Seven months into the war with Iran, President Donald Trump says it will end whenever he decides it should, and critics were quick to point out that it could be horrible messaging.
Talking to reporters on a tarmac Wednesday night, Trump again said the war is nearly over.
“And the Iran war will end very soon. It’s going to end very soon,” Trump said. “As soon as I want it to end, it’ll end.”
He also said that “oil prices will drop like a rock” once the fighting stops.
Trump made a similar promise in March, telling reporters back then that the war would be over “very soon.”
Jonah Goldberg, editor-in-chief of the conservative outlet The Dispatch, questioned the message.
“‘As soon as I want it to end’ seems like suboptimal messaging for an unpopular war,” Goldberg wrote on X.
Mario Nawfal, a podcaster and X Spaces host popular with right-leaning audiences, noted how long the war has already gone on.
“So 7 months is exactly how long the government wants it to last,” Nawfal wrote.
The progressive commentary account Wu Tang is for the Children asked why Trump hadn’t wanted it to end sooner.
“Ummm how about 6-7 months ago,” the account posted.
Political comedian Rose Benson pointed to the human cost. “21 service members have died in Trump’s war in Iran,” she wrote. That matches the latest count of U.S. troop deaths in the conflict.
The anti-Trump group Republicans Against Trump answered the clip with three clown emojis.
Mounira Baraka, a lawyer whose profile lists work in diplomacy across North America, Europe and North Africa, mocked the president’s framing.
“Trump thinks the Iran war is a Netflix subscription,” she wrote.
Patterico, writer of the The Constitutional Vanguard Substack, chimed in, "Clip it and run it on a loop for the next 20 days."