As President Donald Trump huddles with his top advisers at Camp David on Friday, his to-do list from the last Cabinet meeting in May has hit hard realities.
The war with Iran that Trump said would end in “weeks” is expanding with no endgame in sight. There has been little progress in stopping Iran from threatening ships and slowing traffic in the Strait of Hormuz.
U.S. economic growth has slowed. Inflation is still stuck above the Federal Reserve’s target rate of 2% and prices remain high.
That leaves Trump and his team facing a daunting challenge: figure out how to resolve the conflict it started with Israel before the ripple effects wreak more havoc in the Gulf region and on the U.S. economy, all while the president’s approval rating hits a record low 32%, according to the latest Quinnipiac poll.
No answers came out of two days of meetings between Trump’s top officials and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who left Washington this week with no clear shared path forward on Iran, according to a senior Israeli official granted anonymity to describe the closed-door talks.
Now Trump must decide whether to continue pursuing diplomacy, put increased economic pressure on the regime or take major military action to force Iran to make concessions.
In the meantime, the Iran conflict keeps widening.
On Tuesday, the U.S. intercepted a new round of Iranian ballistic-missile attacks in Jordan, ending a short-lived respite in fighting.
On Wednesday, a once-reluctant Saudi Arabia directly entered the war by conducting airstrikes against Iran-backed militias in Iraq that it accused of attacking its oil facilities. Saudi Arabia’s defense minister also met privately with Trump.
The next day, the Saudi Ministry of Defense announced it would lead a multinational defense coalition to protect shipping routes in the Red Sea and other waterways amid repeated attacks by Iran-backed Houthi militants in Yemen, putting additional pressure on sea trade as Iran continues to menace the Strait of Hormuz.
The ballooning conflict comes against a backdrop of covert actions by a widening circle of adversarial global powers.
This week, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine had intelligence showing Russia has been providing Iran satellite surveillance of American military facilities in the Gulf region. The foreign ministers of Ukraine and Iran talked after Ukraine struck a vessel it said was transporting military assets between Iran and Russia.
And Reuters reported China would be sending Iran hundreds of shoulder-fired missiles within weeks.
Looking for a way out
Trump’s last Cabinet meeting, which was originally scheduled to occur at Camp David, was more than two months ago. And since then, he still has not found an exit ramp to the Iran war or been able to convince Iran to fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
“The strait’s going to be open to everybody,” Trump declared at the May 27 meeting. “We’ll watch over it, but nobody’s going to control it. That’s part of the negotiation that we have.”
Weeks later, Trump proposed the U.S. charging a 20% fee in exchange for protection and safe passage. But Iran continues to claim control of the waterway and attack ships there.
At the same meeting, Trump promised fuel prices would come “down to a very low number.”
“I think we’ll be hitting that number shortly after that whole excursion ends,” he said. The national average gas price is $4.10, up nearly a dollar from this time last year, according to the latest data from AAA.
Although polls consistently show the majority of Americans are concerned about the cost of living, the White House would not say whether the economy would be the president’s main focus during Friday’s meeting.
“The President works closely with all members of his cabinet to deliver on a variety of important policy initiatives that the American people elected him to enact,” a White House official told MS NOW in a statement.
Negotiations have stalled
Despite the signing of a memorandum of understanding in June to kick-start talks for a long-term nuclear deal with Iran, diplomatic negotiations to end the U.S. military excursion have remained at a standstill.
“We prefer the negotiated diplomatic route, and we’re going to give it every chance to succeed,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said at the last Cabinet meeting, adding Trump has “other options available” if diplomacy does not work.
Trump followed up by saying if Iran did not give the U.S. what it demanded, “the man on my left is going to finish them off,” gesturing to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
Not only has the U.S. failed to do so, but the conflict has escalated across the region in recent weeks, resulting in American casualties. The Pentagon has been accused of obfuscating those losses after it quietly removed four fallen service members and hundreds of injuries from the casualty count for Operation Epic Fury — the Pentagon’s name for the attacks it launched against Iran on Feb. 28 — instead classifying them as part of “Overseas Operations.”
“Since Operation Epic Fury has concluded, the Department classifies casualties as overseas operations in the CENTCOM area of responsibility,” a Pentagon official said in a statement to MS NOW, despite Hegseth and Trump noting the fallen soldiers’ sacrifice was in service of stopping Iran from pursuing a nuclear weapon.
But any military escalation runs the risk of even more casualties. Given that the Pentagon has declared Operation Epic Fury ended, it is unclear in which mission those casualties will have been fighting.
Albert Wolf, a global fellow at Habib University in Pakistan, said the war is “ripe for widening given Iran’s hardline stance over maintaining possession of the Strait of Hormuz and the increasing willingness of Gulf states to openly retaliate against Tehran.”
Countries in the region, including Saudi Arabia, “have had enough of the strikes,” Wolf said, pointing to the recent joint combat operation by Saudi Arabia and the U.S. against Iranian proxies in Iraq.
Meanwhile, Iran’s decision to strike Egyptian targets for the first time, specifically two vessels at the port of Damietta, “is a strong signal from Iran that shipping from the Suez Canal and throughout the Red Sea is under threat,” Wolf said.
“Bottom line: Trump and his team do not appear to have a goal or strategy in mind with Iran right now,” Wolf said.
Lindsey Pipia contributed to this report.
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