Pentagon drafts Iran attack plans as Tehran threatens aggressive retaliation

This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. End of dialog window. The U. S. military has drawn up options to potentially attack Iran after the U. S. midterm elections, possibly renewing the conflict that has lasted over eight months. The U. S. Central Command (Centcom), which oversees U. S. forces in the Middle East, has plans ready to conduct follow-up strikes against Iran if there’s authorization from the White House, a source aware of the plans, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told The Hill. Centcom has a number of strike options in place, which are presented to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, another source aware of the planning said. President Trump will leave all of his options open until he has to make the final decision, this source, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, said. “To me, it looks pretty likely that the U. S. goes back to military strikes on Iran once the midterm elections are passed,” Gregory Brew, an Iran expert at Eurasia Group, said in a Friday interview with The Hill. Harrison Mann, a former executive officer of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) Middle East/​Africa Regional Center, said there are two forms of escalation Trump’s could exercise if he chooses to hit Iran: return to attacking Iranian military and political targets inland or targeting civilian and energy infrastructure if the Israeli military is involved. “I emphasize inland because since April, the U. S. has basically not attacked anything except for targets on Iran’s coasts. It has apparently not flown aircraft except for maybe one or two strikes over Iranian territory,” Mann said in a Friday interview with The Hill. “That was probably both to reduce the risk of escalation and because they were not willing to risk having more planes shot down.” “The other path; these are not mutually exclusive, and which becomes more likely if Israeli forces are involved would be going directly targeting civilian infrastructure, energy infrastructure, or as we saw the Israelis do at the start of the conflict, universities, police stations, other civilian stuff,” Mann continued. When asking the Defense Department for a comment, a Pentagon official said the department’s “job is to develop and present military options to the President.” “We don’t speculate on hypothetical situations or future operations,” the official said. Centcom did not respond to The Hill’s request for comment. The appetite for authorizing kinetic actions comes as the U. S. government looks to pull major concessions from the Islamic Republic amid stalled diplomatic negotiations. Trump himself has warned the U. S. could attack Tehran following the November midterms, where Republicans are fighting to retain both chambers of Congress. The Trump administration sees Iran’s economy getting weaker by the day, with the combination of sanctions and the U. S. naval blockade degrading the country’s economy, where inflation is rising. “Basically, using force to add to the existing pressures that are on Iran, force them to capitulate, reach a deal, and allow the U. S. to exit the war,” Brew said, adding that part of why the U. S. is considering military strikes is “frustration” with the lack of progress on the diplomatic front. “The Iranians are not bending; they’re not showing any flexibility,” he said. “They have a negotiating position that they’ve been sticking to now for several weeks.” On Monday, Hegseth visited U. S. troops in the Middle East along with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel. “We’ve worked with the Israeli military quite a bit. That’s nothing new. We have for a long time. They have great capabilities, and we appreciate their contributions to assuring Iran never gets a nuclear weapon,” Hegseth told reporters on Tuesday in Wisconsin, praising Israel as “good partners.” Some regional analysts question if another U. S.-Israel strike campaign — which contributed to the depletion of the Pentagon arsenal of missile interceptors and some exquisite offensive systems, spiked gas prices and rocked the Middle East — would force the Iranian leadership to make concessions. “There’s no level of U. S. or Israeli strikes that is going to compel Iran to change course at this point. Iranian leaders not only saw themselves in a fight for personal survival and survival of their regime,” Mann, a former Army major, said. “They’ve increasingly come to understand that they have leverage, they have the upper hand, and they want to drive that advantage to try and get concessions from Trump. “I think we have already seen quite clearly what the limits are of U. S. and Israeli strikes,” he continued. “It could not destroy Iran’s military capacity, could not destroy its political leadership, even though it assassinated key members. During the active stage of the war, the U. S. and Israeli