Trump held Situation Room meeting on massive new Iran strikes

Context

President Trump held a Situation Room meeting Tuesday to discuss a massive offensive in Iran that will be wider in scope than the current strikes around the Strait of Hormuz, three sources with knowledge said. Why it matters: Trump appears willing to escalate the war to cause enough damage that the Iranian regime will open the Strait of Hormuz and accept Trump's nuclear demands. Driving the news: Trump convened the meeting as the U.S. military conducted strikes in the Strait of Hormuz area and along the southern coast of Iran for the fourth day in a row. Most of the targets were air defense and radar systems, anti-ship missile positions and drone launch sites. U.S. officials said the aim of the strikes was to significantly degrade Iran's ability to conduct attacks against ships in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran retaliated by continuing to launch missiles and drones at U.S. bases in Jordan, Kuwait and Bahrain. On Tuesday afternoon, the U.S. naval blockade on Iranian ports went into effect. The commander of the U.S. military's Central Command, Adm. Brad Cooper, said in a statement that over the last week Iran "has intentionally targeted civilians across the region by attacking seven commercial ships resulting in nearly a dozen civilian crew members killed, missing, or injured." Despite the attacks, the U.S. military managed to coordinate the transit of 300 ships through the strait over the past week, U.S. officials said. Inside the room: Trump was joined in the Situation Room by his top national security team, including Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Dan Caine, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, White House envoy Steve Witkoff and other senior officials, the sources said. The sources said the meeting focused on new plans for devastating strikes on strategic targets in Iran, in addition to the strikes against Iranian targets in the Strait of Hormuz. The White House declined to comment. What he's saying: In an interview with Fox News before the Situation Room meeting, Trump said the strikes would expand in the coming days. The U.S. military is going to hit Iran "hard" over the next three days, he said, before stressing that strikes could significantly escalate after that. "Next week, it gets really bad for them because next week comes the power plants," Trump said. "Next week comes the bridges. We're gonna knock out all their power plants. We're gonna knock out all their bridges unless they get to the table and negotiate." What to watch: Trump said the U.S. is monitoring suspicious activity by Iran at Pickaxe Mountain, a deep underground site that the U.S. and Israel think Iran wants to use for its nuclear program and that will be immune from airstrikes. Trump said the U.S. bunker busters "can go deep" and claimed "nobody knows" if Pickaxe Mountain is impervious to such an attack. "By the way, nobody knows if they even are doing anything in Pickaxe. It's just something that comes up. We have cameras on it. There's very little activity there. But, uh, if there's even just a small amount, we'll hit it and we'll hit it hard," he said. State of play: Trump said his negotiators spoke with Iranian officials on Tuesday and delivered the message that Iran needs to come to the table. "I said, 'You better make a deal, [or] you're not gonna have anything left,'" Trump said.

What it means

Trump's explicit threat to strike Iranian power plants, bridges, and potentially a nuclear site represents a genuine escalation beyond the ongoing Hormuz campaign — a qualitatively new signal. Historically, surprise announcements of major strategic strikes on a country controlling a key oil chokepoint have been associated with sharp crude spikes and safe-haven gold bids, alongside gains in defense names. The naval blockade now in effect adds a concrete supply-disruption channel that was not fully in prior signals. (Lower-conviction channels were filtered out by our selectivity bar.)

Causal chain

• Exp. moveTimeframeConviction
• ↑Brent crude (BZ)$49.66L1d

  Trump signals imminent massive escalation — power plants, bridges, and potential nuclear-site strikes — going well beyond the ongoing Hormuz campaign; this is a genuine qualitative leap in scope and target set, not a continuation

  • no significant moveabnormal +0.8%·1 trading day

Not investment advice · for informational purposes only. Generated 15 Jul, 02:50 UTC