WASHINGTON — Military officials have included options in regular war planning for President Donald Trump to end the conflict in Iran should he decide to do so, six people familiar with the plans told NBC News. So far, he hasn't.
As the conflict widens in the Middle East and the Iranian regime maintains its chokehold on the critical Strait of Hormuz, the stated terms and timeline for ending the war remain in flux. Aides and allies have sought to pull Trump in different directions: Those in favor of an exit strategy have been concerned about global economic instability since the war began, two of the people said, while other aides have focused on the opportunity to erode the regime’s influence in the region.
The timeline for the duration of the war “could change every day,” according to one of the people.
The off-ramps are built into daily war planning, along with options for escalation if the White House seeks to increase the pressure on Iran, according to the six people, who did not go into detail on what those plans look like.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement that Trump and the Pentagon provided an initial assessment of four to six weeks “to fully achieve the clear military objectives.”
“The U.S. military is doing a tremendous job and this timeline remains true. Ultimately, the operation will end when the commander in chief determines the goals have been fully realized and the threats posed by Iran have been eliminated,” she said.
But exit strategies have taken on a new significance as the administration wrestles with surging oil prices and questions grow on whether Iran will willingly lay down arms and agree to U.S. terms.
Last week, the president told Axios the war will “end soon” while his defense secretary told CBS it was “only just the beginning.” Asked Friday when he would know when the conflict was done, Trump told Fox News: “When I feel it in my bones.”
The president told NBC News over the weekend that Iran was ready to end the war but that “the terms aren’t good enough yet.” He declined to say what those terms would be, but Trump has suggested publicly there should be regime change, “unconditional surrender” and Iran’s nuclear capability should be decimated.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on Monday said Tehran did “not request a ceasefire” and would “continue this resistance without any hesitation.”
In a major bombing campaign, the U.S. and Israel struck targets on Kharg Island — home to the main terminal that handles Iran’s oil exports. The president warned that the island’s oil infrastructure could also be targeted.
The Iranian regime had warned that a strike on the island would provoke a new level of retaliation and has attacked other Middle Eastern countries in response to the U.S.-Israel strikes.
Officials in Saudi Arabia, Dubai and Kuwait reported multiple strikes and drone sightings in their countries. A key terminal for oil exports in Oman was reportedly evacuated after tankers anchored off Iraq were attacked. Iraq also suspended operations at its oil terminals.
Iran called for the evacuation of three major ports in the United Arab Emirates — the first time it has threatened a neighboring country’s non-U.S. assets. One of those oil ports — Fujairah — came under a drone attack Saturday and again Monday.
Defense Department officials said Tehran is as weak as it has ever been, decimated from days of heavy bombardment.
“With every passing hour, we know, and we know they know that the military capabilities of their evil regime are crumbling,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said during a briefing late last week.
The U.S. has still not secured the vital Strait of Hormuz, through which 20% of the world’s oil supply travels. It has been effectively shut to tanker traffic after more than a dozen commercial ships were hit by drones. In his first public address, Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, said the strait should remain closed.
Commercial ships have requested U.S. escorts through the strait, but Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff, said Friday it was still too complex to see tankers through the waterway.
Trump said that he had reached out to several countries asking them to help police the strait, including China, France, Japan, South Korea and the United Kingdom.
“We are talking to other countries about working with us on the policing of the strait, and I think we get a good response,” Trump said. “If we do, that’s great, and if we don’t, that’s great too.”
The president threatened to delay his summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping and predicted a “very bad” future for NATO if it failed to join. But Trump said Tuesday the delay was coming because he felt he should remain in Washington as the war continued.
"Because of the war, I want to be here. I have to be here, I feel," Trump said. "And so we’ve requested that we delay it a month or so."
Leaders from Berlin to London have indicated they had no immediate plans to provide military support to reopen the crucial waterway.
Trump and administration officials are also hoping Israel will pause strikes on Iranian oil fields over concerns about oil prices and losing possible leverage with Iran to negotiate an end to the war, according to three of the people familiar with the discussions, even as the president has seemed to downplay the impact that rising costs were having on consumers.
“When oil prices go up, we make a lot of money,” he said Thursday on Truth Social.
The price of oil soared and stocks tumbled on the ripple effects the oil market disruption was causing, and the International Energy Agency warned the war was “creating the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market.”
In a podcast that aired last week, David Sacks, Trump’s czar for artificial intelligence, urged the president to bring the war to a close, the first time that a senior figure in the White House had publicly broken with the president over the war.
“I agree that we should try to find the off-ramp,” Sacks said on an episode of “All In.” “This is a good time to declare victory and get out and that is clearly what the markets would like to see.”
But even if Trump chooses to declare victory and call a halt to the war, it’s not clear that the Iranian regime would agree to terms dictated by the president.
“We did not send any message and did not request a ceasefire, but this war must end in a way that it will not be repeated,” Araghchi said, as reported by the semi-official Fars News agency.
Instead, the regime could renew its efforts to thwart commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz with drone attacks, keeping oil prices high and ratcheting up political pressure on Trump.
The hard-line regime in Iran will almost certainly still be in place, albeit with a decimated military. U.S. intelligence assessments suggest there are no indications of an imminent collapse of the clerical and military establishment that rules the country, NBC News has previously reported.
After the 12-day war in June between Israel and Iran, some hard-line voices in Iranian newspapers questioned the government’s decision to agree to a ceasefire with Israel instead of forcing its adversary to use up more of its supply of costly air defense systems.
Siamak Namazi, an American businessman and an analyst on Iran who was held hostage for nearly eight years by the regime, said the country’s leaders believe they are in an existential fight.
“They are banking that their threshold for pain is far higher than their opponents’. And they will do their best to make sure when this war is over, they are standing and that the U.S. and Israel don’t launch another round of attacks after this war stops,” he said.
“The regime’s key objective is survival. If they are standing when the bombs stop, they will consider themselves having won,” Namazi said.
