American defense officials are drawing up contingency plans that could include strikes on senior Iranian military figures, among them the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, if the current ceasefire falls apart, the Daily Mail reported.
The planning goes well beyond a single name. Officials are said to be developing "dynamic targeting" strategies aimed at Iran's fast attack boats, minelaying vessels, and other asymmetric maritime assets operating across the Strait of Hormuz, the southern Arabian Gulf, and the Gulf of Oman. Potential strikes on infrastructure and energy facilities are also on the table, along with targeting top figures and what sources described as "obstructionists" within the regime.
IRGC commander Ahmad Vahidi, who also sits on Iran's Supreme National Security Council, "has been referenced as part of those considerations," one source told the Daily Mail. If these plans move from contingency to execution, they would represent a significant escalation in the already intense pressure campaign President Trump has leveled at Tehran.
The reported military planning sits atop a blockade that has already reshaped the strategic picture in the Persian Gulf. The U.S. on April 13 began enforcing a blockade of Iranian ports, and the results have been swift. The Strait of Hormuz, which accounts for a fifth of the world's oil and gas exports, was effectively shut to international shipping after an initial wave of U.S.-Israeli strikes.
As of Thursday, the U.S. had redirected at least 33 ships. The Pentagon announced that American forces intercepted at least three vessels, including two in the Indian Ocean roughly 2,000 miles from the Persian Gulf. The most recent action saw a "sanctioned stateless vessel" transporting Iranian oil boarded overnight on Wednesday.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt laid out the economic toll in blunt terms on Wednesday:
"We are completely strangling their economy through this blockade. They are losing $500 million a day."
Leavitt went further, describing the chokehold on Iran's oil export infrastructure. She said Kharg Island, Iran's primary oil terminal, "is completely full, they can't move oil in or out, they can't even pay their own people as a result of the economic leverage that President Trump has inflicted on them." She added that Iran has been "significantly weakened and obliterated militarily" while "losing economically and financially every single moment that passes with this blockade."
That kind of sustained financial pressure is exactly the leverage that Trump's broader energy strategy was designed to create, ensuring American energy dominance while squeezing adversaries who depend on petroleum exports to fund their military ambitions.
President Trump has repeatedly argued that Iran's internal command structure is fractured to the point of dysfunction. Joint U.S.-Israeli operations killed several senior figures, including the country's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. His successor, Mojtaba Khamenei, reportedly remains out of the public eye and in hiding due to injuries sustained in U.S.-Israeli airstrikes.
That vacuum has left Iran's Supreme National Security Council, a high-level group that has effectively assumed control of the country's affairs, as the de facto governing body. The council's membership reads like a roster of competing factions. President Masoud Pezeshkian formally heads it. Parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf has emerged as the chief negotiator with Washington. Saeed Jalili represents the supreme leader's hardline wing. And Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr serves as the council's new secretary.
Trump seized on the chaos in a Truth Social post Thursday:
"Iran is having a very hard time figuring out who their leader is! They just don't know!"
He also wrote that "the infighting is between the 'Hardliners,' who have been losing BADLY on the battlefield, and the 'Moderates,' who are not very moderate at all (but gaining respect!)."
Speaking on MS Now, Trump put it even more directly. "They're all messed up. They have no idea who their leader is," he said. "You know, we took out, really, three levels of leaders. And everybody that was even close behind him." He added: "So they have a hard time figuring out who the h*** can speak for the country. They just don't know."
That assessment, a regime that cannot even identify its own chain of command, is not just political rhetoric. It shapes the military calculus. A source familiar with the proposals framed the dilemma facing American planners this way:
"Unless you can unequivocally prove that 100 per cent of Iran's military capability is destroyed or near certainty that the US can mitigate the risk with our capability, it will come down to how badly is [Trump] willing to accept the risk and start pushing ships through the strait."
President Trump extended the initial two-week ceasefire, but the clock is still ticking. Iran has not reopened the Strait of Hormuz, and the reported frustration within the administration over that refusal is what appears to be driving the contingency planning toward more aggressive options.
The range of scenarios under consideration reflects the complexity of the threat. Iran's capabilities in the Strait are not limited to conventional naval forces. Fast attack boats, mine-laying vessels, and other irregular maritime assets give Tehran the ability to disrupt global shipping routes and apply pressure on international energy supplies, even in a weakened state.
That is precisely why the planning reportedly includes not just strikes on military assets but also on the leadership figures who direct them. If the ceasefire collapses, the administration appears prepared to move beyond containment and toward dismantling Iran's capacity to threaten the strait at all. Trump's earlier order for the Navy to open fire on boats laying mines in the Strait of Hormuz already signaled a willingness to use lethal force to keep the waterway open.
The question now is whether Tehran's fractured leadership can produce a negotiating partner capable of striking a deal before the military option moves from planning to execution. With Qalibaf acting as chief negotiator but hardliners like Jalili pulling in the opposite direction, the internal dysfunction Trump keeps highlighting is not just a talking point. It is a material obstacle to any diplomatic resolution.
The administration's approach combines economic strangulation, military posture, and public messaging in a way that leaves Tehran with narrowing options. The $500 million daily loss Leavitt described, if accurate, represents a pace of economic damage that few regimes can absorb indefinitely, especially one already struggling to pay its own people.
Meanwhile, the political environment in Washington has its own pressures. Trump has faced resistance from within his own party on various fronts, as his willingness to defy GOP expectations on certain issues has shown. But on Iran, the president's posture has been consistent: maximum pressure, no concessions without verifiable results.
Democrats, for their part, have offered little in the way of a constructive alternative. Their leadership has been more focused on personal attacks against the president than on articulating a coherent Iran policy of their own. When the stakes involve global energy markets, American naval forces in contested waters, and a hostile regime racing to reconstitute its command structure, partisan sniping is not a strategy.
Several important questions remain unanswered. What specific legal or military authority underpins the blockade and the ship interceptions? What infrastructure and energy facilities are on the target list? And what is the precise expiration date of the extended ceasefire? The administration has kept those details close, which is standard practice for contingency planning, but the scope of what has been reported suggests the planning is well advanced.
For years, the foreign policy establishment told Americans that restraint and negotiation were the only responsible paths with Iran. The result was a regime that grew bolder, funded proxies across the Middle East, and moved steadily toward the capacity to threaten the world's most important energy chokepoint. What the current administration is doing looks different. It looks like leverage, the kind that only works if the other side believes you will use it.
