A senior Trump administration official made a stunning claim Sunday regarding the U.S. war against Iran, telling Zeteo’s Asawin Suebsaeng that the conflict not only began without “real” direction, but that it may very well come back to bite the administration later this year.
“It was doomed from the very start,” the senior Trump official told Zeteo, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “We went in with no real mission and we all knew that. Now we have to spend the next five months hoping voters don’t b----slap us for it.”
Launched in late February, Trump’s war against Iran began with a number of different objectives. Trump explicitly called for regime change just moments after launching his surprise attack on Iran. He’s also claimed the top war objective has been to ensure Iran does not have the capability to create a nuclear weapon.
And yet, despite Trump’s list of war objectives, his top officials – at least, according to the senior Trump official who spoke with Zeteo – were largely directionless in the early days of the war. Another U.S. official told Zeteo that they and their colleagues knew almost immediately that the war would end in failure.
“It made me say: We lost. That’s it. And the war had only just begun,” the official told Zeteo, also speaking on the condition of anonymity. “I don’t care if you were for or against this thing, if you’re the commander-in-chief, if you go to war, you can’t start thinking about cutting and running that early.”