President Donald Trump is weighing ground operations to seize Persian Gulf islands near the Strait of Hormuz, including Kharg Island, Iran’s main oil export terminal, according to U.S. officials describing a Situation Room briefing the president held Tuesday evening. Also on the table: expanded airstrikes against Iranian energy infrastructure and the bombing of a deeply buried tunnel complex known as Pickaxe Mountain.

The session capped days of consultations with Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Trump has already told Fox News what comes next if Tehran refuses to negotiate: “Next week comes the power plants, next week comes the bridges.” The strikes, he said, continue until he says it’s enough.

U.S. Central Command said it conducted two waves of strikes Wednesday, concluding at 9 p.m. ET, hitting Iranian command centers, air defense systems, missile and drone capabilities and coastal surveillance sites, including at Bandar Abbas. It was the fifth consecutive day of American strikes.

The island and the mountain

Kharg Island is the economic target. The majority of Iran’s crude exports leave through it, and taking it would sever the revenue funding Tehran’s war. It would also place American troops within easy reach of Iranian missiles and drones. Trump has suggested another country would handle any ground campaign. Retired Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie argued Sunday on CBS that possession of Iranian soil would carry weight in future negotiations. Administration officials say the president remains reluctant to commit troops and has walked back this same threat before.

Pickaxe Mountain is a tunnel network cut into granite between 300 and 475 feet beneath a mountain peak — far deeper than the enrichment sites at Natanz and Fordow struck last summer. The Institute for Science and International Security assesses from satellite imagery that the facility is not yet operational but that construction continues. Trump told radio host Hugh Hewitt this week that the United States will take it out.

Depth is the obstacle. The 2025 strikes on Fordow worked because bunker-busters traveled down ventilation shafts into the halls below. Public satellite imagery has not identified ventilation shafts at Pickaxe.

Diplomacy is stuck

Trump maintains publicly and privately that he prefers a negotiated resolution. Tehran has refused to surrender its enriched nuclear stockpiles despite months of strikes and a brief interim agreement that allowed restricted oil exports. That deal collapsed when Iranian forces attacked ships transiting the strait, and Washington reimposed its naval blockade.

The blockade is a commercial reality

CENTCOM said a Curaçao-flagged tanker, the M/T Belma, ignored repeated warnings while transiting toward Kharg Island. A U.S. aircraft fired Hellfire missiles into the vessel’s smokestack and disabled it.

That is the environment for anyone moving cargo through the Gulf. War-risk insurance for the strait has climbed from 0.125% of a ship’s insured value per transit to between 0.2% and 0.4% — roughly a quarter-million dollars more for a very large crude carrier, a cost that passes into freight rates.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard answered Wednesday by threatening to halt all regional energy exports, declaring that oil and gas will leave “either for everyone or for no one.” Roughly one-fifth of global oil consumption and about a third of the world’s seaborne crude normally pass through Hormuz.

Where it lands

Brent crude traded above $85 a barrel Wednesday, more than 15% above its pre-war level near $65 and below the $120 reached at the height of the fighting. Regular gasoline averages $3.88 a gallon nationally, about 70 cents higher than a year ago. Every delivery route, contractor’s truck and distributor in the country is paying that difference now.

The slower damage is in food. Up to 30% of internationally traded fertilizer normally moves through Hormuz, with Gulf producers supplying 30% to 35% of global urea exports and 20% to 30% of ammonia. Fertilizer costs feed grain prices, and grain prices reach grocery shelves on a lag of months.

The International Monetary Fund has warned the cushion is gone — spare production capacity deployed, demand compressed, inventories drawn down. A shock at $85 with no buffer behind it is a different proposition than the same price in a normal year.

Destroying Iranian power plants and bridges would deepen that. It would also hand Tehran every reason to make the strait unusable rather than merely dangerous — and the countries buying that oil are not the ones in this fight.

That math is politics too. Fuel prices land on Republicans heading into November, and the pump sign is the only economic indicator most voters read.

JBizNews Desk | Washington © JBizNews.com All Rights Reserved. Reproduction or distribution without written permission is prohibited.