The TWZ Newsletter
Weekly insights and analysis on the latest developments in military technology, strategy, and foreign policy.
U.S. President Donald Trump is at an inflection point in the currently paused war in Iran. He is facing a legally mandated deadline tomorrow for seeking Congressional permission to continue the conflict while also reportedly meeting today with Epic Fury’s top general about future strikes. Meanwhile, Iran’s Supreme leader signalled that his country is not willing to give in to Trump’s demands, increasing the chances hostilities could continue.
This is all happening against the backdrop of a shaky ceasefire and stalled negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program and continuing closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
Tomorrow marks the 60-day mark since Trump formally notified Congress of hostilities against Iran. That’s the limit established under the War Powers Resolution of 1973 for deploying troops without Congressional approval if there is an “imminent threat” to the country. However, Congress must sign off on a 30-day extension if the president says it’s necessary and informs the legislative body. An extension is meant to allow the president to use force protection to withdraw troops from a conflict, not keep it going or expand it.
Trump has until tomorrow to force a vote on the matter, since an extension requires Congressional approval. The legislature also has the option to declare war on Iran, which has not happened. With that in mind, the president’s team is reportedly talking to legislators about an extension. Trump can also ignore the mandate as other presidents have in the past.
“The administration is in active conversations with [Congress] on this topic,” a senior White House official told the Washington Examiner. “Members of Congress who try to score political points by usurping the commander in chief’s authority would only undermine the United States military abroad, which no elected official should want to do.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), a close Trump ally and staunch proponent for armed intervention in Iran and other hostile nations, urged Trump to pay no heed to the resolution.
“If I were them, I’d completely ignore” the deadline, Graham told the Washington Examiner in a brief interview. “I’ve always thought it’s been unconstitutional.”
Several recent attempts by Congressional Democrats to invoke the War Powers Act to stop the war have failed.
As CBS News notes, the resolution has never successfully stopped an administration from continuing hostilities and both the Obama and Clinton administrations continued kinetic actions despite passing the deadline.
It remains publicly unknown at this point what action Trump will take. We have reached out to the White House for more details.
Meanwhile, the president is slated to receive a briefing today on new plans for potential military action in Iran from CENTCOM Commander Adm. Brad Cooper, Axios reported on Wednesday, citing two sources with knowledge.
The briefing “signals that Trump is seriously considering resuming major combat operations either to try to break the logjam in negotiations or to deliver a final blow before ending the war,” the outlet suggested.
CENTCOM has prepared three options, Axios noted. They include:
- “Short and powerful” waves of strikes on Iran, likely including infrastructure targets.
- “Taking over part of the Strait of Hormuz to reopen it to commercial shipping. Such an operation could include ground forces,” one source told the outlet.
- A “special forces operation to secure Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium.” As we have reported in the past, such an operation faces tremendous challenges and great risk for a questionable chance of success.
The ceasefire extension Trump authorized on April 21 continues to hold despite Iranian attacks on shipping and the ongoing U.S. blockade of Iranian ports and its seizure of Iranian-backed oil tankers in the Indian Ocean.
So far Operation Epic Fury has cost taxpayers $25 billion, and that “most of that is in munitions,” the Pentagon’s acting comptroller, Jules Hurst, told the House yesterday. Today, Hurst, War Secretary Pete Hegseth, who engaged in a number of heated exchanges with House Democrats yesterday, and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine testified before the Senate.
Regardless of what actions the U.S. takes, Iran does not appear to be willing to negotiate away either its nuclear ambitions or ballistic missile arsenal.
The Islamic Republic’s supreme leader said Thursday that his country will protect its “nuclear and missile capabilities” as a national asset, The Associated Press reported. That will likely draw a hard line as Trump presses for a wider deal to cement the war’s shaky three-week ceasefire, the wire service added.
“Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei maintained his defiant tone since taking over following the killing of his father in the war’s opening airstrikes,” according to AP. “In a written statement read by a state television anchor, Khamenei — who has not been seen in public since becoming supreme leader — said the only place Americans belonged in the Persian Gulf is ‘at the bottom of its waters’ and that a ‘new chapter’ was being written in the region’s history.”
Khamenei is said to be taking extreme security precautions, and messaging from him has been extremely limited. As we have previously reported, he was also seriously injured in the attack that killed his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on the first day of the war.
Trump on Thursday said Iran wants “to make a deal badly” and repeated his claim that it is unclear who is really in charge in Iran, making it hard to negotiate.
Given all this, the next two days could tell us a lot about the future of this conflict.
UPDATES
CENTCOM has asked to send the Army’s long-range Dark Eagle hypersonic boost-glide vehicle weapon to the Middle East for possible use against Iran, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday. The outlet suggested the request was made because the command is seeking a longer-range system to hit Iranian ballistic-missile launchers deep inside the country.
