The disturbing rumours about what really goes on in Situation Room...

President Donald Trump would like the world to think a ceasefire with Iran is still possible. But within the bowels of the Pentagon and the White House, his military commanders are preparing something very different.

Anonymous defence department sources are warning us to expect ‘the final blow’ – a massive air, sea and land assault to open the Strait of Hormuz, save the world economy and crush Tehran’s resistance once for and all.

The plans are shrouded in mystery of course. The scope and the timetable keep shifting. The only certainty is that the action, when it takes place, will be recorded on camera and the explosion-filled footage will be edited into short video compilations to impress the Commander-in-Chief.

War is a deadly business but, for Trump, life inside the campaign headquarters is a non-stop video game.

Officials from US Central Command are not only obliged to ensure that America’s increasingly complex operations in the Middle East run smoothly. According to high-level sources, the top brass must also, on a daily basis, feed their screen-addicted President a satisfying stream of ‘stuff blowing up’.

Ever since Operation Epic Fury began one month ago with the first bombings of Iran, Trump’s workday routine has included regular sit-downs amid the oak panels and big screens of the newly renovated White House Situation Room alongside his close advisers.

There, in every session, the team is reportedly shown ‘strike montages’ which, lasting two or three minutes, feature satellite or aircraft footage of Iranian targets being pulverised into smoke and dust. Not all of them, of course. America’s warplanes and missiles have struck some 10,000 targets in the last four weeks, so there is not time to review every action. The videos are more of a highlights package.

There’s said to be a ‘written component’ to these briefings, but everybody knows that Trump is a visual creature.

The President also likes to talk. Before and after these regular screenings, he discusses the progress of Operation Epic Fury with everyone in the room – figures such as Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan ‘Raizin’ Caine, and others. He demands feedback and advice on how best to proceed. Trump takes calls – often from reporters – in the course of these sessions. At times he puts his phone on loudspeaker to ‘workshop’ talking points with members of the war cabinet.

On Wednesday, amid suggestions that the President has been treating the Situation Room as a private cinema, the White House pushed back, attempting to deny the allegations.

Yet the claims have persisted – and with good reason, I am told even if the top secret presentations are more ‘sombre’ than the administration’s social media channels, which pump out ‘hype-videos’ combining bomb footage, memes, cartoons and pop songs. I understand there’s no musical accompaniment in the Situation Room.

Many in Washington are concerned that Trump and his team have become hooked on ‘destruction porn’ to the detriment of strategic wisdom. That all the ‘bomb-bomb-bang-bang’ footage has been warping Trump’s sense of how the war is playing out.

Some ask if the President has been shown a contrasting style of footage: the alarming evidence of Iranian missiles and drones hitting US bases across the Middle East. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt rejects the claim that the Commander-in-Chief is obsessed with war porn. ‘That’s an absolutely false assertion coming from someone who has not been present in the room,’ she said in a statement.

‘Anyone who has been present for conversations with President Trump knows he actively seeks and solicits the opinions of everyone in the room and expects full-throated honesty from all of his top advisers.’

But she did not deny that video briefings exist, which suggests the claims are almost certainly true.

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There is also a makeshift war room at the President’s Mar-a-Lago mansion in Palm Beach, Florida, where he watched the first night of the strikes on Saturday, February 28. On weekdays, however, Trump conducts operations from Washington, making a special point to complain to anyone who will listen about negative portrayal of his war on national television. Why, he asks, does the ‘fake news’ media not show more of the magnificent carnage he’s just seen for himself?

Trump is not the first President to claim the media is failing to show America’s military success in its full patriotic splendour.

Lyndon Johnson berated Press and TV for negative coverage of the unfolding disaster in Vietnam. President George W Bush accused the media of focusing too much on car bombs in Iraq instead of his administration’s laudable efforts to rebuild the nation he’d just destroyed.

But no previous US administration has turned war into the art form promoted by Team Trump. The White House and Department of War media channels have been pumping out surreal propaganda including, for example, a video which blends real black and white scenes of targeted strikes with clips from a Nintendo Wii sports game.

One of the clips features rousing images of troops in action to the sound of Secretary Hegseth reading out a warrior prayer; another begins with him declaring ‘we negotiate with bombs’ as an ­ominous soundtrack kicks in.

TV comedians have lost no time sending up Hegseth but no satire can outdo the show on offer from The Pentagon.

At times, Trump seems confused as to what is real and what is not. Last week, speaking to a group of Kennedy Center board members, he explained he had phoned a senior military commander after watching a fake video of the USS Abraham Lincoln, the flagship aircraft carrier, in flames. ‘I called the general. I said, “General, what’s with the Abraham Lincoln, it looks like it’s burning down?’” The general apparently replied: ‘No bullet was ever fired at it, sir. They know ­better [than to do that].’

Trump particularly enjoys regaling audiences with presidential war stories. On January 2, 2020, he was watching as top Iranian general, Qasem Soleimani, was assassinated. Ever since, Trump has regaled guests at fundraising events with an account of the hit, saying: ‘He was saying bad things about our country... that was the last I heard from him.’

Having campaigned as the anti-war candidate, Trump has attacked Yemen, Somalia, Nigeria, Venezuela in his second term. Now he is now waging his biggest military campaign so far and appears to be enjoying it.

After the audacious raid on Caracas on January, when US forces seized Nicolas Maduro, Trump told anyone who’d listen that seeing the mission unfold was ‘literally like watching a TV show. If you would have seen the speed, the violence – we watched every aspect of it.’

He marvelled, again and again, at the brilliance of the soldiers taking down Venezuela’s dictator: ‘They had to go through steel doors… like it was like papier-mache… these guys blasted through every door… he got bum-rushed so fast.’

He has also taken to making ‘bing bing’ noises in Press conferences as he describes the action.

Even among Republicans, there is deep disquiet. Yesterday it was reported that senior figures had stormed out of a secret Iran briefing on Wednesday, claiming to have been ‘misled’ about the administration’s true objectives.

With the mid-term election ­campaigns grinding into action, the fear among growing numbers of his fellow Americans – including parts of his MAGA base – is that the 47th President has lost touch with reality.

And that, sitting in the comfort of the Situation Room with some of his close supporters, he might find the idea of watching US troops in action just a little too exciting to resist.

• Freddy Gray is deputy editor of The Spectator.