Live updates: Iran war news; US launches new strikes after American troops were killed in Jordan

In the week since the US renewed daily strikes on Iran and reimposed a naval blockade of Iranian ports, the Trump administration has offered little clarity on how long the latest military campaign may last and its objective after a fragile truce was ruptured.

Behind the scenes, President Donald Trump has been presented options for expanding the operation further as the military seeks ways to intensify efforts to loosen Iran’s grip on the Strait of Hormuz. But Iran has shown no willingness to cede control of the critical waterway.

In public comments, Trump has signaled he intends to escalate the strikes, including threats on civilian infrastructure and potentially energy targets as he has downplayed the length of the hostilities. “We were in Vietnam for 19 years. We’re here for four months, so I think we’ve done a lot,” the president told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins this week.

Trump on Tuesday told Fox News the strikes would “continue until I say it’s enough,” and in a primetime speech on Thursday in which Trump barely mentioned Iran, the president said, “you will see the fruits of that labor very, very shortly.”

Meanwhile, Vice President JD Vance — the administration’s lead negotiator with Iran — has suggested that military force alone won’t be enough to fully dismantle Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz.

“You can bomb them, you can take away their radar, you can take away some of their drones and some of their missiles, but it’s just too easy to fire at ships in the straits,” he said in a podcast interview on Tuesday. “So, you’ve got to actually be willing to talk and to try to figure out the problem.”

Ryan Crocker, a former US ambassador to several Middle East countries, echoed the vice president’s sentiment, telling CNN’s Elex Michaelson today that bombing Iran “into submission” will not work.