Donald Trump was in the Oval Office during the third week of the Iran war when a group of his most trusted advisers came to deliver some unwelcome news.
His longtime pollster, Tony Fabrizio, had conducted surveys that indicated the war Trump launched was growing increasingly unpopular. Gas prices had surged past $4 per gallon, stock markets had tumbled to multi-year lows, and millions of Americans were preparing to take to the streets in protest. Thirteen American service members had been confirmed killed. Some of Trump’s key public supporters were criticizing a conflict with no clear end in sight. It fell on White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and a small group of aides to tell the President that the longer the war dragged on, the more it would threaten his public support and Republicans’ prospects in November’s midterm elections.
For Trump, the stark warning was unsettling. The President has begun many recent mornings watching video clips compiled by military officials of battlefield successes, according to a senior Administration official. He has told advisers that being the commander in chief to eliminate the nuclear threat posed by Iran could be one of his signature achievements. But Wiles, according to two White House sources, was concerned aides were giving the President a rose-colored view of how the war was being perceived domestically, telling Trump what he wanted to hear instead of what he needed to hear. She had urged colleagues, the officials say, to be “more forthright with the boss” about the political and economic risks.
The meeting reflected a reality the White House can no longer ignore: time is running out before the President, his party, and the American public pay an even steeper price. Trump had promised to revive the economy and keep the U.S. out of foreign conflicts. Now he has started a war he had not gotten a mandate to wage, and the economic pain may only be beginning. A month into the largest oil shock in modern history, global growth forecasts are being slashed, shortages are emerging across Europe and Asia, and energy traders warn the world has yet to feel the full severity of the disruption. A prolonged closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway that is the primary exit route for oil and gas from the Persian Gulf, could tip the global economy into recession.
The President was left frustrated by the predicament, at odds with some of his own officials, and fuming at the negative impressions of the war. The mounting political and economic toll has left him looking for an off-ramp, according to two advisers and two members of Congress who have spoken to him during the last week. Trump told them he wants to wind down the campaign, wary of a protracted conflict that could hobble Republicans heading into the midterms. At the same time, he wants the operation to be a decisive success. Allies say he is searching for a way to declare victory, halt the fighting, and hope that economic conditions stabilize before the political damage hardens. “There’s a narrow window,” says a senior Administration official, who like others interviewed for this account of Trump at war was granted anonymity to provide candid observations about the President’s thinking. [...]
The Pentagon disputes the account. "The U.S. military is the most advanced, comprehensive, and battle-tested planning organization in the world. Long before Operation Epic Fury launched, we had already anticipated, war-gamed, and fully prepared for every possible Iranian response, from the weakest possible reaction to the most extreme escalation,” Hegseth’s chief spokesman Sean Parnell tells TIME. “Nothing Iran does surprises us. We are ready, we are dominant, and we are winning."
By the Pentagon’s accounting, Operation Epic Fury has been an unambiguous military success, leaving 90% of Iran’s missile capacity degraded or destroyed, roughly 70% of its launchers neutralized, more than 150 naval vessels disabled or destroyed, and Iranian Supreme Ali Khamanei killed, along with many of his top lieutenants. Yet it seems increasingly unlikely Trump will achieve the broader objectives he trumpeted—permanently blocking Tehran’s path to a nuclear weapon, dismantling its ballistic missile program, and replacing the Islamic Republican’s theocratic hardliners with a friendlier regime—on the compressed timeline the White House has embraced. [...]
As preparations for the war began, the Administration believed it had a winning formula. The U.S. would deliver an opening strike so overwhelming Tehran’s only viable response would be limited retaliation—enough to satisfy domestic audiences without inviting more attacks. It was a theory rooted in precedent. When Trump ordered the killing of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani during his first term, Iran’s response was a missile strike on a U.S. base that caused no casualties and was telegraphed in advance. After Operation Midnight Hammer, the June 2025 air campaign against Iran’s nuclear facilities, the retaliation was similarly tempered.
