The US military has asked its own members for “creative and unconventional” new strategies to build more effective pressure on Iran and take “punitive” steps, US broadcaster CNN has reported, based on an internal email from US Central Command (CENTCOM).
The report said that last week a senior official of CENTCOM’s intelligence branch wrote in an email to military analysts: “We are looking for new, creative and unconventional ways to pressure and punish Iran.” Two sources familiar with the message confirmed it, CNN said.
According to military officials, soliciting ideas by email in such a “crowdsourcing” way is unusual, and suggests that the administration of President Donald Trump has a narrowing range of effective options to bring Iran to the negotiating table on its own terms — leaving CENTCOM feeling the need to reassess existing strategy.
CENTCOM spokesman Captain Timothy Hawkins said in a statement that US Central Command always believed in innovative thinking and action, and that Admiral Cooper sought to ensure top-level operations by accepting new ideas from team members regardless of rank.
According to the report, after the email was sent, President Trump threatened fresh strikes on Iran but later held off at the urging of regional leaders including the Saudi crown prince.
Over the past few weeks the United States has carried out a series of air strikes to weaken Iran’s military capacity and bring Tehran back to talks, but no sign of a settlement has appeared so far.
Two sources connected to the planning said the Trump administration was considering fresh strikes on several nuclear sites including Iran’s Pickaxe Mountain, thought to hold nuclear material or related equipment. But because these sites are deep underground, military planners believe missile or bomb strikes alone would struggle to destroy them.
According to the sources, fully destroying the sites might require deploying ground forces — carrying major military and political risks that Trump has so far been unwilling to take. The report said 18 US soldiers had already been killed in the ongoing conflict.
Another source said Trump was also considering a kind of symbolic strike that would essentially be like a “fireworks display” — meant to show visible military success and exit the war, even if it did not achieve the core goal of fully halting Iran’s nuclear programme.
US intelligence agencies the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) recently assessed that the current air strikes could not significantly change Iran’s negotiating position. Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman General Dan Caine made a similar point last month, telling lawmakers that air power too had its limits.
The report also said the Trump administration had several military plans before it for escalating the war, including one for one to two weeks of intensive air strikes aimed at destroying Iran’s missile capacity. But dwindling air-defence missile stocks and fears of civilian casualties have so far kept Trump from such a decision.
Options such as sending ground forces or seizing Iran’s strategic Kharg Island are also under discussion, but carrying them out would clash with Trump’s 2024 election-campaign promise not to send US troops into endless foreign wars.
In these circumstances, analysts say, the United States faces a situation in which a long-running exchange of strikes with Iran could continue and instability around the Strait of Hormuz could grow further. The figures and claims in the report could not be independently verified.
At a recent cabinet meeting, Trump said: “We want to win. We will hit them hard. At some point they will say, we can’t take it anymore.”
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report