ANALYSIS | Confusion became a hallmark of this war
Epic Fury. How Trump’s words on Iran have fluctuated over three weeks of war
by Zachary B. Wolf, Boer Deng, Dugald McConnell e Austin Culpepper (CNN)
Over the course of nearly a month since the first US strikes on Iran, President Donald Trump has wavered between demanding an “unconditional surrender” and suggesting a possible detente.
Confusion became a hallmark of this war.
Trump dubiously claimed that Iran posed an “imminent” threat to the US, months after declaring that the US had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear capabilities. He gave a multitude of reasons for launching a war in the first place. He declared victory dozens of times, only to qualify those claims later.
He demanded Iran’s unconditional surrender and suggested that he had already won the war. Then, over the weekend, it announced that it had held “productive” talks with Iran. Although Iran’s Foreign Ministry initially denied Trump’s claim, the Iranians later acknowledged that the US initiated the talks. Now, 1,000 US troops from the 82nd Airborne Division are preparing to deploy to the Middle East, after Trump repeatedly refused to say whether ground troops would be needed.
We have thoroughly analyzed what Trump has said publicly over the past three weeks about “Operation Epic Fury,” as he appears to be trying to justify an expanding war to Americans.
The White House did not respond to CNN’s requests for comment asking for clarification on Trump’s positions.
How many times can you win a war?
“We don’t need people joining wars after we’ve already won!” Trump said on Truth Social on March 7—about a week after the war began—expressing a “thanks, but no thanks” attitude to news that the United Kingdom might deploy aircraft carriers to the region.
Two days later, he said there is more to do.
“We are taking great steps towards completing our military objective. And some people might say they are quite complete,” he said at a press conference on March 9.
Two days later, he declared victory again.
“And we won. Let me tell you, we won. You know, you never like to say too soon that you won. We won. We won — in the first hour, it was over. We won,” he said at a rally in Hebron, Kentucky, on March 11.
This is just a sampling of Trump’s intermittent assessments of whether the war was “won” — or not.
Over the course of three weeks, the president variously claimed that the U.S. achieved victory, “WON militarily,” or “basically” won, or “won in many ways.”
But he also said the war continues, that “we haven’t won enough” and that the U.S. will still need to “finish the job.”
On Tuesday, Trump said again that the war had already been won.
“You know, I don’t like to say this — we won this, because this war was won, the only one that likes to keep it going is fake journalism,” Trump said in the Oval Office.
“Unconditional Surrender” or an Agreement?
Trump demanded Iran’s “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER” in a social media post on March 6. This demand came at a time when it was unclear whether the Iranian regime would survive the initial attack and Trump spoke of a theoretical agreement with future Iranian leaders in which the US would have a say in their selection.
In an interview with CBS News the next day, Trump said the surrender had already occurred.
“He has already surrendered to every country in the Middle East because he was trying to dominate the entire Middle East,” Trump said of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian.
Pezeshkian had effectively apologized to neighboring countries for attacking them. Trump considered this apology a surrender, as he explained to journalists on Air Force One.
“That’s a surrender right there. I called it a surrender tonight…that’s really a surrender to these states and to us.”
However, since then, the war has intensified. The regime did not collapse. And instead of accepting surrender, Trump is now talking about reaching a deal in talks with Iran.
“They really want to make a deal. We would like to make a deal too,” Trump told reporters on Monday.
“We’re taking a five-day break. We’ll see how it goes and, if it goes well, we’ll end up resolving it. Otherwise, we’ll continue to bomb them,” he promised.
“Ahead of the calendar”
Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth often say that the US and Israel are ahead of schedule for war. But they use very different language to describe how long things will take.
In the early days of the war, Trump predicted the operation would take about a month.
“I don’t want to see it go on for too long. I always thought it would be four weeks. And we’re a little early,” Trump told CNN’s Jake Tapper on March 2.
On the same day, at the White House, he reiterated a similar schedule.
