"Little this and that... Any time I want it to end, it will end," Trump said during the five-minute call.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said Wednesday the war will continue "without any time limit, for as long as necessary, until we achieve all the objectives and decisively win the campaign."
Israeli and U.S. officials say they are preparing for at least two more weeks of strikes in Iran. Trump himself declined to specify a timeline for when the war will end.
In a brief call with Barak Ravid of Axios today, President Donald J. Trump said “The war is going great. We are way ahead of the timetable. We have done more damage than we thought possible, even in the original six-week period.” He added that the war against Iran will end “soon” because there’s “practically nothing left to target.” “Little this and that... Any time I want it to end, it will end,” he said.
In fact, according to Patrick Wintour of The Guardian, Iranian officials have rejected two messages from Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff calling for a ceasefire. Wintour writes that Iran’s leaders “sense it is not losing the war and the US president is at the minimum feeling the political pressure.” Iranian officials intend to make the economic, political, and military costs of the war so high that Trump will not attack Iran again.
For his part, Trump appears to be panicking over yesterday’s news that Iran is laying mines in the Strait of Hormuz, through which tankers transport about 20% of the world’s oil through a two-mile-wide (3.2 km) shipping channel. (Twenty percent of the world’s oil is about 20 million barrels, and a barrel is a unit of measure equal to 42 U.S. gallons or 159 liters.) Threats from Iran have bottled up oil in the Persian Gulf, and suppliers are shutting down operations because their storage facilities are full. The average price of gasoline in the U.S. has jumped nearly 60 cents a gallon since Trump launched attacks against Iran.
As Morgan Phillips of Fox News notes, naval mines are cheap, as little as a few thousand dollars, and can incapacitate or sink a $2 billion U.S. destroyer. They can be deployed by small vessels like hard-to-spot fishing craft at night.
The U.S. destroyed sixteen inactive Iranian mine-laying ships yesterday; today three merchant ships sustained minor damage after being struck in or near the strait. Today Trump claimed the U.S. has hit “28 mine ships as of this moment,” prompting Chris Cameron of the New York Times to note that “[t]he president sometimes exaggerates or is imprecise when giving figures.”
A spokesperson for Iran’s military command, Ebrahim Zolfaqari, said: “Get ready for oil to be $200 a barrel, because the oil price depends on regional security, which you have destabilised.” Today Iran struck oil storage facilities in Oman and Bahrain.
While a few Iranian ships are traversing the strait, they are the only ones. Retired French vice admiral Pascal Ausseur told the Associated Press: “In today’s context, sending warships or civilian vessels into the Strait of Hormuz would be suicidal,” adding that a ceasefire with Iran “would move the situation from suicidal to dangerous.” At that point, escorts of oil vessels by military ships could begin.
Today Trump told Leonardo Feldman of Newsweek that the project of reopening the Hormuz Strait is “working out very well, and I think you are going to see that.” Trump has said prices will “drop very rapidly when this is over,” but oil industry analysts say reopening production could take at least a month even if Trump could declare the war over immediately, and there is no indication Iran would agree to an instant ceasefire.
Aarian Marshall of Wired reports that half of the ships that usually travel through the Strait of Hormuz carry oil, but the other half carry raw materials that are made into fertilizer, plastics, precision instruments, machinery, electrical parts, and electronic components, all of which could jump in price.
Jon Gambrell of the Associated Press suggested that the war with Iran boils down to a single question: “Who can take the pain the longest?” Iran is being hammered with air strikes by both Israel and the U.S. Those strikes now include Israeli strikes on targets in Lebanon Israel says are connected to Iran-backed Hezbollah militants, killing more than 600 people and turning as many as 800,000 into refugees. For the regime, Gambrell notes, victory means staying in power and outlasting the bombing.
It is unclear what victory looks like for the U.S. The administration has offered a range of justifications for its war without suggesting what an endgame looks like. David Brown of the Wall Street Journal reported today that the U.S. and Israel appear to disagree about how long the war should last, with Israeli officials wanting to continue the war by decimating Iran’s oil industry and targeting top Iranian officials.
