President Donald Trump will receive a high-stakes military briefing on Thursday that could reshape the trajectory of the Iran War, as Central Command chief Admiral Brad Cooper presents plans for a “short and powerful” wave of strikes intended to break the deadlocked nuclear negotiations. The meeting, disclosed by Axios and corroborated by officials speaking to multiple international outlets, signals that the White House is seriously considering a resumption of major combat operations barely three weeks into a fragile and unravelling ceasefire. The options on the table include targeting key infrastructure, seizing part of the Strait of Hormuz, and a special forces mission to secure Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium.

The conflict, ignited on 28 February by joint American and Israeli strikes, has already killed thousands, displaced millions, and rattled global energy markets. A tenuous truce has held since early April, yet telephone diplomacy between Washington and Tehran has produced no headway. Trump has insisted that no deal can stand without the complete dismantling of Iran’s nuclear programme, and he recently characterised any Iranian blockade of the Hormuz strait as “genius” while threatening the destruction of Iranian infrastructure. Viewed from Washington, the renewed military planning is designed either to compel sweeping concessions or to deliver a decisive blow before the administration seeks a way out.

Admiral Cooper’s briefing will elaborate a three-pronged escalation ladder. The centrepiece is a short, intense bombardment of transport, power, and communications nodes, calibrated to erode Tehran’s war-fighting capacity and drive its leadership back to the negotiating table. A second plan envisages a ground operation to reclaim a segment of the Hormuz strait, reopening the chokepoint to commercial shipping and oil tankers. A third, more audacious concept deploys special forces to secure Iran’s highly enriched uranium, physically removing a pillar of its nuclear ambitions. The chairman of the joint chiefs, General Dan Caine, is also expected to attend, recalling a similar Centcom briefing that preceded the war’s opening phase.

International legal experts have sounded sharp warnings. Deliberately striking infrastructure that sustains civilian life would, they argue, risk breaching the Geneva Conventions’ prohibition on attacking objects indispensable to the civilian population. With the war having already triggered mass displacement and dire shortages, such operations could be condemned as war crimes and intensify a humanitarian emergency that European and United Nations officials have only begun to document.

Across the Middle East, anxiety runs deep. In Gulf Arab capitals, governments that publicly align with American pressure on Iran privately dread the spill-over: Iranian retaliation against oil installations or shipping lanes could ignite a wider conflagration. Israeli strategists, while supportive of a tough line, caution that Iran’s missile arsenal and regional proxies retain the capacity to inflict punishing reprisals. Moscow and Beijing, which have expanded diplomatic and commercial ties with Tehran, perceive the American posture as a gambit that threatens global energy stability and risks drawing external powers deeper into the crisis. Analysts in London note that the simultaneous pursuit of lightning strikes and territorial seizure points to a Pentagon preparing for multiple scenarios rather than a single endgame.

Whether Trump greenlights any of these plans remains uncertain; the briefing may serve as a coercive signal in itself. Yet the very act of convening it tells Tehran that the ceasefire is wholly expendable if nuclear diplomacy does not yield results. With the war’s human and economic toll still mounting, the narrow path toward a negotiated settlement has never looked more precarious.