{"id":205057,"date":"2026-03-23T06:37:27","date_gmt":"2026-03-23T06:37:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/trumps-changing-messages-on-iran-war-what-does-it-say-about-us-strategy-al-jazeera\/"},"modified":"2026-03-23T06:37:27","modified_gmt":"2026-03-23T06:37:27","slug":"trumps-changing-messages-on-iran-war-what-does-it-say-about-us-strategy-al-jazeera","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/trumps-changing-messages-on-iran-war-what-does-it-say-about-us-strategy-al-jazeera\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s changing messages on Iran war: What does it say about US strategy? – Al Jazeera"},"content":{"rendered":"

With the war in its fourth week, the Trump administration sends contradictory messages on how to proceed.<\/em>
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As the United States-Israeli war on Iran enters its fourth week, the conflict seems to have escalated beyond President Donald Trump\u2019s control.
The Iranian government has been able to endure the killings of its top political and military leaders and has launched retaliatory attacks on Israel and Gulf countries despite weeks of air strikes.
Tehran has also been able to impose a de facto blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway through which a fifth of the world\u2019s oil and liquefied natural gas supplies pass, sending oil prices soaring. Analysts said the conflict risks unleashing a global recession. And that has put pressure on Trump, prompting his administration to allow the sale of sanctioned Russian oil to try to ease the energy crisis and pressure allies to police the strait, so far unsuccessfully.
Trump\u2019s response in how to deal with the situation has been anything but coherent.
On Saturday, Trump upped the ante, issuing a threat to \u201cobliterate\u201d Iran\u2019s power plants if Tehran does not reopen the Strait of Hormuz within 48 hours. This came a day after he said the US was \u201cwinding down\u201d its military operations in Iran.
Analysts said Trump launched the war without a clear goal and misjudged how Tehran would respond. The conflict has expanded across the Middle East.
So is Trump looking to exit the war \u2013 or escalate it?
Here\u2019s a brief look at the changing statements from Washington:
While one statement from Trump signalled that the US is considering \u201cwinding down\u201d the war on Iran, another one indicated that the conflict would widen in the coming days.
On Saturday, Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that Washington was \u201cvery close to meeting our objectives as we consider winding down our great Military efforts in the Middle East with respect to the Terrorist Regime of Iran\u201d.
Trump listed the goals of the war as: completely degrading Iran\u2019s missile capability, destroying its defence industrial base, eliminating the Iranian navy and air force, never allowing Iran to get even close to having nuclear weapons, protecting Middle Eastern allies, and guarding and policing the Strait of Hormuz.
Both Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have claimed repeatedly in the past few days that Iranian military capabilities have been \u201ccompletely destroyed\u201d even as Tehran continues to retaliate against Israel and strike countries in the region.
US military officials said they have carried out heavy bombardments of Iran\u2019s coast, including with bunker buster bombs, but still have not been able to limit Tehran\u2019s capacity to disrupt the Strait of Hormuz.
On Saturday, Trump said the US \u201chas blown Iran off of the map\u201d and insisted that he has \u201cmet my own goals \u2026 and weeks ahead of schedule!\u201d He also reiterated that Iran\u2019s \u201cleadership is gone, their navy and air force are dead, they have absolutely no defense, and they want to make a deal\u201d.
Iranian leaders have consistently denied reaching out to the US with a ceasefire offer.
Just an hour later, Trump returned to his Truth Social platform with a warning for Iran.
\u201cIf Iran doesn\u2019t FULLY OPEN, WITHOUT THREAT, the Strait of Hormuz, within 48 HOURS from this exact point in time, the United States of America will hit and obliterate their various POWER PLANTS, STARTING WITH THE BIGGEST ONE FIRST!\u201d Trump wrote.
Iran has since responded by saying it will hit energy sites across the Middle East if its power facilities are targeted. It has already fired hundreds of missiles and drones on Gulf countries, targeting US assets as well as energy facilities.
Between Trump\u2019s claims to be \u201cwinding down\u201d operations and upping the ante later, his administration announced it is sending three more warships to the Middle East with about 2,500 additional Marines.
The US military said about 50,000 military personnel are already deployed for the war against Iran.
That has been among the foremost questions posed to US officials, including Trump, since the war on Iran was launched on February 28.
The next day, Trump told the Daily Mail that \u201cit will be four weeks or so. It\u2019s always been about a four-week process.\u201d A day later, Trump said at the White House: \u201cWe projected four to five weeks, but we have capability to go far longer than that.\u201d
On March 8, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told the CBS TV network\u2019s 60 Minutes programme: \u201cThis is only just the beginning.\u201d The next day, the US president told the same channel that he thinks \u201cthe war is very complete, pretty much.\u201d And the US military operation was \u201cway ahead of schedule\u201d.
Then, on March 9, Trump said one could say the war is \u201cboth complete and just beginning\u201d. Later the same day, the president said: \u201cWe\u2019ve already won in many ways, but we haven\u2019t won enough\u201d and promised to go further and harsher against Iran.
On March 11, Trump said: \u201cWe don\u2019t want to leave early, do we? We\u2019ve got to finish the job.\u201d<\/p>\n