The pain for the U.S. is already becoming clear. Yesterday, after Reuters reporter Phil Stewart reported that as many as 150 U.S. troops had been wounded so far in the Iran conflict, the Pentagon publicly revised its estimate of fewer than a dozen U.S. service members wounded upward to about 140. The wounds include brain trauma, shrapnel wounds, and burns. Seven service members have died.
Lawmakers and their aides expressed frustration that the Pentagon had not announced the casualty numbers without prodding. “Just own it and be transparent,” a congressional aide told Alex Horton of the Washington Post. “You owe it to the service members.”
Bora Erden and Leanne Abraham of the New York Times reported today that at least seventeen U.S. military sites and installations across the region, including air defense systems, have been struck since the war began. Iran has also struck diplomatic sites, including U.S. embassies in Kuwait City, Kuwait, and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and the U.S. consulate in Dubai.
The eye-watering cost of the conflict is also hitting home. Officials from the Pentagon told members of Congress this week that the military used up $5.6 billion worth of munitions in the first two days of the war, a much higher burn rate than the administration had previously disclosed. Lawmakers are concerned that Trump’s Iran attack, along with his strikes on Nigeria, Somalia, Iraq, Venezuela, the small boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, and the Houthis in Yemen, is cutting into U.S. readiness for unexpected conflicts.
Lawmakers are also unhappy about the administration’s expected upcoming request for more money to fight the war. Catie Edmondson of the New York Times reported that Pentagon officials told lawmakers yesterday the first six days of the war had cost more than $11.3 billion, not including the buildup of personnel and military hardware for the initial strikes.
Today Julian E. Barnes, Eric Schmitt, Tyler Pager, Malachy Browne, and Helene Cooper of the New York Times reported that, according to a preliminary report by military investigators, the U.S. is responsible for the February 28 strike on the Shajarah Tayyebeh girls elementary school that Iranian officials say killed at least 175 people, most of them children. The school building had been part of an adjacent Iranian military base years ago, and it appears the U.S. used outdated information in their targeting of the building.
As the journalists wrote, “Striking a school full of children is sure to be recorded as one of the most devastating single military errors in recent decades.”
On Saturday, when asked about the possibility the U.S. was responsible for the strike, Trump answered: “No. In my opinion and based on what I’ve seen, that was done by Iran…. We think it was done by Iran. Because they’re very inaccurate, as you know, with their munitions. They have no accuracy whatsoever. It was done by Iran.”
On Monday, when a reporter noted that it was likely a Tomahawk missile that hit the school and asked if the U.S. would accept responsibility, Trump responded that “the Tomahawk…is sold and used by other countries,” and suggested that Iran “also has some Tomahawks.”
On Tuesday, a reporter asked why Trump said Iran had Tomahawks when only three other U.S. allies and the U.S. have them. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt answered: “The president has a right to share his opinions with the American public, but he has said he’ll accept the conclusion of that investigation, and frankly, we’re not going to be harassed by the New York Times, who’s been putting out a lot of articles on this making claims that have just not been verified by the Department of War, to quickly wrap up this investigation because the New York Times is calling on us to do so.”
Today a reporter confronted Trump, saying: “A new report says that the military investigation has found that the United States struck the school in Iran. As commander-in-chief, do you take responsibility for that?”
Trump answered: “I don’t know about it.”
Tonight, Iranian boats full of explosives hit two tankers carrying Iraqi fuel oil and set them ablaze about 30 miles (48 kilometers) off the Iraqi coast. According to Iraqi state media, Iraqi oil ports have “completely stopped operations.” Jon Gambrell of the Associated Press reported that one of the key measures of oil prices, Brent crude, jumped above $100 a barrel.
