(CNN) — Two weeks into a renewed bombing campaign against Iran, with US forces taking casualties and allies wary of the conflict escalating further, President Donald Trump insists that Iran is “desperate” to find an end to wave after wave of US attacks.
But both the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency have recently assessed that the kind of bombing the US is currently carrying out is unlikely to shift the Iranian negotiating position, according to two US officials familiar with the assessments.
At the same time, the key mediator between the two sides — Qatar — threatened to walk away from the table after Iran struck a Qatari tanker earlier this month, in what would amount to a devastating and possibly irreplaceable loss for diplomatic efforts, according to a current and a former US official.
The Strait of Hormuz, a vital economic lifeline that was freely navigated by an armada of ships daily before the war, remains largely vacant after Iran insisted on authority to control traffic, enforcing their power with sporadic drone and threats of mines.
That confluence of events has left Trump, whose party is staring down potentially devastating midterm election losses in November, with few good options.
He could escalate by putting American boots on the ground, a threat he’s made repeatedly as he’s talked about occupying Kharg Island or removing Iran’s highly enriched uranium. That would further break a key promise he made to his MAGA base: “I will not send you to fight and die in stupid foreign wars that never ends,” he said during a 2024 campaign rally in Pennsylvania.
Trump has also telegraphed that the US plans to target a suspected nuclear facility underneath Pickaxe Mountain, which is located near the Natanz nuclear facility in the country’s rugged interior.
Or he could accept a dangerous status quo: endless rounds of strikes and counterstrikes with Iran that are likely to cost further American lives and leave the Strait of Hormuz in a state of constant peril that could resemble the “forever wars” he has criticized. On Wednesday, Trump seemed to signal that path in a post on Truth Social, vowing that “any time the Islamic Republic of Iran shoots at a ship in the Strait of Hormuz… the United States will bomb and destroy ONE BRIDGE OR POWER PLANT.”
The key problem for the Trump administration is that although its traditional military is far superior to Iran’s, the two sides are fighting two different wars. The US is escalating vertically, hitting increasingly sensitive and valuable targets inside Iran in a gradually-expanding geographic range in an effort to shift the calculus inside Tehran.
But Iran, whose air defenses and missile launch capabilities have been degraded by American strikes, are escalating horizontally — hitting US allies in the region and striking civilian infrastructure to provoke the international community to put pressure on Trump.
CNN reached out to the DIA, and the Qatar embassy in Washington D.C., but did not receive comment before this story published. The CIA declined to comment.
“Right now, the president is focused on making Iran pay for their violations of the MOU and their continued acts of terrorism in the Strait of Hormuz,” a US official told CNN. “In addition, the president will make Iran pay for the recent deaths of US soldiers. These devastating blows will continue until the president deems otherwise, but talks between our countries are continuing. President Trump has all of the cards and all options at his disposal.”
Potentially accelerating growing economic pressure are new threats from Iran-aligned Houthi groups that they will be targeting ships passing through Bab al-Mandab, the passageway to the Red Sea that has served as a relief valve for some oil from Saudi Arabia during the conflict. The group claimed to have attacked two Saudi tankers in the Red Sea early on Thursday morning.
On Tuesday, top defense officials faced withering pressure from lawmakers on the Senate Appropriations Committee, who demanded a clear strategy for the war.
“We need some hard answers and some straight talk,” Sen. John Kennedy, a Republican of Louisiana, said Wednesday, pressing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine on the consequences if the US withdrew from the conflict.
Shifting success
Trump and Hegseth had initially declared victory in the early days of the conflict, insisting that Iran had been militarily defeated.
Under intense pressure from the White House to prove that the war is going well, Hegseth and CENTCOM Commander Adm. Brad Cooper have taken steps to restrict information sharing related to the conflict with other parts of the military and the intelligence community, CNN has previously reported.
Although its military was unquestionably degraded, Iran began striking energy infrastructure across the Gulf region, ratcheting up the economic consequences of the conflict not just for the United States but for its allies.
That’s led to repeated pressure from allies to curtail US military operations and find a deal that could open the Strait of Hormuz and end the threat to nearby countries.
Iran has shown its willingness to absorb economic and military pain in the belief that it might outlast Trump’s political appetite for the conflict, said Alex Vatanka, an analyst with the Middle East Institute in Washington who specializes in Iran. But that doesn’t mean that Iran’s leaders can afford for the war to go on forever.
“Those against diplomacy just have a fundamental conception that the US never delivers. But those are not the people who are running Iran today,” Vatanka said. “They might not like Trump, or trust the US, but they still think that’s better than risking an open-ended war.”
The US has also restarted a blockade that some analysts believe may be doing more to push Tehran towards concessions than the bombing.
But for now, Iran’s ability to threaten the Strait of Hormuz — and its neighbors — remains its greatest point of leverage.
Iran has also learned it can leverage targeted strikes against the energy infrastructure of Gulf countries as an asymmetric capability after doing so to great effect during the war. That tool isn’t going away, a second source familiar with US intelligence assessments said.
Trump officials insist that the objective of the conflict remains to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. But that messaging has been muddled by the administration’s previous insistence that it “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear capabilities in a series of strikes last year. Since Trump launched this war, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has become the dominating issue in the conflict.
“This is a bombing campaign in search of a strategy,” Joe Kent, a former Trump administration political appointee who resigned over the spin up to the conflict, said in a post on X. “We are choosing escalation when de-escalation remains an option, entrenching ourselves deeper into a broader war that we don’t have the capability or desire to sustain. There is not a military solution here that will lead to a win. More bombing will not convince Iran to open the SOH or to give us the deal we want, it will only harden their position.”
CNN’s Zachary Cohen and Davis Winkie contributed to this story
Davis Winkie’s work at CNN is supported by a partnership between Outrider Foundation and Journalism Funding Partners (JFP). CNN retains full editorial control of the reporting.
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