Scoop: U.S. sending dozens more refueling planes to Israel ahead of possible escalation

The Trump administration notified Israel it is sending dozens more refueling planes to the country ahead of a potential expansion of military operations against Iran, three U.S. and Israeli officials said.

Why it matters: After he was presented with several new military plans in a Situation Room meeting Tuesday, President Trump is considering a massive offensive in Iran that would be wider in scope than the current strikes around the Strait of Hormuz.

The big picture: Among the options being considered are bombing Iranian infrastructure facilities like power plants, conducting more attacks on Iran's nuclear facilities in order to bury Iran's enriched uranium even deeper, and bombing the Pickaxe Mountain underground site that is suspected to be a facility in the making.

Trump hasn't made a final decision yet, but he appears willing to escalate the war to cause enough damage that the Iranian regime will open the Strait of Hormuz and accept Trump's nuclear demands.

Trump could order an escalation in the coming days, U.S. and Israeli officials say.

Driving the news: On Thursday, the U.S. military conducted strikes against Iranian targets in the Strait of Hormuz and the southern coast of Iran for the fifth day in a row.

The U.S. military bombed at least seven bridges around the city of Bandar Abbas, which is considered a hub for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) operations in the Strait of Hormuz, a U.S. official said.

Ammunition, supplies and reinforcements go through Bandar Abbas to other parts of the strait, the official said.

Iran also escalated attacks targeting U.S. bases in Jordan, Qatar, Bahrain, Iraq and Kuwait. The IRGC also claimed it attacked an American base in Syria, although U.S. troops withdrew from the base several months ago.

State of play: The U.S. currently has about 30 military refueling planes at Ben Gurion International Airport near Tel Aviv and around the same number in Ramon Airport in southern Israel.

Israeli officials say the U.S. wants to send several dozen more refueling planes in the coming days, bringing the number of planes to the same level it had at the beginning of the war.

Israeli officials say the U.S. military prefers operating the refueling planes from Ben Gurion Airport, because other air bases in the region are more exposed to Iranian attacks and less safe for U.S. planes.

At the moment, the Iranians are still deterred from launching attacks on Israel, because it will likely trigger a massive retaliation.

"I can tell you only one thing, and I will say this to the leaders of Iran: Do not count on it being quiet if you attack us," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a Tuesday speech. "Do not count on a rerun. Because it will not be a rerun, and that was already powerful enough. This will be a different event, much more powerful."

Between the lines: The presence of the U.S. military refueling planes has become a political hot potato in Israel.

The dozens of refueling planes parked at Ben Gurion for months clogged the airport almost completely.

It wasn't a problem at the height of the war when Israel's airspace was mostly closed and many airlines stopped operating flights to Tel Aviv.

But with the airspace now open and Israelis going on summer vacations, additional U.S. refueling planes operating from the airport could lead to mass flight cancellations.

Three months before an election, this could be highly damaging for Netanyahu's coalition.

Israel's minister of transportation, Miri Regev, a close Netanyahu ally, pressed for moving the U.S. refueling planes out of Ben Gurion International Airport or at least limiting their number. The Defense Ministry and IDF pushed back against it.

What to watch: The Trump administration has asked the Israeli government to accommodate the additional refueling planes. Netanyahu will have the final say on the issue. ...