
The frustration is mutual. Iranian diplomats have expressed exhaustion at the multiple times negotiations broke down with the U.S. From their perspective, officials said, there is a lack of trust between the two countries and that relations and the prospect of diplomacy worsen every time Trump threatens military force.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on Thursday vowed to renew its attacks following the U.S. retaliatory strikes.
“Iranian decision-making is increasingly shaped by an intense pessimism about what diplomacy with the U.S. can achieve,” said Esfandyar Batmanghelidj, an Iran expert and chief executive of the Bourse & Bazaar Foundation, an economics-focused think tank. “This pessimism has gotten worse since the [memorandum of understanding] was signed,” Batmanghelidj said of the interim peace agreement, which was signed by the U.S. and Iran in June but fell apart within weeks.
As the Iran war enters its sixth month, neither side appears any closer to softening its positions. Trump continues to insist that Iran must relinquish its nuclear program and abandon its control of the Strait of Hormuz, while Iran has dug in on both counts.
Among Trump’s options is a proposed two-week campaign of intensive airstrikes intended to blunt Iran’s missile capabilities. Dwindling munitions, however, have been cited by Trump’s military advisers as a potential risk, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Some U.S. officials believe Iran will continue to drag out negotiations, banking that Trump will abandon his war efforts in the long term in the face of mounting domestic political opposition. Another complicating factor continues to be competing factions in Iran: Some want to negotiate an end to the conflict, while others want to prolong the war, viewing it as an opportunity to suck the U.S. into another Middle East quagmire.
Behind the scenes, Gulf countries are becoming frustrated with what they see as a lack of clear strategy from the U.S. as the war drags on, subjecting their territory to frequent Iranian attacks. Gulf allies have asked the U.S. in recent weeks for more air-defense interceptors and continued guarantees that the U.S. military will help protect them if the tit-for-tat fighting drags on, officials said.
Mediators in the region have been racing to push the U.S. and Iran into a new ceasefire. They fear that the two nations are at risk of settling into a protracted low-level conflict that is destructive enough to disrupt regional economies indefinitely. American diplomats have not offered any fresh compromises, regional officials familiar with the matter said, while their Iranian counterparts have expressed openness to another meeting in Geneva, Doha, Qatar, or the Pakistani capital of Islamabad.
Some countries in the Gulf, including the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait, have lobbied Trump in recent days to take more decisive actions against Iran, according to senior Gulf officials. Some officials have even suggested the IRGC will not compromise until the U.S. escalates, takes control of the Strait of Hormuz, or perhaps considers ground operations. While Trump has considered various options, he has not been eager to send in ground troops, U.S. officials have said.
“We just want to win. We’re doing very well,” Trump said Friday.
As previously reported by Main Street Independent, the U.S. launched a heavy wave of strikes on Iran on July 30 after an Iranian ballistic missile attack on American forces in Jordan. U.S. launches heavy strikes on Iran after missile attack on Jordan base