“If approved, it would mark the first time the US will have deployed its hypersonic missile, which is running far behind schedule and hasn’t been declared fully operational even as Russia and China have deployed their own versions,” the outlet added. “The Request for Forces submission justifies the move by saying Iran has moved its launchers out of range of the Precision Strike Missile (PrSM), a weapon that can hit targets at more than 300 miles, a person with direct knowledge of the request said.”
As we have noted before, Dark Eagle is “a trailer-launched hypersonic boost-glide vehicle system that can travel long distances at hypersonic speeds (velocities in excess of Mach 5) while maneuvering erratically through Earth’s atmosphere. This makes it an ideal weapon for striking high-priority and time-sensitive targets that are extremely well defended. This includes critical air defenses, command and control nodes, and enemy sensor systems, among other targets. It is the first true hypersonic weapon slated for frontline U.S. service.”
CENTCOM declined comment, however, whether it would even make sense to use this weapon against Iranian targets is questionable. There are just a tiny handful of these munitions (likely single digits) in the inventory and there are many other ways to strike targets anywhere in Iran relatively quickly. This includes fixed-wing airpower being able to loiter over the country and drones operating persistently over it.
Beyond using the war as an operational demonstration of the weapon, which has its own major advantages and disadvantages, Dark Eagle is a precious weapons system that would be poorly allocated to making out a single missile launcher. These weapons are needed for near-peer contingencies in the Pacific and Europe, according to the military.
Images on X show the Wasp class amphibious assault ship USS Boxer and part of its Amphibious Ready Group (ARG), loaded with elements of the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU), continue to steam toward the Middle East. As we have previously reported, the ARG/MEU is traveling to supplement the force currently stationed in the region.
The images show the Boxer and Whidbey Island class dock landing ship USS Comstock traveling westbound in the Singapore Strait.
The aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford will depart the Middle East and begin the sail for home in coming days, The Washington Post reported, citing multiple U.S. officials. The move means an expected relief for roughly 4,500 sailors who have been on a record-setting deployment even as the vessel experienced a fire and plumbing issues.
The Ford, as we previously noted, is one of three aircraft carriers in the region — the others are the USS George H.W. Bush and the USS Abraham Lincoln — amid hostilities with Iran. While the Ford is in the Red Sea, the Lincoln and Bush are operating in the Arabian Sea to enforce the U.S. blockade targeting vessels carrying oil or goods from Iranian ports.
It was not clear precisely when the Ford would depart the Middle East. One official told the Post that it is probably expected back home in Virginia around mid-May.
“As of Wednesday, the Ford had been deployed 309 days — the record for the longest time any modern U.S. aircraft carrier has been at sea,” the newspaper noted.
The Bush’s arrival in the Middle East last week marked the first time since 2003 that there were three carriers in the CENTCOM area of responsibility. Combined, the three carrier strike groups have 200 aircraft, nine Arleigh Burke class guided missile destroyers, and 15,000 sailors and Marines.
Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Kenneth Wilsbaugh told lawmakers that the service will try to replace aircraft lost during Iran operations through a supplemental request, Politico reporter Audrey Decker reported on X.
“Both the supplemental and the 2027 budget is supposed to address those losses,” he testified.
There have been dozens of crewed and uncrewed aircraft damaged and destroyed so far in this conflict, which you can read more about in our chart here.
Both the U.S. and Iran are betting on the flow of oil benefiting their bargaining positions.
A big part of the Trump administration’s plans for the future of efforts against Iran are based on the president’s assertion that Iranian oil fields will be irreparably damaged once it no longer has any place to store crude. As we noted last week, Trump suggested that Iran’s oil infrastructure could “explode” in about three days because of mechanical and geologic issues exacerbated by the blockade. The administration is banking on Iran – concerned about the long-term blow to an economy relying heavily on oil exports – bowing to U.S. pressure and agreeing to give up its nuclear ambitions and open the Strait of Hormuz.
Several experts, however, have since come forward to suggest Trump’s calculus on the matter is incorrect.
“That is not how it works,” Rosemary Kelanic, an energy scholar and director of the Middle East Program at the foreign policy think tank Defense Priorities, told The Washington Post. “Nothing is going to self-destruct.”
Mark Finley, a fellow in energy and global oil at Rice University’s Baker Institute, agreed. “Iran has proven it knows how to keep its system operating,” he told the newspaper. The closure of the strait means there are plenty of empty tankers available to Iran that could hold stranded oil production, Finley said. Even without them, “there is a domestic refining and distribution network that can keep the system running at a reduced rate,” he added.
The Iranians, meanwhile, are watching the price of oil surge. For instance, the price of Brent crude, a benchmark oil, has jumped this week, to just over $104 per barrel today, according to OilPrice.com. That’s up from a recent low of just over $85 a barrel on April 17. Meanwhile, the average price of a gallon of gas in the U.S. is now $4.30, up from $4.03 a week ago, according to AAA.
Given this, Iran feels it can manage the storage issue and feels the pressure will be on the Trump administration as the global impact of the standoff grows.