“We project four to five weeks, but we have the ability to go much further than that. We do it. Whatever anyone said today — they said, ‘Oh, well, the president wants to do this really quickly, after this he’s going to get bored’… I don’t get bored. There’s nothing boring about that,” Trump said.
According to this calendar, US military operations were to end around the first week of April. But Trump has become less specific about the timetable as the war has expanded in the Middle East.
On March 16, for example, when asked by PBS News when the war would end, Trump said, “I don’t think it will be very long” and refused to give a time frame. “I don’t want to say that. I never want to say that because if I’m two days late, they’re going to criticize me.”
What has been consistent throughout is his insistence that the operation is proceeding “ahead of schedule” — a claim Trump has made at least a dozen times since the attacks began on February 28.
Hegseth initially said the war could last between three and eight weeks, but more recently said Trump will determine the “end state.”
“Our will is infinite,” he told journalists at the Pentagon on March 10.
“What I want the American people to understand is that this is not endless. It’s not drawn out. We’re not allowing the mission to drag on,” Hegseth assured.
Best scenario/worst scenario for who should lead Iran?
While Israel has been assassinating Iranian leaders for weeks, starting with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the early hours of the war, Trump had hoped early on to work with the Iranian regime.
“What we did in Venezuela, I think, is the perfect scenario, the perfect scenario,” he told the New York Times on March 1. The US captured Venezuela’s leader, took him to the US to stand trial, and has since worked with the largely intact Venezuelan regime to exert control over the country’s oil.
“We’re doing so well in Venezuela with oil and with the relationship between the president-elect and us. And maybe we’ll find someone like that in Iran,” he said separately. Trump appeared to be referring to Venezuela’s interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, although she is technically not an elected president as she has not won an election.
It quickly became clear that what was done in Venezuela would not work in Iran – in part, as Trump noted, because Israel continued to kill potential leaders. And that led to what Trump himself described when he was asked what the worst-case scenario would be.
“I think the worst case would be that we do this and then someone takes over who is just as bad as the previous person,” Trump said on March 3, a few days after the war began.
On the same occasion, however, he stated that the US would avoid an Iraq-style fiasco by trying to replace the entire government, but would prefer to rely on the existing power structure, something it continues to hope for.
Trump has also previously said he wants to have a say in who leads Iran.
“We want to choose a president who will not lead his country into a war,” he said on March 7, the day before the Iranian government chose the son of the previous supreme leader.
Trump’s “worst case scenario” is coming true
The son of the murdered Khamenei, Mojtaba Khamenei, has been chosen by Iran’s senior clerics as the country’s next leader. Some analysts have suggested that he may be more radical than his father, although this Khamenei has not yet been seen publicly since the start of the war. Trump declared it unacceptable.
Trump was asked on March 11 whether he could declare victory if Khamenei were Iran’s leader.
“I don’t want to comment on that,” Trump responded.
Speaking to journalists on Monday, Trump said he is not even sure if Mojtaba Khamenei is alive and would not say who the US is talking to in the country.
“Because I don’t want him to get killed, okay? I don’t want him to get killed.”
Will the US send ground troops? The answer is not “no”
Trump and his top advisers have consistently promised that the conflict with Iran will not be an “forever war” — a criticism they have often applied to US commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan. Instead, they maintained strategic ambiguity about whether ground troops were needed. CNN reported on Tuesday that 1,000 US troops from the 82nd Airborne Division are preparing to deploy to the Middle East to be available for operations in Iran.
When asked about the possibility of ground troops, Trump routinely insults the asker, as when a Fox News host asked Trump a sympathetic question about whether the U.S. could seize the island of Kharg, home to Iranian oil development.
“Who would ask a question like that? And what idiot would answer that, OK?” Trump told Brian Kilmeade. “It’s kind of a silly question. A little surprising to you because you’re an intelligent man,” Trump told the Fox News host.
On March 23, a reporter mentioned news that Marines from California were heading to the Middle East and asked if the troops could be used to police the Strait of Hormuz.
“If you were in my position and I asked you that question, would you — do you really believe I would give you an answer? A crazy question,” Trump responded.
