The question is no longer whether President Donald Trump has lost control of the narrative of his new war in Iran.
It’s whether he’s lost control of the war itself.
Wars, once begun, create their own insidious momentum that can outpace a White House’s political messaging. If they defy a president’s capacity to determine their direction, political quicksand beckons.
After the thunderclap opening of the conflict with the assassination of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Trump’s team might have hoped to be in a better place three weeks in. Instead, the way out remains impossible to identify.
While the United States and Israel have undeniably visited huge destruction on Tehran’s military industrial complex and machinery of repression, Iran has seized the initiative by widening the impact of the war. Its closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a vital oil shipping route, threatens to paralyze the global economy. Americans are already hurting, with average gasoline prices heading towards $4 a gallon.
Things could get worse.
Regional oil and gas installations across the Gulf region are under attack. Trump insisted Thursday he hadn’t known that Israel planned to attack Iran’s South Pars gas field. CNN sources contradicted his claim — which was hard to square given tight US-Israeli coordination. The president then said he’d told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “don’t do that.”
But the episode only exacerbated concern among MAGA critics that Israel, and not the US, is running the war.
Gulf states hit by days of missile and drone alerts are frustrated that the economic miracle exemplified by their futuristic cityscapes is in danger from a war their US ally started that they didn’t want.
Trump meanwhile is fuming that he can’t simply order Europeans to send ships to open the Strait. “This is not our war,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said this week.
An administration that never got its story straight on the Iranian nuclear threat that is being used as a justification for the war has so far offered no plan for what Trump means when he says it will end “soon.” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth warned Thursday that there were no definite time frames for an exit. “It will be at the president’s choosing, ultimately, where we say, ‘Hey, we’ve achieved what we need to on behalf of the American people to ensure our security.’”
But lawmakers, who are about to be asked by the administration for as much as $200 billion to fund the war and possibly more, are going to need answers.
“The people in Alaska are asking me how long is this going on?” Sen. Lisa Murkowski told CNN’s Lauren Fox. “Are there going to be boots on the ground, how much is this going to cost?” These questions are especially acute in Alaska, which has one of the highest concentrations of active duty soldiers and veterans. The minuscule GOP majority is about to face its biggest test and this question: If dissident MAGA Republicans balk, will Democrats really help Trump fund his war in a midterm election year? Here’s House Speaker Mike Johnson’s answer: “We’ll find out.”
Trump is defiant. “We’ve obliterated just about everything there is to obliterate,” he said in the Oval Office Thursday.
And Hegseth rebuked reporters who “think just 19 days into this conflict that we’re somehow spinning toward an endless abyss or a forever war or a quagmire.”
Up to a point, he has a point.
Thousands of US and Israeli sorties and missile strikes surely delivered an operational victory. Iran’s capacity to threaten its region must be a fraction of what it was. But has the pummeling fatally weakened the regime’s political foundation? Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said Wednesday it was degraded but “appears to be intact.”
Iran might be losing Trump’s war. But it’s winning its own.
A brutal regime that has killed thousands of its people and which none of its neighbors would miss has one goal: its own survival. That means raising the economic price for the rest of the world — and therefore the political heat on Trump. It’s already shown that shutting down tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz is a potent weapon. It’s odd then, the administration didn’t anticipate its use. “(You) don’t need to worry about it,” Hegseth said of the vital waterway — seven days ago.
Maritime experts warn that reopening the Strait will be dangerous. Aerial bombardment can only do so much. A substantial ground force might be needed to flush out drone and missile launch sites in mountainous terrain bordering the Strait. Trump therefore is nearing a fateful choice almost every modern commander in chief has faced: To get out of a war, must he escalate first?
“I’m not putting troops anywhere. If I were, I certainly wouldn’t tell you, but I’m not putting troops,” the president told reporters Thursday, but grasping for a way to change the subject, he produced a non sequitur. “Look, the Dow just hit 50,000 a couple of weeks ago.”
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent suggested lifting sanctions on Iranian oil already at sea in a bid to lower oil prices. This would mean the US allowing its enemy a way to finance its war effort. Even if this is a bluff to soothe oil markets, it speaks of a fast-growing crisis.
It doesn’t seem like there’s a plan.
“I don’t think we have a clue what our objective is at this point. It seems to change by the day and, you know, it was just not foreseen that this was going to be a protracted war when really it should have been,” Nate Swanson, who was director for Iran on the National Security Council in the Biden administration and served on Trump’s Iran negotiating team in early 2025, told Becky Anderson on CNN International.
Washington has been betting for days on when Trump would declare victory and bring the troops home.
But the spiraling conflict means he may no longer have that option.
“Nobody can deliver perfection in wartime,” Hegseth said Thursday.
That’s fair, but “perfection” is nowhere close. After starting a new war, Trump doesn’t control how long it will last, where it will spread, how much it will cost and how badly it will complicate the lives of inflation-weary Americans.
And it’s in danger of defining his second presidency.
