Everything Was Predicted, It Just Wasn’t What They Wanted to Hear

After bombs and negotiations, hunger is now supposed to bring Tehran to its knees, even though the president’s own advisers had laid out exactly where this could end before the first shot was fired. Days before the first planes took off toward Iran, President Trump summoned his intelligence chief to the Oval Office with the kind of question you usually answer before a war, not after it: whether a full-scale attack was a good idea. Iran was weaker than it had been in decades, senior advisers and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had told him. A rare opportunity to smash the nuclear program and polish his legacy as a peacemaker. What remained open was whether one major strike might bring down the regime along with it.

Then-Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard laid out what the apparatus knew. Killing the supreme leader would probably produce a harder-line regime, one even more determined to go after the bomb. Tehran would close the Strait of Hormuz and throw the energy market into turmoil. And it would attack American troops and partners until allies began questioning Washington’s reliability. What Gabbard said, the generals said too. A war would cost lives and eat into the stockpiles of an overstretched force whose readiness was already slipping. Trump brushed the concerns aside, saying the military would solve every problem once it came up. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine repeatedly assured him they could handle every complication.

On February 28, the bombs fell. Trump called on Iranians to overthrow their government and promised the war would be over within six weeks. Nearly six months later, the Revolutionary Guards are still firing on commercial ships in the strait, and there is no end in sight. The war has cost an estimated 3,000 Iranians and 18 American servicemembers their lives, while another 756 have been wounded, according to the Pentagon. It damaged U.S. bases and depleted munitions stockpiles. Oil reserves have been drained. Ahead of the midterm elections, that is hurting Republicans, and Trump’s poll numbers have fallen to the lowest point of his presidency.

Former White House officials see no easy road left to what he wants: an agreement that permanently limits Iran’s nuclear program, along with the glory of being remembered as a historic wartime president. “This was all predictable and predicted,” said Eric Brewer of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, who has served under both parties. A straight line can be drawn from a war launched without a political objective to the diplomacy that failed to end it.

White House spokeswoman Olivia Wales pushes back. Trump has largely destroyed the country’s military and nuclear facilities, she said, and is now preparing to crush its economy with a naval blockade and sanctions. “He will never allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon,” Wales said. Tehran would be wise to make a deal, otherwise it knows what could follow. The year had begun with a desire to show off American power. In June 2025, warplanes had struck three Iranian nuclear facilities, and in January Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro had been captured. Netanyahu recommended Iran as the next arena.

Not everyone wanted this war. Vice President JD Vance argued for the slower route: maybe Iran could be pushed at the negotiating table into giving up its nuclear program, risky, yes, but cheaper than a campaign with consequences no one could really predict, especially since the Iranian economy was already collapsing under sanctions. If that path failed, a later, fast strike would carry that much more legitimacy. Trump listened and then chose the Pentagon’s “decisive” options.

Adm. Brad Cooper, head of U.S. Central Command, laid out the targets with Hegseth and Caine: missile launchers, radar sites, weapons factories, mine depots, warships. The Islamic Republic was to be overwhelmed and crippled while Israel took out its leadership. The Pentagon provides unbiased information, a White House official said. A spokesman for Caine declined to comment, Central Command referred questions to the defense secretary’s office, and that office stayed silent. While the war was underway, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and envoy Steve Witkoff walked into a Mar-a-Lago fundraiser with news: Israel had killed Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei. Trump had them announce it to the guests right away, the room applauded, and the president folded his arms and puffed out his chest. The CIA did not comment when asked.

The applause faded faster than the bill grew. Sitting on the throne of the slain father was his son Mojtaba Khamenei, harder and with no thought of surrender, just as Gabbard had predicted. The losses in men and equipment raised the question of what this war was actually delivering. The closed Strait of Hormuz brought one-fifth of the world’s oil and gas traffic to a halt and pushed fuel prices higher. Gulf leaders, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar, appealed to Washington for an end and a solution that would let everyone save face. Republicans called too, warning that the war was hurting the party in November. Behind closed doors, Trump fumed and asked why Iran was not collapsing under the constant bombing.

A ceasefire came. Defense officials watched as Tehran used the pause to lay dozens of mines in a small section of the strait. By mid-April, still unsure what to do, Trump asked a friend whether he should “bomb the shit” out of Iran. The friend told him not to, warning that it would only drag the United States deeper into a widening Middle East war. On June 17 came the breakthrough, a temporary agreement to reopen the strait and a 60-day window for nuclear talks. Why settle for something temporary, confidants asked; Trump pointed to internal polling showing that nearly 80 percent of Americans wanted the war to end, no matter the price. Soon afterward, Tehran started firing on ships again. Trump took it as a betrayal.

From there, the wheel kept turning: a deal announced, then quickly collapsing, followed by threats, sometimes carried out, sometimes pulled back with talk of fresh progress toward dismantling the nuclear program. In late July, Trump ordered a strike he said would be bigger than anything since World War II, then pulled it back when regional leaders urged restraint. Trump is now relying on sanctions and a permanent blockade that is also wearing down his own forces. Alongside that comes the waiting, which in his telling is supposed to make Iran crawl to him on its knees. If the waterway reopens, victory could still be declared even without a nuclear deal.

On August 17, the deadline for the nuclear talks expired. Three days later, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced the shift to economic warfare, meant to “collapse the regime,” under the name Operation Economic Outcast. Six months after the first shot, the phrase “regime change” is back where everything began, only now at a much higher price.