Tehran tests a more confrontational strategy

Speaking at a briefing attended by Iran International, the official said Trump and Netanyahu discussed three possible paths: reaching an agreement with Tehran, maintaining sanctions alongside intermittent military strikes, or launching a broader military campaign.

While stressing that the final decision rested with Trump, the official said the two leaders were aligned on the objective of preventing Iran from rebuilding its military and nuclear capabilities.

The official said Israel favoured maximising economic pressure while maintaining a credible military threat, arguing the combination would place Tehran under increasing strain without immediately requiring another full-scale war.

Trump, however, remained concerned about the impact of renewed conflict on energy markets and the global economy, according to the official.

Netanyahu acknowledged those concerns but argued they could be addressed by further squeezing Iran's already fragile economy. He also warned that Tehran was trying to use the Strait of Hormuz to extract concessions from Washington.

Tuesday's meeting—the first between the two leaders since the outbreak of the 40-day war on Feb. 28—came as Trump continued to pursue negotiations with Tehran while weighing the possibility of renewed military action.

Several hours later, Iran launched missiles at a US base in Jordan, its first direct attack on American forces since Washington paused strikes on Iran last Friday.

The official also addressed the condition of Mojtaba Khamenei, saying Iran's current leader was believed to be alive, although no one could confirm having seen him publicly.

According to the official, it remained unclear whether recent decisions attributed to Khamenei had in fact come directly from him. The official added that Khamenei had instructed those around him not to act without his approval and had become angry when that instruction was ignored.

The official dismissed reports that Netanyahu had presented Trump with a specific intelligence dossier on the underground Pickaxe Mountain nuclear facility during the meeting.

Israel believes thousands of centrifuges are concealed at the site but assesses that uranium enrichment is not currently taking place there, the official said, adding that intelligence sharing between the two countries occurs through established security channels rather than during leaders' meetings.

The official also said Tehran remained concerned about the possibility of a US ground operation targeting underground nuclear facilities and assessed that Iran's operational missile arsenal had been significantly depleted, with production capacity close to a halt.

The official described the Islamic Republic as being in its weakest economic and political position in years, citing soaring inflation, a deepening fuel crisis and a wave of executions.

The official said Israel viewed the continuing repression as evidence that Iran's leadership feared its own population.

As Trump prepared to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on Tuesday, he again warned that if Tehran refused to reach a nuclear deal, the United States would "finish the job."

The question became more urgent after Iran's surprise strike on US forces in Jordan—the Islamic Republic's first preemptive attack of the war rather than a retaliatory one—prompted Trump to declare the United States would "beat the fu*king sh*t out of" Iran.

"It's not just the nuclear program," said retired Admiral Robert Harward, a former deputy commander of US Central Command, arguing that Iran must lose not only its ability to build a nuclear weapon but also its capacity to threaten the region through missiles, drones and proxy forces.

Harward, a retired US Navy SEAL who lived in Iran before the 1979 revolution, said any lasting solution would require dismantling Tehran's broader military architecture, securing freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz and limiting its ability to project force across the Middle East.

"I think when President Trump says 'finish the job,' he does mean something beyond that," he said.

Trump has never publicly defined the phrase, leaving it open to a range of military and political interpretations. While some see it as shorthand for permanently dismantling Iran's nuclear programme, others argue it points to a broader effort to weaken Tehran's ability to threaten its neighbours and rebuild after the war.

Blaise Misztal, vice president for policy at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA), argued that Iran's nuclear programme is ultimately a symptom rather than the underlying problem.

"So long as that regime is in power, we're going to continue to be under threat," he said.

Harward went further, arguing that "a change of government in Tehran has to be the ultimate end state" because only a different government could permanently redirect Iran's resources away from military confrontation and toward rebuilding the country.

Neither expert presented regime change as current US policy. Trump himself has stopped short of making that case, even as his rhetoric has grown increasingly aggressive.

Earlier this week, Trump suggested the United States could strike Iran's bridges, infrastructure and power plants while insisting he wanted to avoid harming the Iranian people.

Harward argued those comments point not simply to an expanded bombing campaign but to a strategy of economic and military isolation.

