Trump weighs restarting war with Iran, but sticking with peace talks for now: report
President Trump has discussed resuming full-scale war with Iran, but is opting to stay the course with diplomacy for now.

President Donald Trump may have built the Supreme Court’s supermajority, but it was the Reagan Revolution that prevailed during the just-completed term.
President Trump has discussed resuming full-scale war with Iran, but is opting to stay the course with diplomacy for now.
The recent SCOTUS case greatly increased the power of the executive branch
The Supreme Court ended its most recent term on Tuesday with an announcement that it has “agreed to hear a case that asks them to determine whether bans on AR-15s and other semiautomatic rifles are constitutional,” wrote former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance, who then warned that the end of controversial rulings has not come to an end.As she noted on her Substack platform, the Supreme Court is never really dormant and less so recently, using the so-called "shadow docket" to excess in the service of Donald Trump. With that in mind, she raised a red flag over a case involving the availability of assault-style weapons, which could lead to another controversial ruling.The significance is unmistakable, Vance wrote, explaining, "The Court doesn’t take cases like this just to pat a state on the head and sign off on its ban—it has bigger fish to fry than affirming the status quo."According to Vance, the case marks a dramatic reversal from just last year. In June 2025, the court declined to hear Snope v. Brown, a direct challenge to Maryland's semiautomatic rifle ban. But that decision masked a deeply fractured court teetering on the edge of upheaval.At the time, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote an eight-page dissent from the denial, explaining: “This petition presents the question whether this ban is consistent with the Second Amendment. The Fourth Circuit held that it is, reasoning that AR–15s are not 'arms' protected by the Second Amendment … I would grant certiorari to review this surprising conclusion.”"That’s not the kind of language you use if you intend to affirm the ban," Vance suggested before noting that now the case will be taken up after getting the needed fourth vote to grant cert, pointing out that Justice Brett Kavanaugh once wrote, "a denial of certiorari does not mean that the Court agrees with a lower-court decision or that the issue is not worthy of review," before adding, "...in my view, this Court should and presumably will address the AR–15 issue soon, in the next Term or two.” "We don’t know if the four Justices picked up a fifth vote along the way that convinced Justice [Brett] Kavanaugh this was 'the right time,'” Vance warned.
The annual report also includes $80 million in income from settlements tied to his lawsuits against companies like ABC, CBS, Meta and YouTube.
The clerics wrote that the call for their assassinations that avenging the death of supreme leader Ali Khamenei was of “paramount” importance.
The Court determined that biological sex should not give way to gender identity.
President Donald Trump has held a series of private conversations with top military officials over whether to abandon diplomacy with Iran and resume full-scale military strikes, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter.Some aides have described the option as "finishing the job," but for now, Trump has decided against it, telling advisers that another round of heavy strikes could derail negotiations and jeopardize the broader goal of dismantling Iran's nuclear program entirely, reported the Wall Street Journal."President Trump has weighed a return to all-out war with Iran, holding multiple conversations in recent days with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine on more strikes, but has decided to stick with diplomatic talks for now, according to U.S. officials familiar with the discussion," the report said.The president has also indicated he's willing to let an Aug. 18 deadline for a nuclear agreement pass without treating it as a breaking point, giving talks more time to develop. In the meantime, he appears content relying on narrower, retaliatory strikes whenever Iran breaches the existing memorandum of understanding — a policy already tested over the weekend, when limited fighting strained a ceasefire reached just two weeks earlier.Publicly, Trump maintains an upbeat posture, insisting Iran is "agreeing to everything" the U.S. wants and warning that failure to comply means "we just go back and do what we have to do." Vice President JD Vance struck a similar tone, saying the administration would "work the problem" diplomatically but retains "a lot of optionality" if talks collapse.Envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner arrived in Doha this week for another round of indirect negotiations, communicating through mediators rather than directly with Iranian officials.A central obstacle remains Iran's demand for steep transit fees on ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz — a position the U.S. rejects, insisting the waterway must stay open as it was before the conflict. Iran has also refused to accept the extent of nuclear restrictions Trump claims it already agreed to.Energy Secretary Chris Wright said Tuesday that Iran "has not been cooperative at all yet," crediting continued U.S. naval escorts — not Iranian cooperation — for stabilizing global oil flows. A newly established communication channel between the Revolutionary Guard Corps and U.S. Central Command has offered a modest de-escalation tool, though officials are divided on how much it signals genuine improvement.The stalled talks have pushed Trump to solicit fresh military options from Hegseth and Caine, who have outlined paths back to large-scale airstrikes.Officials note this would be a tacit admission that the earlier campaign, which struck more than 13,000 targets in Iran, failed to force lasting compliance — a scenario Trump has so far chosen to avoid, despite repeated threats to escalate.
President Trump has trumpeted his victories and sought workarounds for his losses.