Trump’s Iran war has no clear endgame

There is nothing more frightening than a commander-in-chief who has no idea what he’s doing, and many in Congress fear that’s exactly what we face as Donald Trump continues to prosecute his war in Iran.

After a House Armed Services Committee briefing on Iran, Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., put it as bluntly as she could while expressing the fears of a growing majority of lawmakers: “Let me repeat: I will not support troops on the ground in Iran, even more so after this briefing.” Alabama Rep. Mike Rogers, the Republican chair of the committee, echoed Mace’s thoughts, telling reporters, “We want to know more about what’s going on, what the options are, and why they’re being considered.”

Members of Congress on both sides of the political aisle say that Trump has withheld information, including with whom the administration is negotiating inside Iran, and other basic details. “We just wanted them to tell us what’s the plan,” Rogers said, “and we didn’t get any answers.”

That sentiment was echoed by reporters and others in Congress after a hastily-called press briefing at the White House on Wednesday. Reporters were told the briefing would address dozens of questions we had about the war, but White House Pep Secretary Karoline Leavitt skirted questions about Iran and said she wasn’t going to “negotiate for the president” in the briefing room. Whatever Trump says, she told us, is “obviously true.” 

Trump said Tuesday in a gaggle outside Air Force One that there is a 15-point plan for peace. Leavitt followed his comments by saying on Wednesday that anyone who reports that isn’t reporting the truth, but only part of the truth. That’s an odd way of saying the president isn’t telling the truth. It took two Pakistani officials to describe the broad strokes of the 15-point plan on Wednesday, revealing it addressed sanctions relief, a roll back of Iran’s nuclear program, limits on missiles and — wait for it — reopening the Strait of Hormuz. 

Somehow, even after Leavitt said that Iran has no military capabilities left and U.S. forces have hit more than 10,000 targets, we still need help reopening the Strait of Hormuz. Our allies “are lining up behind Trump” to help. But why would we need it, if the U.S. and Israel had “obliterated” their ability to make war as Trump constantly claims?

Maybe there are people standing on the shore throwing rocks. Otherwise, it’s obvious Trump and Leavitt are both lying. 

But so is Iran. Trump claimed someone inside the Iranian government gave him a “very big present”: allowing 10 oil tankers to pass through the strait. “Well, I guess we’re dealing with the right people,” Trump said during a Cabinet meeting Thursday. If true, clearly someone with some clout in Iran is talking to someone inside the Trump administration. Iran also rejected the “15-point plan,” responding instead with a five-point plan of their own. But according to Iranian officials, “we do not plan on any negotiations” with the United States and will fight “until complete victory.”

Sure. And the checks in the mail. The only conclusion we can logically draw is that with the Pakistani presence, China is obviously interested in peace in Iran. Might have something to do with oil. 

The lies are compounding daily, and the fear of an escalating war continues to mount as other countries in the region say attacks by Iran and its allied groups “must stop.” The death toll has risen to more than 1,500 people in Iran and over 1,000 in Lebanon, as well as 16 in Israel and 13 U.S. service members.

Trump is now preparing to send 2,000 to 3,000 troops from the 82nd Airborne to the Middle East. He’s already committed 5,000 Marines, and there are roughly 50,000 troops already in the Middle East, despite Trump’s claim last week that he’s “not putting troops anywhere.”

“The question isn’t whether or not he’s lying,” a former Pentagon insider told me Wednesday. “It’s why is he lying?” Otherwise, they said, “we’re in it now and we have to let the military accomplish their objectives.”

The trouble is very few know what those objectives are, if there are any and “what resources will they require to be met.” In addition, my defense department source explained that “Trump can call it quits, but that doesn’t mean the regime will. Attacks on the Gulf states and in the Gulf itself could continue for quite some time. How will we deal with that?”

We are “ahead of schedule” in fighting the war, Trump has claimed. His continued public confidence — despite the war expanding into Lebanon and other Arab countries, while Iran continues to trap 20,000 people and hundreds of oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz — is what is bothering most members of the GOP and everyone else in the world. Except Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. On Tuesday he called Trump a man of bold action, even as he prayed for violence “against those who deserve no mercy.” 