"I'd like to see them shut down the airspace. I'd like to see them shut down the borders," he said, arguing that restricting the state's ability to move goods, people and military equipment could prove as consequential as direct military strikes.

Harward also raised the possibility of limited ground operations. Distinguishing them from the large-scale invasions of Iraq or Afghanistan, he described highly targeted missions to seize or destroy specific military objectives as "a very viable option."

The broadest interpretation of Trump's slogan concerns the future of the Islamic Republic itself. For now, however, his repeated promise to "finish the job" remains deliberately open-ended.

Whether it ultimately means dismantling Iran's nuclear programme, crippling its military capabilities or creating the conditions for political change may depend less on Trump's rhetoric than on how the war itself unfolds.

The Treasury Department said the measures target two Iranian firms it accused of helping the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) extort commercial vessels by requiring them to purchase maritime insurance to transit the strait, alongside eight shipping companies operating tankers that transported Iranian crude oil and petroleum products.

The sanctions also block eight vessels that Washington said carried millions of barrels of Iranian oil, mostly to China, as part of what it describes as Tehran's "shadow fleet" used to circumvent international sanctions.

"With its economy in freefall and inflation in the triple digits, the regime is desperate for cash," Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said.

"The United States will not allow Iran to hold global commerce hostage or use international shipping to finance the IRGC's terrorism, aggression, and repression."

According to the Treasury, the Persian Gulf Marine Insurance Company and HormuzSafe Marine Services Authority broker IRGC-approved insurance policies for commercial vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz, including payments in digital assets such as Bitcoin designed to evade sanctions.

The department said the scheme allows Tehran to generate revenue while tightening its control over shipping through the waterway.

On Wednesday, the IRGC Navy said it had "targeted and stopped" three oil tankers after they ignored warnings and used what it described as an unsafe route through the Strait of Hormuz.

It did not identify the vessels or disclose their ownership or destination, but warned that what it called "illegal interventions and orders" by the United States would not go unanswered.

Treasury also sanctioned eight shipping companies linked to tankers transporting Iranian crude oil and petroleum products.

It said it has now sanctioned more than 100 vessels tied to Iran's shadow fleet since the beginning of the year, describing the network as a key source of revenue for Tehran despite existing sanctions.

The Strait of Hormuz has become one of the central flashpoints in the conflict in recent weeks.

Iran has sought to tighten control over commercial shipping by introducing mandatory insurance requirements, challenging alternative transit routes and stopping vessels it says violate its navigation rules, while US-led naval forces have stepped up operations to keep the waterway open.

Roughly a fifth of global oil consumption normally passes through the strait.

The latest measures were imposed under Executive Order 13902, which targets Iran's petroleum and petrochemical sectors as part of the Trump administration's renewed "maximum pressure" campaign.

Iraq's Iran-backed Popular Mobilization Forces said at least 20 of its members were killed and 32 wounded in the strikes, which US Central Command said targeted sites used by groups it accused of carrying out more than 30 drone attacks on US forces and Saudi oil infrastructure over the previous 72 hours.

Iran's consulate general in Karbala denied reports that four IRGC members were killed in the strikes, saying they hit an unoccupied building and caused no casualties.

The operation also marked the first time Saudi Arabia publicly acknowledged taking part in US military action against Iran-backed groups, raising the prospect of a broader regional confrontation.

Iraq's presidency condemned the strikes on the paramilitaries as "an unacceptable attack" on the country's sovereignty, while the prime minister's office urged all sides to avoid escalation and convened an emergency security meeting.

Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi cancelled a planned meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman following the strikes, Reuters reported, citing three people familiar with the matter.

Trump said Washington had coordinated the operation with the Iraqi government. Baghdad did not directly address that claim but reiterated that only its own government had the authority to respond to attacks on Iraqi territory.

Iran's Foreign Ministry condemned the strikes as an attempt by the United States and Israel to widen the regional conflict. Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba, one of the Iran-backed groups in Iraq, warned that US and Saudi forces would pay a "heavy price."

Iran resumes military action

The IRGC said it launched ballistic missiles at a US air base and Central Command facility in Jordan on Tuesday. CENTCOM said all the missiles were intercepted, while Jordan's military said it downed five missiles launched from Iran early Wednesday.