The federal media agency that oversees Voice of America, and whose Trump-appointed leadership has been deemed illegal by a judge, failed to cooperate with a required annual audit of its finances, according to a newly released report.
The U.S. Agency for Global Media had consecutively received clean audit reports for 20 years until 2024. But then Kari Lake was named by President Trump to take the helm, vowing to shut down federally funded newsrooms that she accused of being anti-American and “rotten.”
The audit report by an independent accounting firm dated Feb. 27 said the agency failed to provide information required for a proper examination for 2025. The report says the omission of documents was so “material and pervasive” that the firm, Kearney and Company, declined to express an opinion on the agency’s financial numbers. In accounting, such audit reports, called disclaimed opinions, often signal that the management has imposed limits on auditors’ work.
The report was another sign of turmoil at the agency under Ms. Lake, a fierce Trump ally.
Nearly all of the 1,400 journalists and support workers at Voice of America had been laid off last year, sparing a couple of dozen staff members. A judge ruled last week that Ms. Lake’s appointment as acting head had been invalid and illegal, effectively voiding layoffs, funding cuts and contract terminations at the news agencies. Ms. Lake has said she will appeal the ruling.
The news groups Ms. Lake oversees, which include Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in addition to Voice of America, broadcast to countries with limited press freedoms like Russia, China and Iran. They had to significantly scale back their news operations after facing Ms. Lake’s intense push to close them down.
Their diminished service evoked deep concerns from bipartisan members of Congress, who believed the cuts could allow U.S. adversaries to saturate audiences with disinformation. Their objection, coupled with U.S. attacks on Iran last June and court rulings, had prompted a restart of Voice of America’s broadcasting. V.O.A. now provides round-the-clock coverage in Persian after the United States conducted airstrikes in Iran and killed its key leaders.
The auditors’ report now raises questions about how the agency under Ms. Lake was handling its nearly $1 billion budget.
The report “paints a picture of an agency completely flying blind,” said Grant Turner, a former chief executive at the global media agency during Mr. Trump’s first term. “It looks like complete and utter dereliction of duty in managing taxpayer dollars.”
He added, “This is not just incompetence — it is criminality.”
A separate financial report from the agency dated Feb. 27 also fails to provide any breakdown of more than $800 million it spent in the 2025 fiscal year, listing all expenses in a single line named “total gross costs.”
The global media agency denied that it had blocked auditors from doing their work and said in a statement that the audit team did not have enough time to conduct a full review and issue findings, and pledged that it would do so for the current year. Ms. Lake did not address The New York Times’s questions on the audit report, but blamed the federal judge who blocked her efforts to close down the agency and to fire its employees for continued expenses that her organization was incurring.
“Judicial overreach is the only roadblock here,” she said, responding to a question on her stalled attempts to lay off Voice of America reporters.
The auditors also noted the agency failed to put internal safeguards in place to ensure its own numbers were accurate. Ms. Lake said in a letter attached to the financial report that significant cuts at the agency kept it from performing mandated internal reviews, citing “staffing limitations.”
In Ohio today, Republican candidate for governor Vivek Ramaswamy launched a $10 million TV and digital ad campaign to run until Election Day. Jeremy Pelzer of Cleveland DOT com explained that this ad buy alone is more than twice as much as the $4.4 million Democratic candidate Amy Acton, the former state health director, has raised, and it is only about half of the $19.5 million Ramaswamy’s campaign has raised.
Forbes reported in December 2025 that Ramaswamy’s net worth had nearly doubled, from about $1 billion to about $1.8 billion, since he announced his candidacy in February 2025.
On March 9, Mike Baker and Steven Rich of the New York Times published a long exposé of the corruption of American politics by billionaires. They explain how underwriting political campaigns from those for local school boards to the presidency has enabled the very wealthy to lock in their policy preferences for tax cuts, deregulation, and cuts to the social safety net while also steering valuable government contracts to themselves.