Trump has long favored what aides call “one-and-done” operations. He has launched them in Yemen, Syria, and Somalia. In January, he pulled off the audacious capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, spiriting the autocrat out of the country to face trial in the U.S., and creating room for the ascension of a more compliant partner, acting president Delcy Rodriguez. He then moved to facilitate U.S. access to Venezuela’s oil reserves, among the largest in the world. Aides say Trump saw Venezuela as a demonstration that a swift, surgical intervention could topple a hostile regime, install a cooperative replacement, and secure American interests without drawing the nation into an open-ended confrontation.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a champion of military aggression against Iran, had a different idea of how things might go. Over the last six months, Netanyahu repeatedly told Trump that the past successes against Iran should serve as a prelude for a more sustained, final campaign, an Israeli official tells TIME. On Feb. 11, Netanyahu came to Washington for a private meeting with the President that stretched for hours. “We’ve come this far, Donald,” Netanyahu told Trump, according to a source present. “We have to finish what we started.” Iran was playing for time, Netanyahu told Trump, and would race toward a bomb in secret. “After they got hit the last time, they thought they had nothing to lose,” says another Israeli official, arguing that Tehran would see the development of nuclear weapons as the only way to prevent such an onslaught from happening again.
The plan of attack was set in motion nearly a month before it was executed, according to two senior U.S. officials. It took weeks of meticulous coordination, much of it conducted in close consultation with Israeli counterparts. When the New York Times published details of the planning of the operation on Feb. 17, Trump exploded at aides, unleashing a string of profanities, according to a senior Administration official. The President then told reporters he would decide on strikes within “10, 15 days,” although he knew the U.S. was planning to attack much sooner. “He was intentionally engaged in public misdirection to protect the mission,” a White House official says.
Trump became wary enough of leaks that some of his own aides were the target of subterfuge. On Feb. 27, he traveled to Mar-a-Lago. Aides assembled in a makeshift Situation Room. Trump bristled at the number of people present. “He thought the group was too big,” one official recalls; it included people Trump didn’t recognize or didn’t feel he knew well enough. At one point, the President snapped that the operation was off. He said he would keep deliberating. This was another head fake: Trump had already made up his mind to attack that very night. Once the room cleared, he called back a smaller, trusted circle—those he wanted beside him as the first bombs fell.
That evening, Trump had dinner on the patio of Mar-a-Lago with a group that included deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Witkoff, and White House counsel David Warrington. Not present was Vice President J.D. Vance, who was in the Situation Room back in Washington. A Trump official says that was a reflection of standard continuity-of-government protocol, which calls for the President and Vice President to be kept apart during sensitive national security operations when both are not at the White House. Of the President’s inner circle, Vance had pushed hardest against the operation, according to two sources familiar with the deliberations. “J.D. really doesn’t like this,” Trump told the group gathered under the Palm Beach stars. “But when the decision is made, it’s a decision, right?”
A White House source says that Vance, in the lead-up to the offensive, laid out what he saw as both the benefits and the risks, adding that “once the President makes the decision, the Vice President stands by him 110%.” (A Vance aide declined to comment.)
Operation Epic Fury began with a sweeping round of strikes that killed Iran’s supreme leader. Tehran’s response was expansive: volleys of missiles and drones targeting U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria, barrages against Israeli cities, harassment of commercial shipping in the Persian Gulf, and coordinated attacks by proxy militias across the region. Hegseth was among those taken aback, says the person familiar with his thinking: “He was expecting the Iranians to fight back in some form. When they started attacking virtually the entire region, it sort of hit him like, ‘Whoa, we’re really in this now.’”
by Eric Cortellessa, Time | Read more:
Image: Missiles launched by Iran over Beersheba in southern Israel, on March 29. Mostafa Alkharouf—Anadolu/Getty Images[ed. See also: Trump Needs Smarter Sycophants (NYT):]
His longtime pollster, Tony Fabrizio, had conducted surveys that indicated the war Trump launched was growing increasingly unpopular. Gas prices had surged past $4 per gallon, stock markets had tumbled to multi-year lows, and millions of Americans were preparing to take to the streets in protest. Thirteen American service members had been confirmed killed. Some of Trump’s key public supporters were criticizing a conflict with no clear end in sight. It fell on White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and a small group of aides to tell the President that the longer the war dragged on, the more it would threaten his public support and Republicans’ prospects in November’s midterm elections.