militaries destroyed and damaged Iranian launchers and missile magazines. Last month, the Pentagon said the U. S. military destroyed upwards of 90 percent of Iranian ballistic missiles, naval industrial base and drones. Trump has previously pulled back from greenlighting kinetic strikes against Iran after the Pentagon would prepare a strike package. The U. S. military currently has over 50,000 service members in the Middle East and about 20 warships, some of which are helping enforce the naval blockade in the Arabian Sea. There are two aircraft carrier strike groups in the Middle East and a third one, the USS Theodore Roosevelt, a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, is going to the Centcom region to possibly relieve the USS George Washington. The Pentagon dispatched 4,000 Marines and sailors aboard three warships, led by USS Makin Island, a Wasp-class amphibious assault ship, to the Middle East as part of the amphibious readiness group. The additional battleships and personnel could provide the president with greater options for amphibious landings and other operations. Trump has also telegraphed that the U. S. military could strike Pickaxe Mountain, located near the damaged Natanz uranium enrichment facility in the Zagros Mountains. But some experts have argued the facility’s depth could mean that the U. S.’s most powerful bunker-buster bombs are not likely to penetrate it, as the site is buried up to 2,000 feet below granite. On Wednesday, the State Department ordered the departure of nonemergency U. S. government employees and their family members from Saudi Arabia as the Iran-backed Houthis continue to attack the Kingdom. U. S. intelligence found that Iranian plots to target and kill U. S. officials in the Middle East have “substantially increased,” with efforts reaching “advanced stages,” Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton told Secretary of State Marco Rubio. “Specifically, through various channels, we have received intelligence that Iran has substantially increased efforts to target U. S. personnel,” Clayton said in a memo to Rubio, who also serves as Trump’s national security adviser. “The lethal plotting efforts by Iranians against U. S. citizens have reached advanced stages in both the Middle East and certain other countries.” Iranian leaders have signaled privately and publicly that the retaliation in the event of U. S. or Israeli attacks is going to be “bigger,” “more aggressive” and “different” than earlier this year, Brew said. Tehran is threatening to hit U. S. bases, warships, oil pipelines, refineries and U. S. allies in the Gulf, as Iran still has drone and missile capabilities. The potential for renewed hostilities in the region, which was reported earlier by The New York Times, also comes as oil prices reached their highest point since May. The potential for renewed hostilities in the region also comes as oil prices reached their highest point since May. Brent crude oil surpassed $117 a barrel on Friday, while U. S. benchmark West Texas Intermediate traded around $102. “In particular, regional officials and leadership members have been explicitly saying that undersea cables in the Persian Gulf, AI data centers and tech-related infrastructure, all of these will be regarded as targets to be fired on in an event that Iran comes under attack,” Brew noted. Tom Barrack, the U. S. ambassador to Turkey and Trump’s special envoy for Syria and Iraq, indicated there could be military action against Iran over the weekend. “Could there be a strike this weekend? Absolutely. The president has been clear, I’m giving you American policy, the president is very clear: he’s open, and available and accessible to a deal.  And we’ve been at the table for months and months and months,” Barrack said in an interview with Lebanese-Australian entrepreneur and political commentator Mario Nawfal, which was published on Friday. “That was my ambassador…he is a pretty powerful man, I guess,” Trump said when asked about Barrack’s comments on Friday, glancing over to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R). “If that’s the case, I don’t know anything about it.” “We may do another little epic fury. Or they’ll agree. If they’re smart, they’ll just say ‘Let’s get down to business.’ I doubt they’ll do that because perhaps they are not smart,” Trump said during his Friday rally in Fort Myers, Fla. When asked the White House about the Iran strike plans, the office referred The Hill to the president’s gaggle on Friday. Trump said on Wednesday the U. S. is not negotiating with Iran and left the door open for kinetic action to resume. “We are going to have something one way or the other that’ll happen fairly soon. Most people seem to think it’s after the election, and we’re going to see what happens,” the president told reporters. “But I will say this: what we’ve done with Iran is amazing.” Copyright 2026 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.