Responses to this question are perhaps the most telling about US posturing in the war against Iran.
On March 2, Hegseth said the attacks were aimed at ending \u201c47 long years\u201d of war by \u201cthe expansionist and Islamist regime in Tehran\u201d and were launched because Iran refused to negotiate with the US.
Hours later, Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, told reporters the US knew Israel was about to strike Iran, adding that the Trump administration believed the US needed to launch a pre-emptive strike before Iran\u2019s retaliation potentially targeted US forces. \u201cWe went proactively in a defensive way to prevent them from inflicting higher damage,\u201d he said.
This sparked a massive row in Washington with critics saying Israel had forced the US into war with Iran. Soon Trump rebutted his top diplomat, saying: \u201cThey [Iran] were going to attack. If we didn\u2019t do it, they were going to attack first. \u2026 So if anything, I might have forced Israel\u2019s hand.\u201d
The next day, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, concluded that Trump just had a \u201cgood feeling\u201d that Iran would strike so Washington attacked Tehran.
The launch of the war came as Washington and Tehran were scheduled to meet for another round of talks that were started late last year. Before the war, their Omani mediator said a deal was \u201cwithin reach\u201d.
The US and Israeli assertion that Tehran was on the verge of making a nuclear bomb has not been backed up by the United Nations nuclear watchdog. Last week, US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard also told Congress that Iran was not in a position to make an atomic bomb.
Some analysts said the Trump administration was convinced to go to war by Netanyahu, who has been seeking US military intervention in Iran for decades. They said Trump was buoyed by a swift US military operation in Venezuela and did not think through Iran\u2019s strengths before going into the war. In January, the US military abducted<\/a> President Nicolas Maduro in a military operation in Caracas that took two and a half hours.
Analysts said the moving goalposts in the Iran war show the policy limits of the current Trump administration as well as its strategy, to some extent, of keeping off-ramps available.
Zeidon Alkinani, a Middle East analyst at the Arab Perspectives Institute, told Al Jazeera that in the earlier days of the hostilities, there appeared to be clearer targets and limited objectives.
\u201cThere now seems to be a more chaotic reaction,\u201d he said. He described the attacks as increasingly reciprocal, suggesting strikes on oil or energy facilities could prompt further escalation.
Last week, Iran attacked energy facilities in Qatar and caused \u201csignificant damage\u201d<\/a>, knocking out\u00a0 17 percent of Qatar\u2019s liquefied natural gas (LNG) export capacity. Qatar produces 20 percent of global LNG supplies. Iran said the attack was in retaliation for Israeli attacks on a gas plant.
Paolo von Schirach, president of the Global Policy Institute, told Al Jazeera that Trump changes his mind \u201cvery quickly\u201d and it is hard to predict what his next step could be in the war on Iran.
The analyst said it was unclear to him what \u201ctools\u201d Trump has to end the war.
\u201cWe look at his message saying the war is winding down. OK, good. Things are quiet. Maybe there is an off-ramp somehow. But now he says that if the Iranians don\u2019t open the Strait of Hormuz, then we [the US] are going to unleash hell and what have you,\u201d von Schirach noted.
\u201cIt is not quite clear to me what he wants and what the tools are to accomplish this.\u201d
Von Schirach added that it would be difficult to predict whether the US could force Iran into submission, given its size and population. Using as a reference Iraq, where 150,000 American soldiers were deployed during the Second Gulf War, the analyst predicted that the US might need as many as half a million soldiers if Trump \u201cwants to take over Iran\u201d.<\/p>\n

Follow Al Jazeera English:<\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With the war in its fourth week, the Trump administration sends contradictory messages on how to proceed.SaveShareAs the United States-Israeli war on Iran enters its fourth week, the conflict seems to have escalated beyond President Donald Trump\u2019s control.The Iranian government has been able to endure the killings of its top political and military leaders and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":205058,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-205057","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-us","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205057"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205057\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/205058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}