American military analysts are getting a completely unique treat this week, and it's the best indicator of anything that could be of the Iran war. A top intelligence official at U.S. Central Command issued an open invitation for suggestions, basically seeking to hear from anyone in uniform, regardless of rank, who had an idea to "get Tehran's attention. Officials who have seen the message say it was a call for something that’s out of the box, as the traditional approaches have clearly failed. The sort of admission that isn't heard loudly in the Pentagon, and which tells a lot about the four months of bombing on the White House.

Capt. Hawkins, a spokesman for CENTCOM, framed the request as business as usual, making the point that CENTCOM has always been able to receive input from anybody regardless of rank. That is a fairly correct frame and is really irrelevant. Several people mentioned it as an unusual “crowdsoured brainstorm,” something commanders would turn to when they've used the "usual toolkit. The ongoing bombing campaign is also not expected to alter Iran's thinking at the negotiating table, per a report in the WSJ, and as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Dan Caine, told lawmakers last month: Air power has real limits.

The timing matters. It came before President Trump's latest warning that he would unleash a new round of strikes, a threat that was then dropped over the weekend by the Gulf leaders, with the Saudi crown prince leading the way, who personally called Trump down. This is a pattern in this war. Trump threatens to escalate and threatens to back out, but tells regional partners a deal is still nearing closure. The cycle is beginning to feel like a familiar routine for reporters at the White House, as several times have passed since it began without a real settlement.

The fact that the menu Trump is forced to choose from is incredibly difficult is not mentioned in these briefings. One CENTCOM option being considered is a prolonged bombardment 10 days to 2 weeks of Iran's missile arsenal, but Caine has raised concerns regarding the limited supply of air defense interceptors in Iran and the potential for a high number of civilian casualties from strikes on infrastructure, such as bridges and desalination plants. Anything short of a ground invasion will leave American troops unable to access the deep-buried nuclear sites, and any American troops on Iranian soil seeking to take control of territory or enriched uranium would be directly violating Trump's commitment to “Not another long and costly foreign war.” Washington hasn't been eating too much of that lately, as 18 American troops have already been killed in this confrontation.

That's because of the economic background. The Strait of Hormuz carries about 20% of the world's seaborne oil trade, and the conflict has already led to what the International Energy Agency has termed the "biggest supply disruption in the history of the world oil market. The number of vessel transits through the strait, which averaged more than 100 a day, dropped to thirty all this weekend after the latest ceasefire failure. Earlier in the year there was a lot of spare oil available, but now with global inventory stocks critically low, a further shutdown could see prices climb back into the triple digits with much less margin for error, analysts at Energy Aspects warn. Some Wall Street desks have floated up the once-considered unthinkable prospect of $200 oil if the strait remains closed for much longer and that would ripple through inflation numbers, central bank policy on both sides of the Atlantic, and not incidentally the American midterm election calendar.

But the pressure of sanctions is as elusive as the military offensive. A recent investigation uncovered at least $4 billion that passed through an unlicensed crypto exchange in Dubai that is linked to a network of over 2,000 websites and an online gambling network in Farsi. The exchange was seen by blockchain researchers to directly engage with Iran's central bank and wallets connected to Israeli intelligence by Revolutionary Guard officials, with money moving through the most popular exchanges like the world's biggest crypto exchange. It's a reminder that financial isolation, like precision bombing, has its limits, as soon as Tehran starts to find the ways around it and it eliminates any notion in Washington that squeezing Tehran's finances will bring her to the negotiating table.

Iran, on the other hand, isn't showing flexibility. Iranian officials have also tossed off rumors of any backroom deal to divide control over the strait, as Tehran's foreign ministry has publicly denied this week that there were any plans to reopen it.Meanwhile, Tehran's foreign ministry has come out and said there was no talk of reopening Hormuz this week, despite Trump stating that talks would start “very soon.” Such a disparity between the White House's rhetoric and Tehran's reality is now its own subplot and leaves CENTCOM analysts looking for a way to get leverage in a war that has not been won through a bomb and where sanctions are being sidestepped by those who are supposed to be playing them. The call for creative ideas is not an expression of confidence, but recognition that the tried-and-tested approach has run out of pages and whatever is next will have to be improvised, not plucked off any doctrine on the shelf.