The Iran War Fog

By Judson Berger

Friday, March 13, 2026

 

We can leave it to more credentialed professionals to determine whether President Trump’s evolving characterizations and goalposts for the Iran war are meant to confuse the enemy or simply reflect his own uncertainty and/or desire to stay flexible. But if you’ve had trouble keeping up with the protean assessments emanating from Washington, you are not alone.

 

Andy McCarthy sums up the status reports:

 

We’ll demand regime change . . . or not. Unconditional surrender . . . or not. Ground troops not off the table . . . and not on the table. Reinstatement of the draft . . . or no such plans . . . or no plans for now.

 

Axios reported Friday that Trump told G-7 leaders Iran is “about to surrender,” but because so many leaders have been killed, nobody is around to announce it. Sources said Trump was “ambiguous” on his objectives and timeline: “Some participants left the call believing he wants to wind it down — others felt the complete opposite.” Adding to confusion, Energy Secretary Chris Wright (the X account version of him, anyway) initially claimed this week that the U.S. Navy had escorted an oil tanker through the Strait of Hormuz, then backtracked.

 

“One thing that we can be absolutely certain of in this ongoing U.S. war with Iran,” Jim Geraghty writes, “is that the remaining leaders in the Iranian regime have no idea what the U.S. objectives or victory conditions are, or whether the U.S. military has just begun the fight or whether the commander in chief believes the war is just about over . . . because the messages from the president himself are contradictory and erratic.”

 

The messaging of the war, it can be said, has not been on par with the precision of its military strikes (with the possible exception, tragically, of the deadly strike on an elementary school, which is under investigation). This aspect of a campaign that was both long telegraphed yet sudden with regard to the making of a public case for it — only four days elapsed between Trump’s inclusion of a concise but compelling justification for action in his SOTU and the strikes themselves — creates its own problems. The war’s unpopularity threatens to put added pressure on the administration to find an end point, even as the regime holds on.

 

As of this writing, the signals from the White House and Pentagon are being interpreted widely, partly for cynically partisan reasons, partly because much is left to interpretation. Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal claimed earlier this week, after a private briefing, that the administration seems to be gearing up to deploy ground troops. Iran’s menacing conduct in the Strait of Hormuz could pull the U.S. in deeper. At the same time, recent comments from Trump indicate that he’s at least contemplating what an off-ramp would look like.

 

He told CBS News that the war is “very complete, pretty much,” with Iran having “no navy, no communications, . . . no air force,” and degraded missile and drone capacity. “There’s nothing left in a military sense,” he said.

 

Speaking to reporters earlier this week, he did not evince the same enthusiasm about an Iranian-people-led overthrow of the regime as he did in his original (online video) declaration of hostilities: “We want a system that can lead to many years of peace, and if we can’t have that, we might as well get it over with right now.”

 

Senator Tom Cotton, speaking Tuesday at a symposium on antisemitism hosted by National Review and the Republican Jewish Coalition, offered a similar characterization of possible, acceptable outcomes for the United States and Israel. He said that, hopefully, the Iranian people can rise up against the regime, but, “even if that’s not the case, at least Iran will be totally neutered as a military threat to the United States, to Israel, and to the rest of the civilized world.” The implication was that even if Iran’s government survives, the regime’s being “defanged” of its navy and missile arsenal can count as a victory.

 

Andy argues that it would still be an embarrassment to “leave the regime in place,” albeit one “Trump could try to explain away by saying he’s left it a shell of its former self” — depending on whether the threat to trade has also been resolved.

 

Noah Rothman, who lists here what is going right in the war even amid media pessimism about its trajectory, notes that the White House has simply “not communicated what victory looks like, how it will be achieved, or what is expected of the American public.”

 

Anticipating the need for the forbearance of the American people in the days ahead, he advises: “It’s never too late to correct that oversight.”