The image Trump shared this week is hard to miss. It shows him in front of fighter jets, a warship and American flags, and the post declares “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED 2026.” Smaller portraits of George W. Bush and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei sit above him. The picture is AI-generated.
Bush is there for a reason. In 2003 he stood on the USS Abraham Lincoln under a White House banner with the same two words, and he was widely mocked for it. The Iraq War ran nearly nine more years. U.S. troops are still in Iraq more than two decades on.
Khamenei, Iran’s former supreme leader, was killed in an Israeli strike in the opening salvos of the current war. It reached the six-month mark on Friday.
A “little excursion” that kept going
Trump had repeatedly told Americans this would be a “little excursion” of a few weeks. He now says he is “not in a hurry” to bring Iran back to negotiations. Thursday, he told reporters: “They’re not paying their troops. They’re in deep trouble. They have very little capacity.”
The cost so far tops $37.5 billion, and his popularity has slipped with November elections near. Friday found him in Houston, honoring the Artemis II crew after their 10-day mission around the moon. Whether he would say anything about the anniversary was unclear.
The war cuts against what he sold on the campaign trail. He attacked earlier presidents for squandering taxpayer money and American lives in the Middle East and promised to keep the military out of “endless wars.” He bristles at any comparison with Iraq and Afghanistan, where more than 7,000 Americans died. No U.S. troops have deployed into Iran.
Hormuz and the blockade
Israeli strikes in the first weeks destroyed much of Iran’s leadership structure, and Trump says the campaign has gutted its navy and air force. Iran fights back in the Strait of Hormuz. On Thursday Trump repeated that the strait is open and said 24 vessels went through the day before, against roughly 130 daily before the war.
The U.S. naval blockade, he says, keeps Iranian oil from reaching buyers. “We have control and we have the blockade,” Trump said. “Iran is not getting anything. Nothing is going through.”
A preliminary deal in June, meant to reopen the strait and start talks about Iran’s nuclear program, broke down within weeks after Iran began attacking ships. Qatar and Pakistan keep pushing both sides toward some way out. Qatar’s prime minister was in Tehran on Thursday.
Trump shows no interest in returning to that deal. His administration has turned instead to economic pressure, aimed at countries and companies that still trade with Tehran.
Aarathi Krishnan, a geopolitical risk analyst at RAKSHA Intelligence Future, said Iran has absorbed decades of sanctions and found ways around them. “This is not new to the Iranian regime,” Krishnan said.
Iranian officials say the war has caused $270 billion in direct and indirect damage.
Sources
- Trump says he’s ‘not in a hurry’ to end Iran war
- Trump says no hurry to end Iran war after once predicting quick finish – The Korea Times
- As Iran war hits six-month mark, Trump says he’s ‘not in a hurry’
