Foreign affairs and defense specialists interviewed by The Hill expressed skepticism about rumors that President Donald Trump and his administration are considering a “massive” renewed military assault on Iran, saying an expanded campaign would likely fall short of forcing Tehran to back down.

In a report published Saturday morning, The Hill cited several experts who questioned the effectiveness of “an intensified air strike campaign” against Iran. The report said such a campaign could include targets that Trump has repeatedly threatened to strike, including “bridges, water facilities and electricity plants.” The experts said even a broader air campaign would be unlikely to secure major concessions from Iran in the ongoing peace talks, underscoring the gap between short-term military pressure and the longer-term diplomatic commitments needed to resolve disputes over Iran’s nuclear program and regional conduct.

“I don’t think it will change Iran’s calculation in any way, because from Iran’s perspective, this is when they said it publicly, that this is a war of survival for them. So bombing from the air is not going to change Iran’s calculation, even if the U.S. intensifies it,” Sina Azodi, director of the Middle East Studies Program at George Washington University, told the outlet. “The only thing that will happen is that, first of all, the entire region is going to suffer more. The Iranians have made it very clear. I think it destroys any chance of diplomacy.”

Azodi added that a ceasefire alone would not be sufficient. “You can’t just do a ceasefire. You need a comprehensive agreement that it’s language is no longer open to interpretation. And quite frankly, U.S. has to, when it makes a commitment, it needs to abide by it.”

Another source, identified by The Hill as an anonymous “former senior U.S. defense official,” also said airstrikes were unlikely to produce meaningful progress. The former official argued that progress would be impossible “without collectively enforcing the naval blockade, securing to some degree the traffic going through the Strait of Hormuz and absorbing some of the international economic cost as a long-term strategy.” The Strait of Hormuz is a critical maritime chokepoint for global energy shipments, which is why disruptions there are often treated as a regional security issue with wider economic implications.

“But you’re not going to bomb yourself into a ceasefire,” the former official said. “I think you’ve got to be able to put the economic instrument of power just as make it just as significant as what you’re doing [militarily].”

Michael “Mick” Mulroy, a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East, similarly questioned whether heavy airstrikes would be effective. He also said the remaining choices available to the United States at this stage “aren’t good,” pointing to the tradeoffs between sanctions relief, military replenishment and any future nuclear accord.

“If we allow them to sell their oil, if we unfreeze assets, they’re going to use it to rebuild those capacities potentially faster than we really rebuild the precision munitions and interceptors that we use during a conflict, and we have to get into a new nuclear agreement,” Mulroy explained. “If we don’t, then this, at least from the nuclear side, would be a perpetual conflict, because the other way of preventing them from ever getting a nuclear weapon is to periodically target the facilities that are making the potential nuclear weapon. So the options are not good.”