Trump’s Iran War Media Blitz Only Raises More Questions

The United States has gone to war with Iran, launching a joint campaign with Israel that Donald Trump has described as “massive and ongoing.” Iran’s longtime supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has been killed, as have several top figures in Khamenei’s regime. Multiple U.S. service members are also dead. Trump, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine have all warned that more Americans are likely to die. “That’s the way it is,” the president said on Sunday.

Trump’s announcement that Americans had died as a result of the Iran operation came in a pre-recorded video, similar to his initial announcement of the operation on Friday. The president has since taken calls with seemingly every media outlet he can think of to discuss what’s happening and what comes next. He hasn’t been able to offer much clarity, giving a string of contradictory assessments of the situation that suggest the administration may not have totally thought through the implications of attacking the nation of 90 million.

Trump told The New York Times on Sunday that he sees a similar outcome in Iran to what transpired after the military captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro earlier this year. Maduro was replaced by Delcy Rodríguez, the former vice president whom the United States believes it can control. “What we did in Venezuela, I think, is the perfect, the perfect scenario,” Trump said. Bret Baier of Fox News said on Monday that Trump told him Venezuela is the “template” for how he’d like to see the situation in Iran unfold.

OK, so who is the Delcy Rodríguez of Iran? Jonathan Karl of ABC News said that Trump told him they had identified people they envisioned taking over the nation, but then killed them all. “The attack was so successful it knocked out most of the candidates,” Trump said. “It’s not going to be anybody that we were thinking of because they are all dead. Second or third place is dead.”

“We don’t know who the leadership is,” Trump later told CNN’s Jake Tapper. “We don’t know who they’ll pick. Maybe they’ll get lucky and get someone who knows what they’re doing.” Trump claimed that not even Iran knows who is in charge, and that the situation is akin to an “unemployment line.”

Trump may have gotten what he wanted in Venezuela, but Iran is not Venezuela, and the idea that a member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps would take over and start working with the U.S. is dubious, to say the least. Trump seems to be saying this is what they anticipated, but he has said simultaneously that he wants the Iranian people to rise up and take control of the government, even suggesting that the regime may just decide to cede control. “They would really surrender to the people, if you think about it,” he told the Times.

The plan is unclear, as is the ultimate objective. Trump and his administration said they needed to counteract the threat Iran posed to the United States, even though Iran does not possess a nuclear weapon and the administration acknowledged it had no intelligence suggesting Iran planned to attack U.S. forces. Trump has also said since that offensive began that he just wants to liberate Iranians. “All I want is freedom for the people,” he told The Washington Post. Hegseth claimed on Monday, meanwhile, that “this is not a regime change war,” despite the targeted attacks on the regime’s high command. “The regime did change,” Hegseth added.

“We fight wars to win and we don’t waste time or lives,” Hegseth said.

It’s unclear, again, what “winning” here actually means, or how many lives the war will ultimately cost beyond the six Americans who have already been confirmed dead. Trump has been vague about the length of the campaign, as well, telling the Times he intends to keep up the war for “four to five weeks,” while telling Axios he could end the war in “two or three days.” He said at the White House on Monday the war could go “far longer” than four or five weeks, and told Tapper that “we haven’t even started hitting them hard” and that the “big wave” is coming soon.

Trump didn’t exactly ease the confusion by claiming on Monday that America’s objectives are “clear,” laying out that he wants to destroy Iran’s nuclear capabilities, “annihilate” the nation’s navy, and stop them from funding terror groups.

The speech, made during a ceremony for Medal of Honor recipients, marked the first time the president has spoken in public about the war against Iran. Trump insisted he won’t get “bored” by the war, but couldn’t even stay on topic for the duration of the address. “I picked those drapes in my first term,” he said at one point, gesturing to the curtains hanging behind him, during a lengthy digression about the White House ballroom under construction. “I always liked gold. I think we can save a lot of money. I just saved curtains.”