US’s Own Intelligence Finds Further Strikes on Iran Are Futile, Report Says

U.S. intelligence agencies have assessed that further strikes on Iran aren’t likely to achieve any progress with regard to the U.S.’s war aims, a new report finds as the Trump administration approaches Congress to ask for $87 billion more to fund the war.

The Washington Post reported on Monday that intelligence analysts have “concluded that Tehran and Washington are, for now, stuck in an indefinite limbo between peace and war” that would not be resolved with further strikes. The report, largely prepared by the CIA, finds that there is little reason to believe that Iranian officials will be impacted, nor will further strikes change their positions at the negotiation table regarding provisions on sanctions or the Strait of Hormuz.

The findings come, nonetheless, on the U.S.’s 10th straight day of bombing Iran after President Donald Trump unilaterally declared the ceasefire. Dozens of people in Iran have been killed as a result of the strikes, including children, while three U.S. soldiers were killed by Iranian strikes this past weekend. The U.S. has targeted hundreds of sites across Iran, including civilian infrastructure like bridges, railways, and power facilities.

The U.S. is showing no signs of slowing, even as the war has already begun to escalate into an all-out closure of the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, at the opening of the Red Sea, by the Houthis.

On Tuesday, during a meeting with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, Trump once again threatened to strike Iran’s “Pickaxe Mountain,” a nuclear energy facility south of Tehran.

“We’ll be hitting that area pretty soon, and very heavily,” said Trump.

Trump also claimed, once again, that Iranian officials “want to meet desperately to try to end” the war, but then said that the U.S. won’t stop its attacks until Iranian officials are “ready to meet in a meaningful way.”

Secretary of State Pete Hegseth is also slated to testify before senators on Tuesday to push for the Trump administration’s request for an additional $87 billion to continue the war on Iran. The Trump administration has reportedly internally estimated that the war has already cost the U.S. between $80 billion and $100 billion.

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Iranian officials have indeed expressed interest in negotiations in recent days. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has said that Iranian officials are eager to negotiate because they believe they have the upper hand.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, however, said in remarks to the press on Sunday that the U.S. is only open to negotiations if Iran stops attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz.

“As long as Iran insists on controlling an international waterway, we’re going to have to respond to that,” Rubio said. “They continue to send signals that they want to talk, that they want to negotiate, but their behavior is what we’re responding to. And their behavior is, they’re launching missiles and drones at ships.”

However, the U.S.’s insistence over the control of the strait is one of the major sticking points in the ceasefire negotiations, alongside provisions for sanctions relief for Iran. Rubio threw cold water on the sanctions relief proposals, too, on Sunday.

“One of the reasons why Iran is in shambles is because every penny that this regime there gets, be it in sanctions relief or through the oil they’re able to get out, they invest it in Hezbollah, they invest it in Hamas,” said Rubio, ignoring the U.S.’s position as the single largest spender on the military in the world. “They should be spending billions of dollars supporting the people of Iran,” he said.

Meanwhile, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has pushed the U.S.’s strategic crude oil preserve to its lowest point since 1983, and gas prices have once again risen above $4 a gallon on average across the country.

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