U.S. President Donald Trump looks at statues in the Rose Garden while returning to the White House, after Israel and the U.S. launched strikes on Iran, in Washington, D.C., U.S., March 1, 2026. REUTERS/Annabelle Gordon
The conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board issued a surprising warning to President Donald Trump about the "biggest mistake" he could make after striking Iran.
Early on Saturday morning, U.S. and Israeli forces conducted coordinated strikes against multiple sites in Iran, which killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the dictator who had ruled the country since 1989, multiple government officials, and damaged the country's ballistic and nuclear missile facilities. Trump has said the strikes will continue until the U.S. achieves its objectives, of which few details have been released.
The WSJ editors celebrated the move in a new editorial on Sunday, but also warned Trump not to end the campaign too soon.
"The first two days of the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran have been a striking success, but the response of the Iranian regime has also revealed the reason it was necessary," the editorial reads. "The biggest mistake President Trump could make now would be to end the war too soon, before Iran’s military and its domestic terror forces have been more thoroughly destroyed."
The editors added that Iran's continued strikes against its neighbors in the region speak to the necessity of the strikes.
"The attacks underscore that Iran is the main threat to the entire region," it added. "What it has been doing all along by proxy, it now does directly. This is an opportunity to rally even the region’s equivocating states into a coalition for changing the Tehran regime."
"All of this reveals the risks of ending the bombing campaign before Mr. Trump’s stated war aims are achieved," it continued.