In 2024, Baker and Rich note, 300 billionaires and their immediate family members donated 19% of all political contributions in federal elections, either directly or through political action committees (PACs). While that amount does not account for money that might have gone through dark money groups that don’t have to disclose their donors, it still amounts to more than $3 billion, or an average of $10 million per family.
The authors’ example of what this flood of money looks like in the political system is the victory of Senator Tim Sheehy (R-MT), who beat popular Democratic incumbent Jon Tester in 2024 with the help of $8 million from billionaire Stephen Schwarzman and at least 63 other billionaires and 37 of their immediate family members, who donated about $47 million to Sheehy’s Senate race.
In the Senate, Sheehy “has become a key ally on tax policies that benefit the wealthy and cosponsored a proposal to eliminate the estate tax,” the authors note. Sheehy has been in the news lately for killing a decades-old solar energy tax credit when his own home uses solar power. Sheehy’s spokesperson declined to tell reporters if he had used the tax credit for 26% of the system’s cost.
Sheehy has also been in the news for jumping into the effort of three Capitol Police officers to eject a protester opposed to the Iran War from a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing. The arm of Brian McGinnis, a Marine Corps veteran who was wearing his dress uniform, was stuck behind the door. As Sheehy threw his weight into McGinnis, there was the audible crack of his arm breaking. When a spectator called Sheehy a coward, the senator appeared to tell him: “Go f*ck yourself.” Sheehy later said he was trying to “de-escalate the situation” and blamed McGinnis for “causing…violence.”
Billionaire Elon Musk spent close to $300 million in the 2024 elections, putting much of it, as well as the support of the social media platform X, behind Trump. After his leadership of the Department of Government Efficiency created a backlash to his companies and sparked a rift between him and Trump, Musk said he was going to step back from political spending.
And yet by the end of 2025, he had already given $20 million to Republicans to prepare for the 2026 elections. “It’s a big deal for Trump and for the Republicans to have the world’s richest man on their side,” Republican strategist Brian Seitchik told Julia Mueller and Julia Shapero of The Hill in February.
Baker and Rich noted that while both parties had reaped windfalls from billionaires in the past, in 2024 that money turned sharply toward Republicans. For every dollar of billionaire money that went to Democrats, they wrote, five dollars went to Republicans.
During his term, President Joe Biden called for securing the solvency of Social Security and Medicare and addressing the growing national debt with higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations. He wanted to increase the tax rate for those making more than $400,000 a year, to close the carried-interest loophole, and to impose a tax of 25% on Americans with a wealth of more than $100 million, saying during his 2024 State of the Union address: “No billionaire should pay a lower tax rate than a teacher, a sanitation worker, a nurse.” When she took over as the Democratic candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris also called for higher taxes on the wealthy, although at slightly lower rates than Biden backed.
In contrast, Trump promised billionaires he would extend the 2017 tax cuts that benefited the wealthy and corporations. At a fund raiser at Mar-a-Lago, he told oil executives that they should raise $1 billion to put him back in office. That price tag would be a “deal,” he told them, because of the taxes and regulations they would avoid if he were in charge.
And so, some of them pumped money into his campaign. Once back in office, Trump gave his wealthy supporters what he promised: the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that extended the 2017 tax cuts, cut regulation, and slashed the social safety net.
But along with those tax cuts and deregulation, those who supported Trump gave the country an erratic president who has destabilized the world economy through tariffs and now has led us into war in the Middle East.
Today Paul Krugman wrote in his newsletter that this is “The Billionaires’ War,” since it was their campaign money that mobilized low-information voters to rally behind Trump and his minions: “The Gang That Couldn’t Think Straight,” as Krugman puts it.
There are major societal implications for that war. It is already costing at least $1 billion a day, and administration officials have suggested they are going to ask Congress for more money for it. That request will come on top of the news of March 10 that, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the U.S. has borrowed $1 trillion over the past five months—that’s $50 billion a week on average—as Trump’s tax cuts slash revenue.