In a message delivered on the occasion of Iran’s “National Day of the Persian Gulf,” Iranian President Masoud Peseshkian claimed that “any attempt to impose a naval blockade and restriction on Iran is doomed to failure.”
“The Persian Gulf is not an arena for imposing unilateral foreign wills and the security of this strategic zone can only be ensured with the cooperation of the coastal countries,” he wrote. “The Persian Gulf is not the field of imposing foreign wills. Hormuz Strait is a symbol of national sovereignty and Iran’s role in the security of the region. Any attempt to blockade Iran’s ports is doomed to failure. Iran is the guardian of the security of the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz.”
Israel, meanwhile, says it is ready to resume hostilities with Iran.
Defense Minister Israel Katz says while Israel supports the United States’ diplomatic efforts with Iran, it may “soon be required to act again” to remove the “existential threats” posed by the Islamic Republic, the Times of Israel reported.
“Iran has suffered extremely severe blows over the past year, blows that have set it back years in all areas,” says Katz during a ceremony promoting the next Israeli Air Force chief, Omer Tischler, to the rank of major general.
“US President Trump, in coordination with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is leading the effort to complete the campaign’s objectives in a way that ensures Iran will not return to being a threat to the existence of Israel, to the United States, and to the free world for generations to come,” he added.
So far, CENTCOM has turned away 42 ships during the blockade, Cooper stated on X yesterday. Cooper said this represents 69 million barrels of oil, worth about $6 billion, that Iran can’t sell.
Russian Ambassador Mikhail Ulyanov said that President Vladimir Putin told Trump that if the US and Israel resume military operations, this would inevitably lead to extremely adverse consequences not only for Iran and its neighbors, but for entire international community, Ulyanov stated on X.
Putin also stressed that a ground operation on Iranian territory would be particularly unacceptable and dangerous, Ulyanov wrote.
Investigators from Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) are aboard the Majestic X, one of several Iranian-linked oil tankers seized in the Indian Ocean.
Last week, the Pentagon announced an overnight “maritime interdiction and right-of-visit boarding of the sanctioned stateless vessel M/T Majestic X transporting oil from Iran, in the Indian Ocean within the INDOPACOM area of responsibility.”
Pakistan has opened six overland transit routes for goods destined for Iran, effectively allowing the Islamic Republic to partially circumvent the U.S. port blockade, Al Jazeera reported.
“The move formalizes a road corridor through its territory as thousands of containers remain stranded at Karachi port because of the United States blockade of Iranian ports and ships trying to pass through the Strait of Hormuz,” the outlet stated.
The order “allows goods originating from third countries to be transported through Pakistan and delivered to Iran by road,” according to Al Jazeera.
The announcement coincided with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi’s visit to Islamabad for talks with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and army chief Asim Munir, the latest in a series of diplomatic engagements as Pakistan seeks to mediate an end to the two-month war between Washington and Tehran.
The Trump administration wants other countries to form an international coalition to restore freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz, according to a State Department cable Reuters says it saw.
“U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio approved the creation of the Maritime Freedom Construct (MFC), the cable dated April 28 said, which it described as a joint initiative by the State Department and the Pentagon,” the outlet noted.
“The MFC constitutes a critical first step in the establishment of a post-conflict maritime security architecture for the Middle East. This framework is essential to ensuring long-term energy security, protecting critical maritime infrastructure, and maintaining navigational rights and freedoms in vital sea lanes,” the cable read.
The MFC would reportedly be similar in nature to the European-led Operation Aspides, a defensive mission in the Red Sea region.
Iran’s Navy Commander Rear Admiral Shahram Irani says the Islamic Republic will soon unveil a new weapon that would “deeply terrify the enemy,” the official Iranian IRNA media outlet reported.
“In a televised interview on Wednesday, Admiral Iran said the adversaries are deeply afraid of the new weapon the Islamic Republic plans to unveil close to where they are stationed,” IRNA added.
Irani provided no details about the weapon.
The IDF issued a new warning to residents in south Lebanon of pending military action against Hezbollah.
“URGENT ALERT TO RESIDENTS OF LEBANON IN THE FOLLOWING VILLAGES: Al-Samanieh, Al-Hnieh, Al-Qalila, Wadi Jilo, Al-Kanisa, Kafr, Majdal Zoun, Seddiqine Hezbollah activities force the Defense Army to act against it, as it does not intend to harm you,” the warning read. “Out of concern for your safety, you must evacuate your homes immediately and stay away from the villages for a distance of at least 1000 meters to open areas. Anyone present near Hezbollah elements, their facilities, and combat means exposes their life to danger.”
Israeli forces continue being attacked by Hezbollah drones. The following image shows an Israeli cargo carrier struck by one near the northern border community of Shomera. As we reported yesterday, the IDF is resorting to the use of netting to help defend some of its vehicles from these weapons.
Contact the author: howard@thewarzone.com
