President Donald Trump held an emergency meeting on Tuesday to discuss a massive offensive against Iran in a bid to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, three sources with knowledge of the matter told Axious.
It comes after the US leader threatened Iran with airstrikes against their bridges and suggested “other people” will launch a ground campaign for him.
As fighting in the region intensifies, the US president said he will hit Iran “very hard” in the coming days.
“Next week comes the bridges. We’re going to knock out all their power plants. We’ll knock out all their bridges unless they get to the table and negotiate”, Trump told Fox News Tuesday evening, Washington time.
“Sometimes you need a ground campaign, but we have other people that will do the ground campaign for us”.
American forces launched more strikes against Iran and reinstated their blockade of Iranian ports in the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday.
But Trump U-turned on his plan to impose a 20 per cent fee on maritime traffic to guard the oil waterway.
The president wrote on Truth Social that trade and investment deals with the Gulf states would replace the fee for ships to pass through the channel.
