The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday that President Trump has considered resuming all-out war with Iran, holding talks with US War Secretary Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs Chairman Dan Caine about potential strike options, but has decided to hold off for now and stick with engagement under the US-Iran Memorandum of Understanding.
The report said the talks focused on whether the US should restart the full-scale war and abandon negotiations, and that while Trump hasn’t made a final decision, he told aides that he believed another round of full-scale strikes would derail negotiations and hurt the chances of dismantling Iran’s nuclear program, though Tehran has maintained it won’t give up its civilian nuclear program.
Trump also reportedly said that he was fine with going past the first 60-day deadline for talks under the MoU and that he was happy with launching limited strikes against Iran for allegedly “violating” the MoU, though attacks in themselves are a violation of the agreement, which states each party pledges “not to initiate any war or any military operation against each other, and to refrain from the threat or use of force against each other.”
The president has publicly threatened to destroy Iran if the Islamic Republic doesn’t do what he wants, but he has also admitted that bombing the country isn’t a viable path to opening the Strait of Hormuz.
“If we go and bomb — which we could do very easily if we want, and we spend another two or three weeks bombing — they’ll have nothing left whatsoever. But you won’t have the strait open for months,” he said in early June, days before the MoU was announced. “If we do the bombing, you know, a lot of people are going to be killed. Who wants to do that? I don’t.”
