President Donald Trump will be briefed Thursday on options for the way ahead in the Strait of Hormuz and on the ground in Iran, according to a U.S. official familiar with the planning.
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Adm. Brad Cooper, the commander of U.S. Central Command, will brief Trump and his senior national security team at the White House, the official said, and update them on the continued U.S. blockade of Iran’s ports.
The update came after energy prices soared to their highest point in years with little sign of a deal to end the war.
Iran’s new supreme leader vowed in a message earlier Thursday that the Islamic Republic would protect its “nuclear and missile capabilities” as national assets.
The defiant written statement, read on state television, was the latest signal that Tehran was not about to capitulate in the standoff wreaking havoc on the global economy.
The price of the international benchmark for oil, Brent crude, rose to more than $126 a barrel at one point overnight — the highest since 2022, when Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine — before falling back to around $114 a barrel early Thursday.
Gas prices in the United States rose to an average of $4.30 a gallon Thursday, also the highest level in nearly four years.
The spike came following an Axios report that the U.S. military was set to brief President Donald Trump on plans for potential military action to help break the deadlock in talks to end the war and reopen the key trade route.
One plan prepared by U.S. Central Command includes a wave of “short and powerful” strikes intended to force Iran back to the negotiating table, Axios reported.
A senior Revolutionary Guard commander vowed swift retaliation if the U.S. does renew its assault.
“With prolonged and wide-ranging painful strikes, we will, by the grace of God, respond to the enemy’s operations even if they are rapid and short,” Seyed Majid Mousavi said on social media Thursday.
“We have seen the fate of your fragile bases in the region; we will also see your warships,” he said.
It comes after Trump warned that Iran had “better get smart soon” as he weighed possible military options to reopen the strait, through which some 20% of the world’s oil passes.
Traffic in the waterway has been at an effective standstill since Iran attacked shipping after the U.S. and Israel launched their joint military assault in late February, rattling the global economy.
Washington launched its own blockade of Iranian ports in response, and Trump told Axios on Wednesday that it would stay in place until Iran agreed to a nuclear deal.
That seemingly rules out a new Iranian proposal to end the war and reopen the strait without resolving the impasse over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program. Trump said he saw the blockade as “somewhat more effective than the bombing.”
Trump told reporters at the White House on Thursday that the blockade is working well.
“The power of the blockade is incredible. They’re not getting any money from oil, and hopefully it can be worked out very soon,” he said.
Trump added, “Iran is dying to make a deal.”
Trump and other top administration officials met with a group of energy industry executives earlier this week to discuss key issues, including Washington’s possible next steps in continuing the blockade “for months if needed,” a White House official told NBC News.
Members of Trump’s national security team presented him with multiple options this week for how to handle the bottleneck, a U.S. official and a person familiar with the meeting told NBC News. The options discussed included whether the U.S. military presence in the strait should change — either increase or decrease — and whether the military should become more aggressive in conducting operations there, the U.S. official said.
The prospect of prolonged disruption in the strait has sent energy prices soaring despite the ceasefire. “Our world is facing a major economic and energy challenge,” International Energy Agency head Fatih Birol told a conference in Paris.