Republicans are sounding the alarm about the ballooning debt and suggesting the only way to address it is to cut more programs that benefit the American people. But that raises fundamental questions about the purpose of the U.S. government. What should it do? Whom should it benefit, and why?
In the 1860s, during the U.S. Civil War, the Republican Party reacted to rising expenses and growing debt not by punishing everyday Americans, but by inventing the income tax. In a time when the very existence of the American government was under threat, Republicans argued that the federal government had a right to “demand” 99 percent of a man’s property for an urgent necessity. When the nation required it, Vermont’s Justin Smith Morrill said, “the property of the people…belongs to the Government.”
From the beginning, congressmen graduated the taxes according to income. Morrill said: “The weight [of taxation] must be distributed equally not upon each man an equal amount, but a tax proportionate to his ability to pay.”
Recognizing that those who supported the government financially would care deeply about its survival, the American people welcomed the taxes. Even conservative Republican newspapers declared, “There is not the slightest objection raised in any loyal quarter to as much taxation as may be necessary.”
Brandon9000 wrote:I agree.The world's chief sponsor of terrorism, who chant "Death to America" every day, cannot be allowed to acquire atomic bombs.
175 schoolgirls and staff died when a missile struck a primary school in Minab in southern Iran on the first day of the war.
Anyone with a working brain would do that because no-one would allow them to acquire atomic bombs.
Quote:... the fact remains that anyone with any sense who was president would have attacked Iran.
Yes, that worked out so successfully in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Vietnam. It's obviously the best way to deal with political problems, especially when your country has had a hand in creating those problems. Just spend a billion, kill a bunch of people, and get out, no need to pick up the pieces. If you get any heat for it, just blame it on the previous administration.
Point out the terrorism Iran has had a hand in here in the US. That's why, thanks be to the Almighty, you'll never be in a position of responsibility at the 7-11, let alone the White House.
Atomic bombs! How old are you?
... who chant "Death to America" every day ...
The world's chief sponsor of terrorism ... cannot be allowed to acquire atomic bombs.
They might give atomic bombs to terrorists.
Iran‑backed militias carried out over 100 attacks on U.S. facilities in Iraq and Syria using missiles, drones, and rockets. Anyway, if they commit or promote terrorism anywhere, it proves that they commit of promote terrorism as a strategy.
Despite reports that Russia is providing Iran with intelligence that permits it to target U.S. forces in the Middle East, late last night the Trump administration lifted sanctions on shipments of Russian oil until April 11, permitting it to be sold to buyers around the world for the next month. The U.S., along with the rest of the Group of Seven (G7) nations with advanced economies, has maintained sanctions against Russia since it invaded Ukraine in 2022.
Russian president Vladimir Putin has been eager to get those sanctions dropped because oil sales will help the flailing Russian economy. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says the move is necessary to help ease oil prices, which are skyrocketing because Iran has closed the Strait of Hormuz in retaliation for the attack by the U.S. and Israel. But German chancellor Friedrich Merz said the heads of the G7 had urged Trump not to ease the sanctions, saying “[t]here is currently a price problem, but not a supply problem.” He added that he “would like to know what additional motives led the US government to make this decision.”
After Trump lifted sanctions on Russian oil that was already in ships, Democrats cried foul. At a Senate Armed Services Committee meeting yesterday, Senator Angus King (I-ME) said: “There is a clear winner in this war. The clear winner is Vladimir Putin and Russia. Estimates released a few hours ago are that Russia has reaped $6 billion of benefit from this war since it began just two weeks ago. That’s about $400 million a day from the increase in oil prices and the easing of sanctions, which is somewhat puzzling to me…. I just think the record should show that the real winner so far is Vladimir Putin to the tune of $6 billion in two weeks.”
