The Trump administration is back at war. It just doesn’t want to admit it.
In the 11 days since the United States resumed its air strikes against Iran, neither President Trump nor any other senior administration official has publicly addressed the campaign. U.S. forces began by striking Iranian military facilities but later expanded to attacking civilian infrastructure that the administration says is being used for military purposes.
Iran’s decision to attack ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz and the U.S. decision to retaliate and threaten to abandon diplomacy have pushed both sides close to the resumption of a war that neither wants.
For the United States—which joined Israel in late February in a war to end Iran’s nuclear ambitions, among other goals—allowing Iran’s continued attacks on ships in the strait risked signaling that Tehran still holds the whip hand over one of the world’s most strategic waterways.
General Chris “C. D.” Donahue was the last U.S. soldier to leave Afghanistan during the chaotic 2021 withdrawal. As the head of Army forces in Europe and Africa, he has helped bolster Ukraine in its fight to repel the Russian invasion. Now Donahue has become the latest casualty in Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s purge of the military’s senior ranks.
Donahue’s abrupt departure, after just 18 months in his role, is another sign of the upheaval.
Declaring that “the deal is all signed” with Iran, as President Trump did today, is like shopping for a wedding dress after a good first date: It’s just too soon.
A deal has an element of finality and permanence. A nuclear deal with Iran, for example, would require specific obligations, concessions, and verification measures, such as inspections, agreed to by all parties.
President Trump, celebrating Tehran’s declaration that the Strait of Hormuz would reopen to commercial shipping, posted on Truth Social on April 17, “IRAN HAS JUST ANNOUNCED THAT THE STRAIT OF IRAN IS FULLY OPEN AND READY FOR FULL PASSAGE.” The opening didn’t last. But, in his haste, Trump had inadvertently spelled out possibly the most consequential result of his eight-week war: The Strait of Hormuz now looks, in practice, like the “STRAIT OF IRAN.
President Trump may have reached the limits of what he can achieve by bombing targets in Iran—now he’s trying to use economic pressure to bring Tehran back to the negotiating table. After a six-week pummeling by U.S. and Israeli forces failed to force Iran to capitulate, and a marathon weekend negotiating session ended without a deal, the United States announced that it would be imposing a naval blockade on Iran.
President Trump clearly wants out—and soon.
The war that the United States and Israel started with Iran delayed what Trump sees as a landmark visit to China, which he postponed until mid-May, suggesting that he thinks he will be free to travel by then. He said in a Cabinet meeting that most of Iran’s military capabilities have been destroyed, implying a high degree of success.
The death of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on the first day of the Iran war generated hope that the regime change the Trump administration and Israel yearned for would come to pass, perhaps with a more moderate new leader stepping up. That, after all, is what happened two months ago in Venezuela, where Delcy Rodríguez assumed power after her boss, Nicolás Maduro, was captured by U.S. forces.
During President Trump’s first term, Pentagon officials took a highly unusual step to diminish the likelihood of war: They shared their plans for a large-scale conflict with Iran with top White House officials. They reasoned that if advisers saw the risks that the plan entailed, they would choose another path, people familiar with the matter told me.
The gambit was successful. At least twice, the president weighed ordering an attack on Iran, only to be dissuaded by aides from moving forward.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, in a Pentagon meeting last year, passed a note to Army Secretary Dan Driscoll about one of Driscoll’s top aides, asking, in effect: Why hasn’t this guy been fired yet?
The aide, Colonel Dave Butler, a former infantry officer, is a longtime leader in Army public affairs (not a specialty Hegseth embraces) who worked closely with the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley (whom Hegseth despises).
Even with a nearly $1 trillion budget, the U.S. military can only do so much. Pentagon officials are privately warning that the United States may not be able to threaten Venezuela’s regime, support protesters seeking to topple Iran’s government, and protect its interests in the Asia-Pacific without being overstretched.
As a naval aviator, Alvin Holsey trained to conduct missions that required precise targeting. For years, his job was to fly helicopters over potential targets and, using radar and other detectors, assess whether they posed a threat to the United States; if so, he had to determine whether to launch an attack.
On September 2, Holsey, now an admiral leading the U.S.
The first person I saw when I walked into the Pentagon for the final time was Jimmy. I don’t even know his last name, but I know his story. Before he started work at the labyrinthine headquarters of America’s armed forces, he was a medic in the Marine Corps. For the past 21 years, he has been a building police officer and an unofficial, affable greeter.
In the days before Pete Hegseth stepped onstage to address the hundreds of generals and admirals he summoned for a mysterious meeting outside Washington, D.C., officials at the Pentagon joked that the defense secretary could have saved a lot of time and money by making his remarks via email instead.
Sign up for National Security, a newsletter featuring coverage of rising authoritarianism, military intelligence, and geopolitical conflicts.
In the 18 years I have been reporting at the Pentagon, military leaders have rarely been delighted to see me. Over the years, I have had heated conversations with generals, spokespeople, and civilian leaders. I have reported news that the department officials didn’t want publicized, as well as information they were eager to share.
The black-and-white video President Donald Trump released yesterday was, in some respects, familiar. The grainy clip, only 30 seconds long and taken from a U.S. aircraft, shows a small boat skipping across the waves, bracketed by crosshairs. The crosshairs move in closer. Seconds later, a missile explodes, engulfing the boat in fire and destroying everything and everyone on board.
Last month, a group of seven U.S. generals and admirals—including the top admiral in charge of U.S. military operations in the Asia-Pacific region—prepared to travel to the Aspen Security Forum, in Colorado. Security officials had spoken at the annual conference for years, including during Donald Trump’s first term, and were set to discuss topics such as the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, the future of AI, and threats from China.
These days, you could forgive Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for feeling like an American CEO being whipsawed by President Donald Trump’s on-again, off-again tariffs. But the Ukrainian president is not trying to maximize profits. He wants to win a war and needs a consistent, predictable flow of American weapons to do that.
He’s not getting it.
Late last month, the administration suspended a promised shipment of much-needed arms to Ukraine, saying the U.S.