The meeting reflected a reality the White House can no longer ignore: time is running out before the President, his party, and the American public pay an even steeper price. Trump had promised to revive the economy and keep the U.S. out of foreign conflicts. Now he has started a war he had not gotten a mandate to wage, and the economic pain may only be beginning. A month into the largest oil shock in modern history, global growth forecasts are being slashed, shortages are emerging across Europe and Asia, and energy traders warn the world has yet to feel the full severity of the disruption. A prolonged closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway that is the primary exit route for oil and gas from the Persian Gulf, could tip the global economy into recession.
The President was left frustrated by the predicament, at odds with some of his own officials, and fuming at the negative impressions of the war. The mounting political and economic toll has left him looking for an off-ramp, according to two advisers and two members of Congress who have spoken to him during the last week. Trump told them he wants to wind down the campaign, wary of a protracted conflict that could hobble Republicans heading into the midterms. At the same time, he wants the operation to be a decisive success. Allies say he is searching for a way to declare victory, halt the fighting, and hope that economic conditions stabilize before the political damage hardens. “There’s a narrow window,” says a senior Administration official, who like others interviewed for this account of Trump at war was granted anonymity to provide candid observations about the President’s thinking. [...]
The Pentagon disputes the account. "The U.S. military is the most advanced, comprehensive, and battle-tested planning organization in the world. Long before Operation Epic Fury launched, we had already anticipated, war-gamed, and fully prepared for every possible Iranian response, from the weakest possible reaction to the most extreme escalation,” Hegseth’s chief spokesman Sean Parnell tells TIME. “Nothing Iran does surprises us. We are ready, we are dominant, and we are winning."
By the Pentagon’s accounting, Operation Epic Fury has been an unambiguous military success, leaving 90% of Iran’s missile capacity degraded or destroyed, roughly 70% of its launchers neutralized, more than 150 naval vessels disabled or destroyed, and Iranian Supreme Ali Khamanei killed, along with many of his top lieutenants. Yet it seems increasingly unlikely Trump will achieve the broader objectives he trumpeted—permanently blocking Tehran’s path to a nuclear weapon, dismantling its ballistic missile program, and replacing the Islamic Republican’s theocratic hardliners with a friendlier regime—on the compressed timeline the White House has embraced. [...]
As preparations for the war began, the Administration believed it had a winning formula. The U.S. would deliver an opening strike so overwhelming Tehran’s only viable response would be limited retaliation—enough to satisfy domestic audiences without inviting more attacks. It was a theory rooted in precedent. When Trump ordered the killing of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani during his first term, Iran’s response was a missile strike on a U.S. base that caused no casualties and was telegraphed in advance. After Operation Midnight Hammer, the June 2025 air campaign against Iran’s nuclear facilities, the retaliation was similarly tempered.
Trump has long favored what aides call “one-and-done” operations. He has launched them in Yemen, Syria, and Somalia. In January, he pulled off the audacious capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, spiriting the autocrat out of the country to face trial in the U.S., and creating room for the ascension of a more compliant partner, acting president Delcy Rodriguez. He then moved to facilitate U.S. access to Venezuela’s oil reserves, among the largest in the world. Aides say Trump saw Venezuela as a demonstration that a swift, surgical intervention could topple a hostile regime, install a cooperative replacement, and secure American interests without drawing the nation into an open-ended confrontation.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a champion of military aggression against Iran, had a different idea of how things might go. Over the last six months, Netanyahu repeatedly told Trump that the past successes against Iran should serve as a prelude for a more sustained, final campaign, an Israeli official tells TIME. On Feb. 11, Netanyahu came to Washington for a private meeting with the President that stretched for hours. “We’ve come this far, Donald,” Netanyahu told Trump, according to a source present. “We have to finish what we started.” Iran was playing for time, Netanyahu told Trump, and would race toward a bomb in secret. “After they got hit the last time, they thought they had nothing to lose,” says another Israeli official, arguing that Tehran would see the development of nuclear weapons as the only way to prevent such an onslaught from happening again.