Trump vowed a forceful response.

"We'll be hitting them hard. They're going to get a beating," he told Fox News, while adding that indirect talks with Tehran were continuing.

At the same time, the IRGC Navy said it stopped three oil tankers after they ignored warnings and used what it described as an unsafe route through the Strait of Hormuz. It did not identify the vessels or report whether anyone was injured.

Oil prices rose more than 7%, pushing Brent crude above $90 a barrel as renewed fighting deepened concerns over already restricted shipping through Hormuz and the Red Sea.

The latest exchanges underscored the increasingly regional character of the war.

Even as Washington and Tehran kept indirect diplomatic channels open, fighting spread across Jordan, Iraq and the Strait of Hormuz, raising fresh doubts about whether diplomacy can keep pace with the military escalation.

Khorasan Daily, published in Tehran and Mashhad for nearly a century, asked this week whether China's sharp cut in crude purchases "ruined Iran's Strait of Hormuz strategy" or was simply a commercial response to a war zone.

The question would be unremarkable in a Western think tank. In a paper aligned with the man running Iran's negotiations, it reads as something else: the talks camp auditing, in public, the war camp's central weapon.

The shock that never came

For decades, Iranian crisis planning has rested on one assumption: disrupt the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world's oil normally flows, and crude rockets past $200 a barrel, forcing the world to restrain Washington. During the current war, the strait has indeed been closed to Iranian exports and contested for weeks. The spike never arrived.

Khorasan's explanation is the buyer, not the seller. China purchases heavily discounted Iranian crude in calm periods, then pivots to Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) drawdowns and Russian pipeline oil the moment escalation begins, draining the drama out of the market. Western and regional reporting describes the same pattern as a deliberate "shock absorber" policy designed to neutralize Persian Gulf risk.

The paper offered two readings of Beijing's behavior. In the darker one, "real market power shifted from the producer to the largest consumer, and Iran's game was effectively neutralized by its biggest customer."

In the gentler one, China simply stepped back from a market where war-risk premiums would have bankrupted its refiners, "rather than entering intense price bidding with other global buyers."

A question from the talks camp

Where the analysis comes from matters as much as what it says. Khorasan sits in the orbit of Ghalibaf, who is not only Tehran's lead negotiator with the United States but also officially holds the China portfolio in Iran's foreign relations.

A paper in his camp questioning whether the Hormuz card still works is, in effect, an argument for his own project: if the economic weapon no longer detonates, negotiation is not weakness but arithmetic.

That may also explain the analysis's careful landing. Khorasan concluded that Beijing's buffers, reserve drawdowns and reduced refinery runs, are temporary and unsustainable without causing domestic inflation and fuel shortages.

"China did not necessarily act within a framework of ruining Iran's game," the paper wrote. Beijing's retreat "changed the traditional formula from a rapid oil shock to a gradual attrition, but it did not eliminate the core impact of the conflict on the market." The conclusion spares the partner its patron cannot afford to alienate.

Reformist and centrist outlets took the argument further. Shargh noted that while China and Russia provide diplomatic protection and veto cover at the UN Security Council, neither has any intention of entering a military or financial confrontation with Washington on Iran's behalf.

Khabar Online asked whether the two powers are helping Iran withstand Western pressure or using the confrontation as leverage in their own dealings with Washington.

Etemad and Donya-ye Eqtesad went at the doctrine itself: an energy-shock strategy assumes the customer has no alternatives, a premise they argue no longer holds.

The war camp pushes back

The other side of Iran's establishment read the same data and refused the conclusion. Tasnim, Javan and Kayhan, the outlets closest to the camp that favors fighting on, rejected the notion that Beijing "ruined Iran's strategy," reframing the story around Western supply strain and the slow grind of market friction, the "gradual attrition" that Khorasan itself conceded is still working on the world economy.

The dispute is not really about China. It is about which lever Iran has left. The war camp needs the Hormuz card to be live, because it is the argument for endurance. The talks camp needs it to be spent, because that is the argument for a deal.

What Khorasan put in print is that Iran's biggest customer may have already settled the question, and that the answer favors the men at the table.