Meanwhile, Kim Barker of the New York Times reports that, at the request of the United States, Ukraine has sent interceptor drones and a team of drone experts to Jordan to protect U.S. military bases there. “We reacted immediately,” Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky told Barker. “I said, yes, of course, we will send our experts.” In a phone call to the Brian Kilmeade Show on Fox Radio this morning, President Donald J. Trump denied that Ukraine was helping the U.S. with drone defense, saying “we don’t need their help…. We know more about drones than anybody. We have the best drones in the world, actually.”
Six American servicemembers are dead after a military refueling plane crashed in Iraq. U.S. Central Command has not specified the circumstances of the crash beyond saying it was “not due to hostile or friendly fire.”
Lara Seligman of the Wall Street Journal reported today that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is sending an amphibious ready group of vessels led by the U.S.S. Tripoli and carrying about 5,000 Marines and sailors, to the Middle East.
This morning, Trump, who famously got five deferments to avoid the military draft, posted a picture of himself standing by his parents in his schoolboy military uniform. He captioned the photo: “At Military Academy with my parents, Fred and Mary!”
Last night, Trump posted on social media: “We are totally destroying the terrorist regime of Iran, militarily, economically, and otherwise, yet, if you read the Failing New York Times, you would incorrectly think that we are not winning. Iran’s Navy is gone, their Air Force is no longer, missiles, drones and everything else are being decimated, and their leaders have been wiped from the face of the earth. We have unparalleled firepower, unlimited ammunition, and plenty of time—Watch what happens to these deranged scumbags today. They’ve been killing innocent people all over the world for 47 years, and now I, as the 47th President of the United States of America, am killing them. What a great honor it is to do so! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP”
On Wednesday, Kelsey Davenport of the Arms Control Association assessed that Trump’s frustration with the talks between U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi in Geneva was fueled by Witkoff’s reports about those talks. But, Davenport noted, “Comments made by Witkoff in two background briefings with reporters on Feb. 28 and March 3, as well as media appearances since the strikes began, made clear that Witkoff did not have sufficient technical expertise or diplomatic experience to engage in effective diplomacy. His lack of knowledge and mischaracterization of Iran’s positions and nuclear program throughout the process likely informed Trump’s assessment that talks were not progressing and Iran was not negotiating seriously.”
Having reviewed recordings and transcripts from those meetings, the Arms Control Association believes that the Iranian offer showed flexibility and was “an opening offer and unlikely Iran’s bottom line.” Future negotiations might have revealed irreconcilable positions, Davenport wrote, but “Witkoff’s failure to comprehend key technical realities suggests he misunderstood the Iranian nuclear proposal and was ill-prepared to negotiate an effective nuclear agreement.”
This morning, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth spent significant time at a press briefing at the Defense Department complaining about headlines that say the war is widening and that the administration did not take seriously enough that Iran could close the Strait of Hormuz. A “patriotic press,” he said, would say that Iran is weakening.
Despite widespread reporting, sourced from within the White House, that the administration did not, in fact, accurately gauge the chances of Iran’s closing the strait, Hegseth said it was “patently ridiculous” to think the administration didn’t prepare for the strait to be closed. He said about CNN, which reported that story, “The sooner [right-wing Trump ally] David Ellison takes over that network, the better.”
Hegseth said the Strait of Hormuz is open. “The only thing prohibiting transit in the straits right now is Iran shooting at shipping,” he said. “It is open for transit should Iran not do that.” Of the issue that the Iranians are shooting at the shipping, Hegseth said: “We have been dealing with it, and don’t need to worry about it.”
He claimed that the Iranians “can barely communicate, let alone coordinate. They’re confused and we know it. Our response? We will keep pressing, we will keep pushing, keep advancing. No quarter, no mercy for our enemies.”
As reporter Matt Novak notes, “No quarter is the refusal to take prisoners and instead just execute everyone. It’s been considered a war crime for over a century.” Former government war crimes lawyer Brian Finucane agreed, noting that “[d]enial of quarter—even the declaration of no quarter—is a war crime. And recognized as such by the U.S. government.”
