Trump floats limited strike on Iran as nuclear draft deal lingers

President Donald Trump says he is considering a “limited” military strike on Iran even as a draft nuclear deal is still being negotiated, with diplomacy conducted with a carrier group in the background and Congress treated as optional paperwork.

According to CBS News, Trump told reporters he is weighing a limited strike, framing it as an option if talks fail. Euronews similarly reports that the White House is keeping a draft nuclear agreement “in the works” while the president publicly floats military action. Iran, for its part, is unimpressed: Al Jazeera reports Tehran called the US military build-up “unnecessary and unhelpful” and insisted a deal remains achievable.

Presidents threaten force; the threat is used as a bargaining chip while the costs are immediately pushed onto everyone else. The moment Washington signals escalation, markets begin pricing in the possibility that the Strait of Hormuz becomes a policy lever. Oil risk premia widen, shipping rates and war-risk insurance rise, and firms reroute or hedge—private actors paying for state “signaling” they did not vote for. This is the hidden tax of executive brinkmanship: the bill is socialized through higher energy and transport costs long before any missile is launched.

“Limited” is also doing a lot of work. A strike can be limited in intent and unlimited in consequences—especially when Iran’s deterrence strategy relies on asymmetric retaliation, proxy networks, and maritime disruption rather than matching US firepower platform-for-platform. Even absent a full-scale war, a tit-for-tat cycle can produce a de facto blockade effect through harassment, seizures, or missile/drone incidents that spike insurance and choke throughput.

Domestically, the constitutional problem is equally predictable: the executive branch experiments with escalation while legislators issue statements. The War Powers Resolution has been treated for decades as more of a suggestion than a constraint, and the legal theory tends to be whatever the White House needs that week.

Trump’s posture also underlines how “negotiations” can become a theater where the coercive apparatus is the main prop. If a draft deal exists, the rational move would be to argue it on its terms—verification, enrichment limits, sanctions relief—rather than to wave a strike option that markets, allies, and civilians will price as real. But the executive incentives favor drama: credibility is measured in deployments, not in clauses.

The US government’s preferred negotiating instrument remains the same: the ability to make everyone else’s risk profile worse, quickly, and then call it diplomacy.