A White House official stated that diplomacy remains Trump’s clear preference and that Iran would be wise to lock in a deal while the offer stands.By Yair Kleinbaum, JFeedUS President Donald Trump has held a series of conversations in recent days with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine about the possibility of resuming full-scale military strikes on Iran, The Wall Street Journal reported overnight, citing officials familiar with the discussions.The talks, held at the White House and the Pentagon, centered on whether Washington should abandon the diplomatic track and return to large-scale attacks, a step some officials described as an effort to “finish the job” against the Islamic Republic.Trump has not made a final decision, according to the report.For now, he has told aides that another major round of strikes risks derailing negotiations and undermining Washington’s broader goal of dismantling Iran’s nuclear program through a deal.He is reportedly comfortable letting talks run past the August 18 deadline set for a final nuclear agreement.At the same time, Trump remains willing to authorize targeted strikes whenever Iran violates the memorandum of understanding the two countries signed on June 17.Those violations have piled up in recent days: Iranian forces struck commercial vessels in the Strait of Hormuz, including a tanker carrying more than two million tons of crude oil, prompting US retaliatory strikes on Iranian missile and drone storage sites and coastal radar installations.Iran’s Revolutionary Guard hit back with strikes of its own on US-linked targets in Kuwait and Bahrain.After one such exchange over the weekend, Trump wrote on Truth Social that Iran had violated the ceasefire yet again, warning that the US might soon be unable to keep exercising restraint — and that if it were forced to finish militarily what it had started, “the Islamic Republic of Iran will no longer exist.”Publicly, Trump keeps insisting the negotiations are working.Tehran, he told reporters last week, will “agree to everything I want” — or the US will simply resume the fight.A White House official told the Journal that diplomacy remains Trump’s clear preference and that Iran would be wise to lock in a deal while the offer stands.That diplomacy is fraying at the edges, though. Trump’s envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, arrived in Doha this week for a fresh round of talks, but Qatari officials say the sessions are running through mediators rather than face-to-face after Iran declined a direct meeting.The two sides remain far apart on substance: Iran is demanding billions of dollars in transit fees from ships crossing the Strait of Hormuz, which Washington insists must stay open at no cost, as it was before the war.Tehran is also resisting the sweeping curbs on its nuclear program that Trump maintains it already agreed to accept.US Energy Secretary Chris Wright said this week that Iran has yet to cooperate in any meaningful way, crediting American naval escorts—not Iranian goodwill—for the recent recovery in global oil supply.Washington, he said, will keep energy flowing through the strait regardless of Tehran’s cooperation, while continuing to push for an end to Iran’s nuclear program altogether.In parallel, the US has been building a crisis communication channel between Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and US Central Command aimed at preventing a misstep from spiraling into open war; a White House official said the channel is active and already in use by both sides, though others caution it remains in its early stages.The current deliberations follow Operation Epic Fury, the joint US-Israeli campaign launched on February 28, in which American forces alone struck more than 13,000 targets across Iran, according to figures later relayed to Trump by military leaders, severely degrading Tehran’s missile and drone arsenal along with its capacity to rebuild it.By early April, those same military leaders told Trump they would need several more weeks to finish the job militarily; instead, Trump accepted an initial ceasefire on April 7.He has since repeatedly held off on ordering a full resumption of the campaign, twice threatening dramatic escalation, including a threat to seize Iran’s main oil-export hub on Kharg Island, only to pull back both times in favor of renewed talks.He has told aides in the past that he would restart the war outright only if Iran killed American soldiers.Bombing Iran further would only get people killed, Trump said recently, adding that a negotiated deal would ultimately prove “stronger than bombs.”The post Trump weighs resuming full-scale war with Iran appeared first on World Israel News.