Jack Detsch and Paul McLeary of Politico reported today that last year Hegseth slashed the oversight offices designed to limit civilian casualties in war and to investigate responsibility for them. Over the warnings of top military officials, he cut the number of employees working in that field from 200 to fewer than 40. Hegseth has vowed not to be hampered by “stupid rules of engagement,” but as Wes Bryant, the Pentagon’s former chief of civilian harm assessments, told the journalists, ““As it turns out, when you kill less civilians, you tend to be putting your resources toward killing the enemy.”
Democrats in both the House and the Senate are demanding an investigation into the strikes on a girls’ school that killed at least 165 civilians, most of them children.
Hegseth insisted today that the U.S. never targets civilians, and noted that Iran does. Observers note that the U.S. military has targeted at least 40 small boats in the Caribbean, killing at least 157 people it insists—without evidence—are “narcoterrorists.”
“[W]ar, in this context and in pursuit of peace, is necessary,” Hegseth said, “which is why each day, on bended knee, we continue to appeal to heaven. To Almighty God’s providence, to watch over and give special skill and confidence to our leaders and to our warriors. To those warriors, who this nation prays for every single day, I hear from all of you out there, who pray for them every day, stay on bended knee, and pray for them. I continue to say to them, Godspeed, may the Lord bless you and keep you, and keep going.”
In today’s phone call to the Brian Kilmeade Show, Trump suggested the war will not continue for long and said he will know it’s over “[w]hen I feel it, OK, feel it in my bones.”
Tonight, Alexander Ward, Lara Seligman, Alex Leary, and Vera Bergengruen of the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump’s advisors, including Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine, warned Trump that if the U.S. struck Iran, its leaders could well respond by closing the Strait of Hormuz, but Trump said that Iran’s leaders would capitulate and that even if they tried to close the strait, the U.S. military could handle it. The authors report that, while Trump has told audiences that “we’ve won” the war in Iran, in fact he has no immediate plans to end the war.
Philip Gordon of the Brookings Institution, who was formerly a national security adviser to Kamala Harris and the White House coordinator for the Middle East under President Barack Obama, told Andrew Roth of The Guardian that previous administrations had spent much time gaming out war with Iran and foresaw exactly what is happening: Iran would attack its neighbors to try to spark a regional war and would close the Strait of Hormuz to hurt global trade and drive up oil prices. “One of the reasons we did the nuclear deal and didn’t try to change the regime is exactly what’s happening,” he said of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Trump took the U.S. out of that treaty in 2018, undercutting it.
Michael Rubin, a senior fellow at the center-right American Enterprise Institute, told Roth that while the military planning had been stellar, “politically, this is increasingly looking like a cluster f*ck. And the reason is that step one of any plan is to establish a goal—the targeting should be in pursuit of that goal. The United States has this backwards. We have the targeting, but we don’t have a clear goal, and that lies not on the Pentagon planners, but on Donald Trump.”
White House officials are concerned enough about the unpopularity of the war that they are trying to change their messaging to convince the American people that the military is so powerful that it will eventually overcome Iran’s ability to retaliate.
Perhaps the clearest sign the administration is concerned about the Iran war is that Vance is distancing himself from it. A story by Diana Nerozzi and Eli Stokols of Politico today claims that “Vice President JD Vance was skeptical of the U.S. striking Iran in the leadup to President Donald Trump’s decision to launch the war.” Sources told the journalists that Vance is “skeptical,” “worried about success,” and “just opposes” the war.
And yet Trump has also been threatening a “takeover” of Cuba, prompting Senate Democrats yesterday to file legislation to stop him from going to war against Cuba without congressional approval. Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA) said in a statement: “Only Congress has the power to declare war under the Constitution, but [Trump] operates with the belief that the U.S. military is a palace guard, ordering military action in the Caribbean, Venezuela, and Iran without Congress’ authorization or any explanation for his actions to the American people. We shouldn’t risk our sons and daughters’ lives at the whims of any one person.”