Trump, for his part, said Hegseth wanted to destroy boats and take lives “for the fun of it.”

Some think Trump and Hegseth are insane, juvenile or both – but others who know Trump say he’s banking on U.S. superiority in firepower as the basis for his confidence. “He might actually think that he can threaten to send in troops without ever having to do it,” my Pentagon source explained. “We wouldn’t be the first to mistakenly think a smarter bomb will keep us from putting boots on the ground.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whom many believe is driving the war and its objectives, has said it won’t be finished until ground troops are deployed. According to the defense department insider, “the other thing Trump may be gambling on is putting Israeli troops on the ground.” 

But the president could also be betting on autonomous swarms of drones to carry out deadly attacks while keeping our troops out of combat. The Israel Defense Forces used the first combat-drone swarm in Gaza in 2021 to track down Hamas groups firing rockets. But the real innovation with drone warfare in combat has occurred in Ukraine. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said last week that Ukraine would provide assistance to the U.S. and other allies in ​response to requests for support in dealing with Iran’s Shahed drones, which are manufactured both in the Islamic Republic and Russia, while at the same time providing the U.S. and Israel information on autonomous drones.

“If there is any sense to Trump’s confidence that he can call off the war whenever he wants, then it has to be something like that which he’s banking on,” my Pentagon source explained. “Otherwise he’s just nuts.”

Right now, it is impossible to know what, if anything, is behind Trump’s arrogance in prosecuting an increasingly expensive war that is growing more unpopular within his MAGA coalition. As recently as February, Nancy Mace had praised Trump’s efforts against Iran, saying he “did not flinch and did not negotiate with darkness.” But on Wednesday she said, “The justifications presented to the American public for the war in Iran were not the same military objectives we were briefed on today in the House Armed Services Committee. This gap is deeply troubling. The longer this war continues, the faster it will lose the support of Congress and the American people.”

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The former defense department official who spoke with me expressed grave doubt about an exit strategy and listed “three main concerns.” Trump, they said, could “pull the plug early” and risk terrorism against the U.S. Second, even with a victory — “however that is defined” — there has been no talk about “post-conflict stabilization.” And finally, since the administration has done nothing to prove that war with Iran was necessary in the first place, how can they even “define what a victory is?”

We don’t know because the president continues to defy questions from the press. In fact, he told Republican lawmakers Wednesday night at the annual National Republican Congressional Committee fundraising dinner that he had “decimated” Iran and the press needs to be “taught a lesson.” He also reiterated his claim that Iran was just two to four weeks from having a nuclear weapon when he started the war on Feb. 28 — after previously bragging that he completely “obliterated” Iran’s ability to make one when he bombed the country last June.

Then there’s Sen. John Kennedy. “The president didn’t start a war,” the Louisiana Republican told Fox News Wednesday. “He was trying to stop a war.”

Of course Trump, the winner of the first-ever FIFA Peace Prize, would probably agree with Kennedy, especially since he claims to have stopped eight wars already and a few “pre-wars” as well. 

Now the president is engaged in a war that is spreading even as he says it is ending. His exit ramps, at the very least, do not include the “unconditional surrender” that he demanded from Iran when he started the war to “stop a war.”

Remember: Leavitt told us Wednesday that if Trump says it then it’s obviously true. At the NRCC dinner later that evening he told us that Democrats are lunatics and our true enemy in America, and real polls show he is loved all over the world.

According to the BBC, that’s definitely not true. Citing sources in the Danish government, it reported that soldiers, medical supplies and blood were flown into Greenland in January to blow up key airport runways over fears that Trump would invade the arctic island.

These are our allies — and they don’t trust us.

A high-ranking Danish security source said that “when Trump keeps saying he wants to take over Greenland, and then what happened in Venezuela happened, we had to take all scenarios seriously.”

With Trump brashly claiming victory in Iran, you have to wonder how long it will be before he gets back to threatening Greenland or Cuba. “That’s very frightening to a lot of people,” my Pentagon source said.

Perhaps the fear of additional wars, combined with concerns about Trump’s increasingly transparent ineptitude, will drive more Republicans to speak out. We can only hope it isn’t too late.