President Donald Trump has told his aides that he is willing to end the war on Iran even if the Strait of Hormuz remains under Iranian blockade, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Monday.
US officials told the WSJ that the US president and his aides had concluded that a mission to reopen the waterway would extend the conflict beyond his four-to six-week timeline.
It added that he had decided to focus on battering Iran's missiles and navy, before looking to pressure Iran diplomatically to reopen the strait. A further step would be to pressure European and Gulf allies to lead the effort to reopen the strait, the officials added.
Trump also threatened on Monday to destroy Kharg Island, through which most of Iran's crude passes, if a peace deal is not reached.
He warned US forces would destroy "all of their Electric Generating Plants, Oil Wells and Kharg Island (and possibly all desalination plants!)"
Destroying civilian infrastructure would constitute a war crime, experts have warned.
Iran has previously threatened to retaliate by targeting energy infrastructure and desalination plants in its Arab neighbours that host the US military, fanning fears of a wider conflict.
But Trump also said officials were speaking to a "more reasonable regime" in Tehran, which has denied any talks and accused the president of lying about negotiations as cover while preparing a ground invasion.
Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that the war on Iran had achieved more than half its aims, without putting a timeline on when it would end.
"It's definitely beyond the halfway point. But I don't want to put a schedule on it," Netanyahu told the conservative US broadcaster Newsmax .
He added that he meant the war was more than halfway "in terms of missions, not necessarily in terms of time", and that it had killed "thousands" of members of Iran's Revolutionary Guards.
Netanyahu also claimed that Israel and Washington are also "close to finishing their arms industry", he added.
"Just the whole industrial base -- wiping out all, you know, just plants, entire plants, and the nuclear program itself," he said.
Netanyahu and Trump have repeatedly alleged that Iran was close to building a nuclear weapon, a claim not supported by the UN nuclear watchdog and that comes despite Trump saying he "obliterated" key sites in attacks last year.
Netanyahu also voiced confidence that the Iranian regime would fall.
"I think this regime will collapse internally. But at the moment, right now, what we're doing is just degrading their military capacity, degrading their missile capacity, degrading their nuclear capacity and also weakening them from the inside," Netanyahu said.
On Tuesday, an Israeli military spokesman said Tel Aviv is prepared for "weeks" more of fighting in Iran.
Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani told reporters the decision is up to political leaders, but that "we are prepared to keep operating for weeks to come. We have the targets for that, the munitions for that, the manpower for that, and it's up to the leadership to decide". Blackouts hit Iran, missile launches continue Despite weeks of wide-ranging strikes on Iran by the US and Israel , Tehran has continued to target Israel, US military sites in the region, and its Gulf neighbours .
Israel's emergency services said Tuesday that eight people with minor injuries were evacuated to hospitals in the Tel Aviv area, where police reported falling munitions fragments after an alert for incoming Iranian missiles.
The military's Home Front Command said it had received "reports of damage" in the central parts of the country.
Earlier on Tuesday, at least 10 blasts were heard in the Jerusalem area after missile launches from Iran were detected, though no injuries were subsequently reported.
In Iran, explosions rocked Tehran, and power outages affected parts of the capital, according to Iranian media.
The Fars news agency reported "power outages in parts of Tehran after several explosions were heard", while the Tasnim news agency also reported that some residents in eastern and western Tehran were without power and that authorities were working to restore it, before confirming damage to a substation belonging to a power plant.
Tehran also reported on Tuesday that US and Israeli strikes had hit a pharmaceutical company producing cancer drugs, as well as a mosque and religious site in northwest Iran.