Donald Trump is deciding whether to restart the bombing of Iran, and his own officials rush towards securing a peace deal with the regime.
Trump met his national security team at the White House on Wednesday and again on Thursday to weigh resuming military operations against Iran, according to multiple reports. It was the president’s first session on the war since Democrats seized both chambers of Congress on Tuesday.
Officials told the president that this Monday brings a new moon over the Middle East, leaving next to no moonlight and the kind of cover commanders want for air operations, sources told Fox News.
Trump told reporters in the Oval Office hours earlier that Washington would ‘make a decision’ on resuming the war, and asked whether to ‘go further’ to ensure Iran’s nuclear program is finished for good.
He said he would rather not destroy the rest of the country if he can avoid it, ‘but maybe I will have to.’
‘You’ll know soon enough,’ he added.
Tehran, meanwhile, has offered the White House a new proposal on its nuclear program through Qatari mediators, leaving Trump to choose between a deal and flattening what is left.
Moreover, Iran is handing out iodine tablets to families living within two miles of its nuclear sites and coaching them on how to survive a blast, The Times reports.
Tehran fears the next American strike will hit Pickaxe Mountain, the nuclear complex buried as deep as 100 meters under granite near Natanz.
US Central Command has drawn up strike plans that could have started the day after the election. Additionally, thousands of American troops remain in the waters off Iran enforcing the blockade.
Trump met his national security team at the White House on Wednesday and again on Thursday to weigh resuming military operations against Iran
An oil tanker burns after being hit by an Iranian strike in the ship-to-ship transfer zone at Khor al-Zubair port near Basra, Iraq, late Wednesday, March 11
Official told the president that this Monday brings a new moon over the Middle East, leaving next to no moonlight and the kind of cover commanders want for air operations, sources told Fox News.
Iran will not reopen the Strait of Hormuz or sit down to talks until the United States meets seven conditions, the country’s top security official, Mohsen Rezaei, said on Thursday during a visit to Russia.
Those demands include lifting American sanctions, releasing Iran’s frozen assets and paying reparations for the war.
Trump rejected the seven-step version of the plan in September and answered it by posting a map that relabeled the waterway ‘Trump Strait’, though Tehran now says the sequence has been condensed and could run in two days.
Vice President JD Vance leads the advisers pushing Trump toward an agreement, while CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent want the naval blockade kept in place.
Iraqi Prime Minister Ali Faleh al-Zaidi used a phone call with Trump on Thursday to warn that his country cannot be used as ‘a launchpad for aggression against neighboring countries,’ his office said in a statement on X.
Democrats took the House and the Senate on Tuesday, flipping seats in Texas, Kansas and other reliably red states as voters turned on Trump over high prices and the war.
‘The reason we lost is the war,’ Vance wrote on X, adding that the president had said so himself the night before.
Trump called that ‘largely true’ but pinned the defeat on the price of gas rather than the fighting, and said again that ‘You can’t let Iran have a nuclear weapon.’
Drivers paid an average of $4.15 a gallon on Election Day, the highest for any midterm or presidential election day since at least 2000.
Meanwhile, higher energy costs took nearly $1,230 from the average American household. The strait carried a quarter of the world’s traded oil and a fifth of its liquefied natural gas effectively sealed.
