The Wrong Way to Talk About the Iran War

By Noah Rothman

Wednesday, May 13, 2026

 

As Donald Trump prepared to embark on his trip to China, he was asked by a reporter if Americans’ worsening “financial situation” had motivated him to “make a deal” with the Iranians. “Not even a little bit,” the president confidently replied. “The only thing that matters, when I’m talking about Iran: They can’t have a nuclear weapon.”

 

As rhetoric, Trump’s response was a touch myopic. But he was projecting steadfastness, and that’s a desirable quality in a wartime president. If only Trump had stopped there. What followed was a statement so portentous that no one with a lick of political horse sense could dismiss it.

 

“I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation,” Trump added. “I don’t think about anybody. I think about one thing: We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon. That’s all. That’s the only thing that motivates me.”

 

That distant rumble you hear is the sound of a thousand Democratic ad-makers racing to cobble together 30-second spots with that remark as the centerpiece. Democratic lawmakers, at least, instantly recognized its significance.

 

“And they still want you to believe he’s fighting for you,” Representative Summer Lee jeered. Trump “literally doesn’t give a damn” about Americans’ financial hardships, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro concluded. “Trump says he doesn’t think about Americans’ financial situation at all,” wrote Representative Brendan Boyle. “We can tell.”

 

Trump went on to explain how he thinks about the war, although that did nothing to repair the political damage he’d done to himself. The “American people understand when it’s over, you’re going to have a massive drop in the price of oil,” Trump insisted. In a reference to April’s miserable 3.8 percent increase in the inflation rate, the president issued a non sequitur: “If you go back to just before the war, for the last three months, inflation was at 1.7 percent,” he said, reassuring no one. “Now, we had a choice,” Trump closed, “let these lunatics have a nuclear weapon. If you want to do that, then you’re a stupid person.”

 

Trump’s commitment to creating the conditions that could compel what remains of the Iranian regime to back down has frustrated his critics, some of whom mourn Trump’s failure to display some of that manic inconstancy for which he’s famous. It should be clear by now that the president will not wiggle out of this conflict or slap his name on something that approximates Barack Obama’s nuclear deal. That’s commendable. The majority of Americans who want to see an end to the war in which Iran’s nuclear program is “permanently” disabled, its people “safe and free,” and the Islamic Republic gone might take heart in Trump’s perseverance.

 

But Trump couples that resolve with an unfailing refusal to acknowledge the burdens the American people are expected to bear in the interim. He either refuses to recognize their financial precarity or, when he does, insists their struggles will be short-lived — assertions that a plurality of voters, at least, do not believe. The voting public does not think the president is giving them his honest assessment of what it will take to win this war, and they’re repaying his mistrust of the public in kind.

 

As Michael recently observed, spiking energy costs are just about all that stands between Trump and a booming domestic economy. Trump’s domestic allies see the warning signs ahead of November’s midterm elections, and they can no longer contain their anxiety. And as Joe Biden learned, an inflation rate that outpaces wage growth can have fiendish effects on the national political psychology — none of which redound to the benefit of the party in power.

 

The papers are glutted today with stories written around leaked intelligence that purport to claim that the devastation meted out against Iran over 40 days of high-tempo combat operations amounted to nothing. Iran’s nuclear program endured more damage during the hours-long Operation Midnight Hammer than in Operation Epic Fury, the assessments allegedly contend. And Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal and launchers are largely intact. Indeed, they were wholly intact at the outset of the war. And yet, launches slowed to a trickle by the end of that operation anyway, perhaps because U.S. and Israeli forces interdicted them. And if combat operations resumed in the effort to hit the Iranian regime’s pain-tolerance threshold, they would be again.

 

All this is designed to convince the American people that Trump’s project in Iran was a waste of everyone’s time. Only the costs of that campaign are real.

 

Trump isn’t going to counter his political adversaries’ messaging by insisting that his critics are “stupid,” that the inflation they’re experiencing is transitory, or that he is so focused on his mission that the public’s hardships are none of his concern. The war to defang Iran and reshape the landscape in the Middle East for a generation is a national project, and Trump needs to solicit the public’s participation in it — hat in hand, if need be. A little humility would go a long way.