Days before President Donald Trump ordered the United States into war with Iran in February, he summoned his intelligence chief to the Oval Office and asked whether a full-scale attack was the right move, according to a Wall Street Journal report detailing the warnings he received before the conflict and the decisions that followed.
Iran was at its weakest point in decades, senior aides and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Trump, offering what they saw as a rare chance to dismantle Tehran’s nuclear program and strengthen the president’s legacy as a peacemaker. The question was whether a major attack could achieve that goal and perhaps even bring down the regime.
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Trump was warned an Iran war could spiral. Six months later, it has
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Then-Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard presented a far more cautious assessment.
According to people familiar with the meeting, she warned Trump that killing Iran’s supreme leader could produce an even harder-line government, one more willing to pursue nuclear weapons. Tehran would likely move to close the Strait of Hormuz, destabilizing global energy markets, and strike US forces and allies across the Middle East, raising questions about Washington’s credibility and resolve.
Those warnings were not isolated. Senior military leaders also cautioned that a war could result in American casualties, strain weapons stockpiles and create readiness problems for an already stretched military.
Trump ordered the attack anyway. It began on Feb. 28, accompanied by calls for Iranians to overthrow their government.
Nearly six months later, a war Trump had said would be over within six weeks is still underway, with no clear end in sight.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps remains in control of the country and continues attacking commercial vessels in the Strait of Hormuz. The government led by Mojtaba Khamenei, who succeeded his father after the supreme leader was killed, has shown no sign of surrendering.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
(Photo: AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg, Pool)
The stalemate has pushed Trump to consider declaring victory if the Strait of Hormuz reopens, even without securing the nuclear agreement he originally sought.
For now, the president has shifted toward sanctions and a continuing blockade, betting that economic pressure can accomplish what military force and diplomacy have so far failed to deliver.
The cost has already been heavy.
An estimated 3,000 Iranians and 18 US servicemembers have been killed in combat-related operations, while the Pentagon says another 756 American troops have been wounded. US bases have been damaged, emergency oil reserves have been depleted and American munitions stockpiles have been strained.
Politically, the war has also become a growing liability. It is weighing on Republican prospects ahead of the midterm elections and has helped push Trump’s approval ratings to the lowest point of his presidency.
Some former White House and national security officials argue there is no simple path left to Trump’s preferred outcome: a deal that indefinitely restricts Iran’s nuclear program while allowing him to claim a historic wartime achievement.
“This was all predictable and predicted,” said Eric Brewer, a deputy vice president at the Nuclear Threat Initiative who served in both Democratic and Republican administrations. “You can draw a straight line from the fact that the war was launched without any clear political objective to the mishandled diplomacy in trying to end it.”
White House spokeswoman Olivia Wales said Trump had devastated Iran’s military and nuclear infrastructure and was now preparing to crush its economy through sanctions and a naval blockade.
“He will never allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon,” Wales said. “It would be wise for Iran to reach a deal. Otherwise, they know what could happen.”
The case for war
At the beginning of the year, Trump was looking for another opportunity to demonstrate American military power after the June 2025 strikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities and the January raid that captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, according to US officials.
Netanyahu presented Iran as the next arena.
But there was no consensus inside the administration.
Vice President JD Vance advocated a more cautious strategy, officials said, arguing that Tehran might still agree through negotiations to dismantle its nuclear program. A diplomatic deal carried risks, he told Trump, but those were lower than the costs of a war whose consequences could be difficult to control.
Iran’s economy was already buckling under heavy US sanctions, Vance argued. If negotiations failed, Trump would then have a stronger case for launching a swift and overwhelming attack.
Vice President JD Vance
(Photo: Vincent Alban / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / AFP)
Trump listened, but Pentagon presentations emphasizing what officials described as “decisive” military options ultimately carried more weight.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine and Adm. Brad Cooper, the head of US Central Command, repeatedly briefed Trump on plans to strike Iranian missile launchers, radar systems, weapons-production sites, mine-storage facilities and warships.
The goal was to overwhelm the Islamic Republic and cripple its armed forces while Israel targeted Iran’s senior leadership.
Despite the warnings from national security officials, Trump repeatedly suggested that the military could deal with complications as they emerged.
Hegseth and Caine responded on several occasions that they would manage whatever problems developed, according to officials who attended the meetings.
Early applause gives way to doubts
Shortly after the war began on Feb. 28, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Steve Witkoff, one of Trump’s principal Iran envoys, arrived at a fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago with major news: Israel had killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
Trump was delighted. He told them to announce the news to the crowd.
The room erupted in applause. Trump crossed his arms and puffed out his chest as he absorbed the reaction, according to people familiar with the event.
The satisfaction did not last.
As U.S. casualties mounted and American equipment and bases sustained damage, officials began questioning what Washington was actually gaining from the conflict.
Then came the economic shock.
Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz brought about one-fifth of the world’s oil and gas trade to a standstill, sending fuel prices sharply higher.
Leaders in Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar, contacted the White House and urged Trump to find a face-saving diplomatic solution. Republican lawmakers also warned him that the war was damaging the party ahead of November’s midterm elections.
Trump privately complained about the backlash and repeatedly asked aides why Iran had not surrendered despite the relentless bombing campaign.
Diplomatic efforts eventually produced a ceasefire, but the pause brought new complications. US defense officials watched as Iran used the lull to place dozens of mines in the Strait of Hormuz, although they were concentrated in a relatively small part of the waterway.
By mid-April, Trump was still struggling with the question of what to do next.
A friend visiting him urged him to end the war. Trump asked whether he should “bomb the s—” out of Iran. The friend said no, warning that doing so would only drag the United States deeper into a widening Middle East conflict.
A breakthrough appeared to come on June 17, when the two sides reached an interim agreement to reopen the strait and begin 60 days of nuclear negotiations.
Asked by confidants why he had accepted a temporary arrangement, Trump pointed to new internal White House polling showing that nearly 80% of Americans wanted an agreement ending the conflict regardless of its specific terms.
The breakthrough did not last.
Tehran soon resumed attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz. Trump viewed the move as a betrayal.
What followed became a familiar cycle: Trump would announce progress toward an agreement, only to see negotiations falter. He would then threaten overwhelming military action to force Iran to capitulate, sometimes following through and sometimes backing away when diplomacy appeared to revive.
In late July, Trump ordered a major assault that he said would be larger than any military operation since World War II. He later pulled back after regional leaders urged him not to escalate the fighting further.
The 60-day nuclear negotiation period expired on Aug. 17 without a breakthrough.
Three days later, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that the administration was turning toward a new economic-pressure campaign aimed at isolating Iran and, in his words, to “collapse the regime.”
The initiative was given a name: Operation Economic Outcast.
Six months after the war began, regime change was once again part of Washington’s vocabulary.
But after military force failed to secure a decisive outcome and repeated diplomatic initiatives collapsed, Trump’s strategy now rests on a different assumption: that Iran can be economically squeezed into accepting the agreement it has so far refused to make.