When Donald Trump launched Operation Epic Fury alongside Israel on 28 February, his administration had settled on a set of stated, and broad, objectives: destroy Iran’s missiles, eliminate its navy, prevent a nuclear weapon.
Over a month later those objectives have multiplied, contracted and contradicted each other.
In the fifth week of the war alone, Trump said the war had nothing to do with oil, then posted that the US should “take the oil & make a fortune”. He described the war as nearly over and simultaneously threatened weeks of escalating infrastructure strikes in a primetime address. And within 48 hours of that, he went from telling other nations they could reopen the strait of Hormuz themselves once the US left, to insisting Washington could “easily” do it.
Here is how the story shifted over the week.
Talks are going great – and maybe we’ll take Kharg Island29 March
Aboard Air Force One, Trump told reporters the diplomatic scene was peachy. Iran had agreed to most of the US’s 15-point list of demands, he said, conveyed via Pakistan.
“They gave us most of the points. Why wouldn’t they? They’re agreeing with us on the plan. We asked for 15 things, and for the most part, we’re going to be asking for a couple of other things.”
He also said Iran had shipped oil to the US as a show of good faith: “to prove they’re serious.”
In a separate interview with the Financial Times the same day, Trump said he wanted to “take the oil in Iran” and was considering seizing Kharg Island, which handles 90% of Tehran’s oil exports. “Maybe we take Kharg Island, maybe we don’t. We have a lot of options,” he said.
Iran’s parliament speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, rejected the ongoing negotiations the same day, saying Iran could not be forced into submission, according to state-linked media.
“Great progress” and total obliteration30 March
On Truth Social, Trump announced that the US was “in serious discussions with A NEW, AND MORE REASONABLE, REGIME” in Iran and that “Great progress” had been made.
In the same post, he threatened to end the war by destroying all of Iran’s power plants, oil wells, Kharg Island and possibly all its desalination plants if a deal was not reached “shortly” and the strait of Hormuz not reopened “immediately.”
Leaving soon and going after Europe31 March
With national gas prices hitting a $4-a-gallon average, Trump offered reporters at the White House what amounted to a new exit strategy, and a quiet retreat from his earlier vow to force the strait of Hormuz open.
“All I have to do is leave Iran, and we’ll be doing that very soon, and they’ll become tumbling down. I would say that within two weeks, maybe two weeks, maybe three.”
On the strait, he added: “We’ll be leaving very soon. And if France or some other country wants to get oil or gas, they’ll go up through the strait, the Hormuz Strait, they’ll go right up there, and they’ll be able to” get it.
Earlier in the morning, Trump took another shot at allies in Europe, singling out the United Kingdom:
“You’ll have to start learning how to fight for yourself, the U.S.A. won’t be there to help you anymore, just like you weren’t there for us.”
The call to London was one Pete Hegseth, the US secretary of defense, had also used earlier in the day at a morning press conference.
“Last time I checked, there was supposed to be a big, bad Royal Navy that could be prepared to do things like [getting involved in taking the strait of Hormuz] as well”
Iran ‘asked’ for a ceasefire. Also, back to the ‘stone ages’1 April
Before his primetime address, Trump posted on Truth Social:
“[Iran’s] New Regime President, much less Radicalized and far more intelligent than his predecessors, has just asked the United States of America for a CEASEFIRE!”
The US would consider it, he wrote – but only once the strait of Hormuz was “open, free, and clear. Until then, we are blasting Iran into oblivion or, as they say, back to the Stone Ages!!!”
Iran’s foreign ministry called the claim “false and baseless.” The Revolutionary Guard separately said that the strait “is firmly and decisively under the control” of its forces, and that it “will not be opened to the enemies of this nation through the ridiculous spectacle by the president of the United States.”
That evening, Trump addressed the nation from the White House. He said the war’s “core strategic objectives are nearing completion”. He threatened to hit “each and every one of their electric generating plants very hard, and probably simultaneously” and to send them “back to the stone ages”
We are going to hit them extremely hard. Over the next two to three weeks, we’re going to bring them back to the stone ages, where they belong.”
He also said the war had nothing to do with oil.
“We’re now totally independent of the Middle East. And yet we are there to help. We don’t have to be there. We don’t need their oil. We don’t need anything they have. But we’re there to help our allies.”
‘Bridges next, then Electric Power Plants’2 April
Hours after a US-Israeli airstrike destroyed the B1 bridge between Tehran and Karaj, killing eight people (which Trump also posted a video of), Trump later posted on Truth Social:
“The New Regime leadership knows what has to be done, and has to be done, FAST! The US hasn’t even started destroying what’s left in Iran. Bridges next, then Electric Power Plants!”
‘Take the oil, make a fortune’3 April
On Truth Social, Trump posted:
“With a little more time, we can easily OPEN THE HORMUZ STRAIT, TAKE THE OIL, & MAKE A FORTUNE. IT WOULD BE A ‘GUSHER’ FOR THE WORLD???”
Whether the post was a statement or a question, it landed three days after his primetime address in which he told the American people the war was not about oil.