A week after the United States resumed daily attacks on Iran and reimposed a naval blockade of Iranian ports, the Trump administration gave little clarity on how long the latest military operation would last and its purpose after a fragile ceasefire was broken.
Behind the scenes, President Donald Trump is being presented with options to further expand operations as the military looks for ways to step up efforts to loosen Iran’s grip on the Strait of Hormuz. However, Iran has shown no desire to relinquish control of the vital waterway.
In public comments, President Trump downplayed the length of the fighting and signaled he intended to expand the attack to include threats to civilian infrastructure and possible energy targets. “We were in Vietnam for 19 years. We’ve been here four months, so I think we’ve done a lot,” the president told CNN’s Caitlan Collins this week.
Trump told Fox News on Tuesday that the airstrikes “will continue until I say enough is enough,” and in a prime-time speech Thursday, Trump barely mentioned Iran, saying “the fruits of that effort will be seen soon.”
Meanwhile, Vice President J.D. Vance, the administration’s chief negotiator with Iran, has suggested that military force alone will not be enough to completely dismantle Iran’s control over the Strait of Hormuz.
“You can bomb them, you can take out their radars, you can take out some of their drones and missiles, but it’s too easy to fire on ships in the Strait,” he said in a podcast interview on Tuesday. “So you have to actually be willing to talk and try to solve problems.”
Ryan Crocker, a former U.S. ambassador to Middle Eastern countries, echoed the vice president’s sentiments, telling CNN’s Erex Michelson on Saturday that bombing Iran “into submission” would not work.
