President Donald Trump’s top aides are already scripting a victory narrative in Iran for the inevitable day when he tries to extricate himself from the war.
The White House is conjuring a surreal endgame scenario that he will personally certify an unconditional surrender by the Islamic Republic — even if it’s not true.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth says only Trump can judge whether the war is at “the beginning, the middle or the end.” It’s as if his boss is the sole arbiter of reality amid a raging regional conflagration.
Iran’s revolutionary leaders are unlikely to cooperate since Trump’s choreography will clash with their core objective in an existential fight: outlasting Americans’ tolerance for a new foreign war.
And the Middle East’s tormented history shows violence is not a tap that can just be turned off. Each new war merely refreshes the historical grievance that feeds the next one. This bitter experience means Israelis, Lebanese, Iranians and their regional brethren will be less sanguine than Trump’s team about the future.
Furthermore, America’s own recent past suggests that conflicts often defy presidential exit strategies and rarely culminate in unequivocal victories such as those over Germany and Japan in World War II.
Why the White House needs to think about an endgame
Potential paths to halting US military operations might still be a way off. But there’s increasing urgency to identify them as an oil crisis ignited by the war threatens global economic disaster. And Trump’s fragile political position risks being further weakened by elevated gasoline prices he insists are “temporary.”
The conflict also undermines Trump’s campaign vow to start no new wars. This is not a political trifle. It’s an obligation carried in the hearts of hundreds of thousands of US service men and women who served in the post-9/11 wars and vowed to honor fallen compatriots by opposing new foreign imbroglios.
Amid the staccato bravado of his news conference Tuesday, Hegseth spoke pointedly of this trust from his perspective as a decorated veteran of the Iraq and Afghan wars, “This is not endless nation-building under those types of quagmires we saw under Bush or Obama. It’s not even close. Our generation of soldier will not let that happen again, and nor will this president,” Hegseth said.
Unlike those comrades who oppose new adventurism, Hegseth concluded the answer is a more lethal and unconstrained brand of US warfare delivered through fearsome air campaigns — or special forces raids like the one that toppled Venezuela’s president.
“We’re crushing the enemy in an overwhelming display of technical skill and military force,” he said of the Iran war. “We will not relent until the enemy is totally and decisively defeated. But we do so … on our timeline and at our choosing.”
Whether this methodology works is one of the most critical questions of Trump’s second-term foreign policy. The president, however, has struggled to coin a definitive war rationale. He’s shuffled through warnings that Iran was about to destroy the Middle East and had reconstituted a nuclear program he previously claimed to have “obliterated.”
He pushed for regime change and demanded to name the country’s next leader — but also said he might do a deal with an Iranian cleric.
This lack of rhetorical precision explains why the administration is now grappling for more convincing endgame scenarios.
On Tuesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked what Trump meant when he demanded Iran’s unconditional surrender.
“When President Trump says that Iran is in a place of unconditional surrender, he’s not claiming the Iranian regime is going to come out and say that themselves,” Leavitt explained. “What the president means is that Iran’s threats will no longer be backed by a ballistic missile arsenal that protects them from building a nuclear bomb in their country.”
She went on: “President Trump will determine when Iran is in a place of unconditional surrender, when they no longer pose a credible and direct threat to the United States of America and our allies.”
Leavitt may have been walking back an undeliverable Trump condition. But the idea that he could accept a fake Iranian surrender strains credulity.
Why Iran might also declare victory
But it’s not just the endgame that doesn’t add up. Trump has been hesitant to level with Americans about what is really going on. He refers to the war as an “excursion” in a classic case of a tendency identified by George Orwell of politicians misusing language to obscure reality rather than to express truth.
A more discrete set of war aims might have avoided Trump’s current problem.
The administration has a strong case that US and Israeli air assault is inflicting catastrophic damage on Iran’s missile, nuclear and military infrastructure, and now the economic underpinnings of the regime. A defanged Iran would make Israel and the region safer and count as a significant victory for the president even if the regime clings on. His raised expectations and scattershot rationalizations for the strikes, however, might diminish such an achievement.
But a premature presidential victory lap that ignores the reality of a still-raging war would repeat a pattern that has haunted modern US foreign policy.
Often, America has seemed to be fighting different wars than its adversaries. And in the current one, it’s conceivable both sides could claim a win when the fighting stops.
Iran’s theocratic regime is being pummeled by the world’s premier superpower and a regional hegemon. Its military is being destroyed and its regional punch, built up over decades, eviscerated. But anything short of total defeat — no matter whether Trump falsely claims the regime surrendered — would count for it as a win.
“I think the Iranian leadership understands that it’s militarily inferior to the United States (and) it’s not going to have a military victory,” Mohammad Ali Shabani, editor of Amwaj.media told Becky Anderson on CNN International. “You have to think about, how would Iran define victory? Because each state needs to have a kind of endgame in which they can claim to be to have been victorious.”
“I think for (Iran’s regime) it’s about being able to say that we survived,” Shabani said.
History has lessons for Iran
The mismatch in the US fight against Iran is characteristic of many of Washington’s modern wars.
Typically, the US relies on massive firepower, the prowess of its high-tech weaponry and capacity to inflict enormous violence with precision across a vast battlefield. It almost always confronts far weaker adversaries.
But enemies adapt and wage asymmetric warfare. They have often confounded Washington with their endurance, with insurgent tactics, or by exploiting local conditions, terrain or culture the US doesn’t understand.
Iran might respond to a Trump claim of victory with terrorist attacks on US global soft targets; with continued missile strikes in the Gulf; or by activating what’s left of proxy allies such as Hezbollah and Hamas. Its sowing of mines in the Strait of Hormuz — a critical oil exportation route — is designed to raise the costs for Trump. New-generation drone warfare is a cheap, easy way to quickly rebuild its threat outside its borders.
Tehran has no doubt consulted the playbooks of previously outgunned US enemies.
In Vietnam, Communist Viet Cong guerrillas and the North Vietnamese Army melted into thick jungles where they had the advantage over US troops. In Iraq, the collapse of the Iraqi state led to the rise of insurgencies and sectarian militia that created killing grounds for US troops. In Afghanistan, the Taliban waited nearly two decades for America to leave, emulating forbears who endured over Soviet and British empires.
And Tehran has another advantage: geography.
America’s distance from such theaters also explains why foreign wars become finite once citizens wonder why they are fighting other peoples’ battles with American blood and treasure. Trump’s failure to properly prepare the country for this war and to define clear goals and an exit strategy make him especially vulnerable on this point as a pivotal moment in the war looms.
Barring a sudden transformation of a region soaked in blood and the collapse of a regime that has defied the US for nearly 50 years, he will soon face a dilemma familiar to many modern presidents.
Does he manufacture a false or partial victory and get out? Or does he get sucked in deeper?