The plan of attack was set in motion nearly a month before it was executed, according to two senior U.S. officials. It took weeks of meticulous coordination, much of it conducted in close consultation with Israeli counterparts. When the New York Times published details of the planning of the operation on Feb. 17, Trump exploded at aides, unleashing a string of profanities, according to a senior Administration official. The President then told reporters he would decide on strikes within “10, 15 days,” although he knew the U.S. was planning to attack much sooner. “He was intentionally engaged in public misdirection to protect the mission,” a White House official says.
Trump became wary enough of leaks that some of his own aides were the target of subterfuge. On Feb. 27, he traveled to Mar-a-Lago. Aides assembled in a makeshift Situation Room. Trump bristled at the number of people present. “He thought the group was too big,” one official recalls; it included people Trump didn’t recognize or didn’t feel he knew well enough. At one point, the President snapped that the operation was off. He said he would keep deliberating. This was another head fake: Trump had already made up his mind to attack that very night. Once the room cleared, he called back a smaller, trusted circle—those he wanted beside him as the first bombs fell.
That evening, Trump had dinner on the patio of Mar-a-Lago with a group that included deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Witkoff, and White House counsel David Warrington. Not present was Vice President J.D. Vance, who was in the Situation Room back in Washington. A Trump official says that was a reflection of standard continuity-of-government protocol, which calls for the President and Vice President to be kept apart during sensitive national security operations when both are not at the White House. Of the President’s inner circle, Vance had pushed hardest against the operation, according to two sources familiar with the deliberations. “J.D. really doesn’t like this,” Trump told the group gathered under the Palm Beach stars. “But when the decision is made, it’s a decision, right?”
A White House source says that Vance, in the lead-up to the offensive, laid out what he saw as both the benefits and the risks, adding that “once the President makes the decision, the Vice President stands by him 110%.” (A Vance aide declined to comment.)
Operation Epic Fury began with a sweeping round of strikes that killed Iran’s supreme leader. Tehran’s response was expansive: volleys of missiles and drones targeting U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria, barrages against Israeli cities, harassment of commercial shipping in the Persian Gulf, and coordinated attacks by proxy militias across the region. Hegseth was among those taken aback, says the person familiar with his thinking: “He was expecting the Iranians to fight back in some form. When they started attacking virtually the entire region, it sort of hit him like, ‘Whoa, we’re really in this now.’”
by Eric Cortellessa, Time | Read more:
Image: Missiles launched by Iran over Beersheba in southern Israel, on March 29. Mostafa Alkharouf—Anadolu/Getty Images
***
Kristi Noem is gone. Pam Bondi is out. If there’s going to be a fall guy for our ill-starred regime-change operation in Iran, it’s likely to be Pete Hegseth, whose prewar overconfidence is being highlighted in hostile leaks from inside the administration, emphasizing how he was “caught off guard” (never a good look!) by the scale and boldness of the Iranian response.The former secretary of homeland security, the jettisoned attorney general and the embattled secretary of defense have often seemed like President Trump’s ideal cabinet officials: selected for televisual looks and energy, lacking any political constituency apart from Trump himself, serving without qualm as pure conduits of his will. So their struggles offer a lesson for Republicans contemplating service in this administration’s 33 (but who’s counting?) remaining months: What Trump appears to want and what he actually wants are not exactly the same thing.
The seeming desire of the president is for loyalty, sycophancy and TV-ready swagger. He wants to turn on Fox News and see his top officials performing like reality-show characters in the drama of his administration. He wants to sit in a cabinet meeting and listen to a litany of his accomplishments. He wants the decisions made in the West Wing or at Mar-a-Lago to be simply rubber-stamped in his departmental fiefs.
He wants all that, but at the same time he also wants victory rather than defeat, and he definitely doesn’t want embarrassment. His metrics for success are unusual by normal presidential standards: He has a high tolerance for unpopularity, to put it mildly, and a remarkable shamelessness around corruption. But there is a point at which, even inside his cocoon, Trump senses that things aren’t going well for him. And then sycophancy doesn’t work, and it doesn’t matter if you were acting on his orders; you will be punished for that unsuccessful service just as surely as if you’d tried to thwart his aims... when Hegseth reportedly told the president “let’s do it” in the run-up to the war, he was merely being an enthusiastic yes man for a bellicose boss. But there’s no reward for being a loyalist if Trump’s grand plans don’t actually work out: In that case, you own the failure, not him.
