Trump wants to claim victory in Iran. But what would he accomplish?

In Book VI of History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides recounts how Athens, at the height of its power, convinced itself that victory in Sicily would be swift, decisive, and transformative. "Most of them fell in love with the enterprise," he wrote.

As the US enters yet another uncertain phase of its war with Iran, the line feels less like ancient wisdom and more like a contemporary indictment. 

Trump is expected to address the American people with a message he has been hinting towards for weeks: the Iran war must end. What began as a show of force has turned into a grinding war of attrition with no clear end in sight. Now, facing mounting domestic pressure and a restless electorate, Trump is signalling that the US could wrap up its involvement within "two to three weeks".

But wars do not end simply because one side grows tired. In Tehran, the calculus is markedly different. Iran's foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, has made it explicit that his country is prepared to fight for at least six months, dismissing any notion of externally imposed deadlines. At the same time, Washington's claims of ongoing negotiations have been contradicted by Iran itself.

This divergence frames the central dilemma: Even if Trump wants to end the war and cut his losses, can he actually do so? With shifting objectives, reluctant NATO allies, and a narrowing set of viable military and diplomatic options, the conflict has slipped beyond easy control. 

The million-dollar question, therefore, is not whether Trump wants to end the war. It is whether he knows what in the world he is doing. 

The illusion of a quick exit

Trump's recent statements suggest a desire for a rapid disengagement, even without a formal deal. He has indicated that the United States could simply "leave very soon," reframing success in increasingly flexible terms. 

If this moment feels familiar, it is because Donald Trump has repeatedly declared, hinted, or implied that the Iran war was nearing its end – only for events on the ground to contradict him. 

From the earliest days of the conflict, Trump framed the campaign as swift and decisive. Within days of the opening strikes, he described the operation as an "unmitigated success," insisting that "nobody else could have done this." 

That confidence quickly evolved into a pattern. 

By early March, Trump was suggesting that the war could end "any time I want it to end," even as he simultaneously cautioned against leaving "too early" and emphasised the need to "finish the job." 

Days later, he oscillated again — declaring the war effectively over in one moment, while threatening continued bombardment in the next if Tehran did not comply. 

On 24 March, he went as far as to say, "We've won this war," predicting regime change in Iran. Yet, within 24 hours, he was speaking of "very good and productive conversations" toward a peace deal, coupled with warnings that the US would continue bombing if talks failed. 

Even as the war entered its fifth week — already pushing beyond his initial four-to-five-week timeline — the rhetoric remained untethered from reality. Trump alternated between claims that Iran was "defeated" and suggestions that core objectives were still being pursued. 

The White House, for its part, attempted to impose coherence, with officials like Karoline Leavitt and Marco Rubio insisting that objectives were being met "on or ahead of schedule". 

But these assurances sat uneasily alongside reports of 50,000 US troops deployed to the region and discussions of potential ground attack from targeting critical infrastructure to seizing strategic objectives like Kharg Island.

Inside the administration, there is growing recognition that core objectives — such as reopening the Strait of Hormuz — cannot be achieved within the same compressed timeline. The chokepoint remains contested, and restoring full maritime flow could take months, not weeks.

In other words, Trump faces a classic strategic dilemma: either prolong the war to achieve stated goals or redefine those goals to justify an early exit.

He appears to be choosing the latter. Because one of his core points was to end the endless wars. With the domestic fuel price rising and massive 'No Kings Protests', he needs to backpedal. 

Illustration: TBS

Iran's strategy: Time as leverage

Washington is racing against the clock. Tehran is not.

Iranian Foreign Minister Araghchi has made it clear that Iran is prepared for "at least six months" of war and does not operate on externally imposed deadlines. More importantly, Iran has explicitly rejected the premise of ongoing negotiations, directly contradicting US claims of diplomatic progress.

Control of the strait has already allowed Tehran to disrupt global energy flows and impose costs on the international system. Iran has successfully utilised the Houthis and the Hezbollah to open new fronts of the war. If the war ends with Iran retaining this leverage, it will be able to claim a strategic victory regardless of battlefield losses. Iran has more leverage on the 

This fundamentally limits Trump's exit options.

