Trump’s changing messages on Iran war: What does it say about US strategy? 

As the United States-Israeli war on Iran enters its fourth week, the conflict seems to have escalated beyond President Donald Trump’s control.

The Iranian government has been able to endure the killings of its top political and military leaders and has launched retaliatory attacks on Israel and Gulf countries despite weeks of air strikes.

Tehran has also been able to impose a de facto blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway through which a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas supplies pass, sending oil prices soaring. Analysts said the conflict risks unleashing a global recession. And that has put pressure on Trump, prompting his administration to allow the sale of sanctioned Russian oil to try to ease the energy crisis and pressure allies to police the strait, so far unsuccessfully.

Trump’s response in how to deal with the situation has been anything but coherent.

On Saturday, Trump upped the ante, issuing a threat to “obliterate” Iran’s power plants if Tehran does not reopen the Strait of Hormuz within 48 hours. This came a day after he said the US was “winding down” its military operations in Iran.

Analysts said Trump launched the war without a clear goal and misjudged how Tehran would respond. The conflict has expanded across the Middle East.

So is Trump looking to exit the war – or escalate it?

Here’s a brief look at the changing statements from Washington:

Is the war winding up or widening?

While one statement from Trump signalled that the US is considering “winding down” the war on Iran, another one indicated that the conflict would widen in the coming days.

On Saturday, Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that Washington was “very close to meeting our objectives as we consider winding down our great Military efforts in the Middle East with respect to the Terrorist Regime of Iran”.

Trump listed the goals of the war as: completely degrading Iran’s missile capability, destroying its defence industrial base, eliminating the Iranian navy and air force, never allowing Iran to get even close to having nuclear weapons, protecting Middle Eastern allies, and guarding and policing the Strait of Hormuz.

Both Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have claimed repeatedly in the past few days that Iranian military capabilities have been “completely destroyed” even as Tehran continues to retaliate against Israel and strike countries in the region.

US military officials said they have carried out heavy bombardments of Iran’s coast, including with bunker buster bombs, but still have not been able to limit Tehran’s capacity to disrupt the Strait of Hormuz.

On Saturday, Trump said the US “has blown Iran off of the map” and insisted that he has “met my own goals … and weeks ahead of schedule!” He also reiterated that Iran’s “leadership is gone, their navy and air force are dead, they have absolutely no defense, and they want to make a deal”.

Iranian leaders have consistently denied reaching out to the US with a ceasefire offer.

Just an hour later, Trump returned to his Truth Social platform with a warning for Iran.

“If Iran doesn’t FULLY OPEN, WITHOUT THREAT, the Strait of Hormuz, within 48 HOURS from this exact point in time, the United States of America will hit and obliterate their various POWER PLANTS, STARTING WITH THE BIGGEST ONE FIRST!” Trump wrote.

Iran has since responded by saying it will hit energy sites across the Middle East if its power facilities are targeted. It has already fired hundreds of missiles and drones on Gulf countries, targeting US assets as well as energy facilities.

Between Trump’s claims to be “winding down” operations and upping the ante later, his administration announced it is sending three more warships to the Middle East with about 2,500 additional Marines.

The US military said about 50,000 military personnel are already deployed for the war against Iran.

When will the war on Iran end?

That has been among the foremost questions posed to US officials, including Trump, since the war on Iran was launched on February 28.

The next day, Trump told the Daily Mail that “it will be four weeks or so. It’s always been about a four-week process.” A day later, Trump said at the White House: “We projected four to five weeks, but we have capability to go far longer than that.”

On March 8, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told the CBS TV network’s 60 Minutes programme: “This is only just the beginning.” The next day, the US president told the same channel that he thinks “the war is very complete, pretty much.” And the US military operation was “way ahead of schedule”.

Then, on March 9, Trump said one could say the war is “both complete and just beginning”. Later the same day, the president said: “We’ve already won in many ways, but we haven’t won enough” and promised to go further and harsher against Iran.

On March 11, Trump said: “We don’t want to leave early, do we? We’ve got to finish the job.”

Why did US and Israel launch strikes on Iran?

Responses to this question are perhaps the most telling about US posturing in the war against Iran.

On March 2, Hegseth said the attacks were aimed at ending “47 long years” of war by “the expansionist and Islamist regime in Tehran” and were launched because Iran refused to negotiate with the US.

Hours later, Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, told reporters the US knew Israel was about to strike Iran, adding that the Trump administration believed the US needed to launch a pre-emptive strike before Iran’s retaliation potentially targeted US forces. “We went proactively in a defensive way to prevent them from inflicting higher damage,” he said.

This sparked a massive row in Washington with critics saying Israel had forced the US into war with Iran. Soon Trump rebutted his top diplomat, saying: “They [Iran] were going to attack. If we didn’t do it, they were going to attack first. … So if anything, I might have forced Israel’s hand.”

The next day, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, concluded that Trump just had a “good feeling” that Iran would strike so Washington attacked Tehran.

The launch of the war came as Washington and Tehran were scheduled to meet for another round of talks that were started late last year. Before the war, their Omani mediator said a deal was “within reach”.

The US and Israeli assertion that Tehran was on the verge of making a nuclear bomb has not been backed up by the United Nations nuclear watchdog. Last week, US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard also told Congress that Iran was not in a position to make an atomic bomb.

Some analysts said the Trump administration was convinced to go to war by Netanyahu, who has been seeking US military intervention in Iran for decades. They said Trump was buoyed by a swift US military operation in Venezuela and did not think through Iran’s strengths before going into the war. In January, the US military abducted President Nicolas Maduro in a military operation in Caracas that took two and a half hours.

What does the conflicting messaging mean for US strategy?

Analysts said the moving goalposts in the Iran war show the policy limits of the current Trump administration as well as its strategy, to some extent, of keeping off-ramps available.

Zeidon Alkinani, a Middle East analyst at the Arab Perspectives Institute, told Al Jazeera that in the earlier days of the hostilities, there appeared to be clearer targets and limited objectives.

“There now seems to be a more chaotic reaction,” he said. He described the attacks as increasingly reciprocal, suggesting strikes on oil or energy facilities could prompt further escalation.

Last week, Iran attacked energy facilities in Qatar and caused “significant damage”, knocking out  17 percent of Qatar’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) export capacity. Qatar produces 20 percent of global LNG supplies. Iran said the attack was in retaliation for Israeli attacks on a gas plant.

Paolo von Schirach, president of the Global Policy Institute, told Al Jazeera that Trump changes his mind “very quickly” and it is hard to predict what his next step could be in the war on Iran.

The analyst said it was unclear to him what “tools” Trump has to end the war.

“We look at his message saying the war is winding down. OK, good. Things are quiet. Maybe there is an off-ramp somehow. But now he says that if the Iranians don’t open the Strait of Hormuz, then we [the US] are going to unleash hell and what have you,” von Schirach noted.

“It is not quite clear to me what he wants and what the tools are to accomplish this.”

Von Schirach added that it would be difficult to predict whether the US could force Iran into submission, given its size and population. Using as a reference Iraq, where 150,000 American soldiers were deployed during the Second Gulf War, the analyst predicted that the US might need as many as half a million soldiers if Trump “wants to take over Iran”.