Trump says the Iran war will end ‘very soon’ – but it is not clear how

Donald Trump has said he thinks the war with Iran will be over soon. In a phone interview with CBS News on Monday, March 9, the US president said: “I think the war is very complete, pretty much … we’re very far ahead of schedule.”

This seemed to mark a shift in tone from earlier statements in which Trump had insisted the war would continue until Iran’s “unconditional surrender”. Given Tehran’s defiant tone and continuing missile and drone campaign throughout the region, such a scenario doesn’t seem to be on the cards.

Trump’s remarks appear to have been designed to calm the anxiety which had spread through financial markets on Monday, with oil briefly trading above US$100 (£75) a barrel for the first time since 2022 and stock markets falling. They look to have achieved that goal, at least for now, as markets stabilised the following day.

The fact that economic pain would persuade Trump to start talking about an end to the conflict is not surprising. The economy is set to be the major issue in the upcoming US midterm elections in November and Trump’s domestic political aides are concerned that inflation caused by higher oil prices will harm the Republican party’s prospects.

They want Trump to find a way out of the conflict as soon as is feasible. But what Trump’s comments did not clarify is what his exit strategy might look like and whether the US would be able to claim victory after finding one.

Trump’s mixed messaging

Whether a war is deemed to have been a success or a failure is typically judged against the goals the combatants set for themselves. However, reaching that judgment is complicated in this case by the fact that different figures in the Trump administration have put forward different goals.

The Pentagon, for instance, has claimed that the US has “short-term, clearly defined goals in Iran”. These goals are destroying Iran’s missile capabilities, its navy and its nuclear ambitions. But if that is official US policy, then nobody seems to have told the president.

Trump has frequently spoken like he will settle for nothing less than a complete change of leadership in Iran. Sometimes Trump has made it sound like this means total regime change, with the Iranian people rising up and overthrowing their government.

When announcing the start of the operation in Iran, for example, Trump said: “I call upon all Iranian patriots who yearn for freedom to seize this moment, to be brave, be bold, be heroic and take back your country.”

At other times, he has drawn a parallel to Venezuela where the US deposed Nicolás Maduro in January and installed its preferred figure, Delcy Rodríguez, in his place. Following the killing of Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei on February 28, Trump said: “I have to be involved in the [next] appointment, like with Delcy in Venezuela.”

Through these remarks, Trump’s suggestion seems to be that someone from within the current Iranian government might be acceptable to the US if they agree to reorient the country’s policies.

Judged by that metric, any early end to the conflict is almost certainly going to leave the war looking like a failure for the US. Israel and the US have not gained enough leverage over the Iranian government to force a significant change in leadership, and it’s extremely hard to see how they could.

Iran’s government has so far shown no signs of internal fissures or weakness. It has, for example, now replaced the slain Khamenei with his 56-year-old son in a show of defiance towards Trump who had previously said: “I’m not going through this to end up with another Khamenei.” And after 11 days of attack by two of the most powerful air forces in the world, it is still fighting back.

A better case might be made that the Pentagon’s goal of degrading Iran’s military capabilities has been achieved. But the results here also threaten to look underwhelming for the US, especially because Trump had raised the prospect of achieving much more.

If all this war is seen to have accomplished is a great deal of damage to the Iranian military while leaving its government intact and able to rebuild its capabilities, Trump will struggle to justify its cost.

That cost can be counted in many ways. This ranges from the estimated US$1 billion to US$2 billion a day the war is costing in financial outlays through to the years it is going to take to build US munitions stocks back up.

The US will also incur diplomatic and reputational costs as a result of starting such a reckless conflict. And that’s before counting the economic damage from energy disruption and the risks of sparking a recurrent cycle of conflict into the future.

At the same time, this war may also reinforce the idea among American adversaries and friends that the US is strategically incontinent and unable to match means to ends. All of this means that any claim of victory by Trump will probably ring hollow, absent some major change in the pattern of the war to date.

A final complicating factor is that Trump alone does not get to decide when the war ends. Iran is still firing missiles and drones, and its threats to shipping are keeping the vital strait of Hormuz shipping lane effectively closed.

This is inflicting economic pain on the world, with Saudi Arabia’s state oil company Aramco warning recently of “catastrophic consequences” for global oil markets if the waterway doesn’t reopen soon.

Perhaps the worst case scenario for Trump will be if he declares victory and Iran continues to attack targets in the region. But if market turmoil forces Trump to find an early exit, this scenario could easily come true.

Andrew Gawthorpe is affiliated with the Foreign Policy Centre in London.