The cost of inconsistency

Compounding the problem is the administration's lack of strategic coherence. US objectives have shifted repeatedly — from eliminating Iran's nuclear capability to merely "diminishing" its missile programme and from dismantling proxy networks to simply "weakening" them. Such fluidity may offer political flexibility, but it undermines strategic clarity.

Even within the US, public support is fraying. Two-thirds of Americans now favour ending the war quickly, even if key objectives are not achieved. This political pressure further constrains Trump's room for manoeuvre. 

In effect, the administration is attempting to exit a war whose goals it has not clearly defined.

Allies in retreat

Perhaps the most striking development is the widening rift between Washington and its allies.

European partners have refused key requests for military support – denying overflight permissions, basing access, and air-defence deployments. Even traditionally aligned countries such as Poland have declined to participate.

The war was initiated without broad consultation, and allies are now reluctant to bear its costs. As one analyst noted, European governments are being asked to support a strategy they had no role in shaping. Trump's response — publicly criticising allies and questioning the value of NATO or threatening them to secure their own oil — has only deepened the divide. 

Donald Trump has told The Telegraph that he is strongly considering pulling the United States out of NATO after it failed to join his war on Iran. Labelling NATO a "paper tiger," he went further, saying US withdrawal from the alliance was now "beyond reconsideration." His frustration was rooted in what he saw as a failure of reciprocity: "I just think it should be automatic… We've been there automatically. They weren't there for us."

Yet this cuts both ways. NATO's reluctance is not simply a failure of will, it is also a response to Washington's unpredictability. Allies are being asked to commit to a war whose objectives remain fluid and whose timeline is dictated less by strategy than by presidential instinct. Without allied support, the United States faces a stark reality: it must either escalate unilaterally or disengage without achieving its objectives. Neither option is attractive.

Escalation without a pathway

Trump has once more decided to bomb a country back to the Stone Age. 

"When we feel that they (Iran) are, for a long period of time, put into the Stone Ages and they won't be able to come up with a nuclear weapon, then we'll leave," Trump said. Despite Iran always maintaining that its nuclear activities are peaceful and that it has never sought to produce a nuclear weapon, both Israel and the US are holding onto that narrative. 

Here's where things get complicated. The danger of such rhetoric becomes clearer when placed against the precedent of the Iraq War. 

That conflict was launched on the assertion that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and posed an imminent threat. In the years that followed, extensive inspections and investigations found that Iraq had no active WMD stockpiles and had largely dismantled its programmes long before the invasion. 

The consequences were catastrophic: a state collapsed, hundreds of thousands of lives were lost, and an entire region was destabilised for decades. It became a textbook example of how easily allegations can become a casus belli.

What makes Trump's statement particularly troubling is that it echoes the same logic: act first, verify later. The threshold for war is lowered to suspicion, and the objective becomes maximalist — total incapacitation of a state — rather than verifiable containment. 

Each step up the escalation ladder reduces the possibility of a negotiated settlement. The longer the war continues, the harder it becomes for Trump to accept a compromise without appearing weak. 

This creates a dangerous feedback loop: indecision leads to incremental escalation, which in turn narrows the space for de-escalation.

The temptation to "declare victory"

Faced with these constraints, the most plausible scenario is a rhetorical exit, which we may see at Trump's upcoming speech. There are already signs that the administration is preparing the ground for such a move. 

However, the attempts to emphasise partial successes, redefine objectives, and suggest that the United States has achieved its core goals fall short of wrapping the issue up, as nothing has been clearly outlined before. 

As Carl von Clausewitz observed in On War, "War is the continuation of politics by other means," but it is also governed by its own internal logic—one that resists political timelines and rhetorical shortcuts. 

Trump appears to be attempting the inverse: forcing war to conform to his messaging, to bend to declarations of victory and imminent closure. Yet Clausewitz offers a quieter, more sobering reminder: "Everything in war is very simple, but the simplest thing is difficult." 

Shadique Mahbub Islam is a journalist.