President Trump dismissed the value of allies in his war in Iran on Monday. Then he demanded their help.
“We don’t need anybody,” he said, echoing a refrain he has sounded since the beginning of the war. But, he added, other nations must take up the task of securing the Strait of Hormuz, whose near-closure by the Iranians is hobbling the global oil supply.
His remarks were the latest in a string of dizzying turnabouts in Mr. Trump’s positions on the war, sometimes issued in nearly the same breath. He has called it just an “excursion” but also a critically important means of addressing an existential threat. He has said the United States has already “won,” but added that it should not leave yet because it still needs to finish the job.
Mr. Trump is no stranger to offering conflicting messages. He has long employed ambiguity as a strategy to appease differing factions in his political base and declare victory even in situations when the details are murky.
But as the president’s contradictory positions have collided with the chaos of a war whose rationale and end game he has struggled at times to delineate, the effects of his shifting positions threaten to radiate around the globe. And although Mr. Trump has often muddied the waters to outrun international crises, retreat from tariffs or back off threats like his push to seize Greenland, he has not been able to talk himself out of the rising scrutiny over his decision to wage war against Iran.
The conflict in Iran is not just one of Mr. Trump’s rhetorical threats on the global stage but has come with tangible consequences like a rising death toll and soaring gas prices, causing even some of his supporters to accuse him of betraying his campaign pledge not to start new wars.
“The lack of discipline and the lack of clarity strongly suggest that the administration was simply unprepared for the messaging aspects of this conflict,” said James J. Kimble, a historian of rhetoric and propaganda at Seton Hall University. “The likelihood is that the demands are ambiguous because the administration does not know what its goals are beyond winning.”
Mr. Trump’s aides have long defended his messaging strategy as an effort to keep his political opponents guessing. They say it is part of a negotiating style he has embraced since his days as a New York City real estate mogul, part of the “art of the deal.”
Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, has said on social media that the claims of “mixed messaging” were a “fake narrative.” Ms. Leavitt also defended Mr. Trump’s comments in a statement.
“The United States has won — the regime is significantly weakened and the evil ayatollah is dead,” Ms. Leavitt said in the statement. “But the president will not rest until the objectives of Operation Epic Fury are fully realized — destroy their ballistic missiles and their ability to make them, permanently end their ability to build a nuclear bomb, annihilate their Navy and weaken their evil proxies in the region.”
Even that list of goals, however, undercut another past statement by Mr. Trump. After his administration’s airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities in June of last year, Mr. Trump said the nuclear facilities in the nation had been “obliterated.”
The lack of clarity began before the war. Mr. Trump did not do what past presidents did before going to war; he did not traverse the country and make the case for why a conflict against Iran was justified.
And in its early days, backing for the war has been far lower than at the beginnings of previous foreign conflicts, with most polls showing less than half of Americans supporting it. In the days after President George W. Bush put troops on the ground in Afghanistan, by contrast, 92 percent of Americans were on board in a Gallup poll.
The frustration has extended to some of Mr. Trump’s more influential supporters. Joe Rogan, the podcast host, said last week that the war in Iran was “crazy,” “insane,” and left Americans feeling “betrayed” by Mr. Trump.
“He ran on no more wars; end these stupid, senseless wars,” said Mr. Rogan, who endorsed Mr. Trump in 2024 and said he still texted with him occasionally. “And then we have one that we can’t even really clearly define why we did it.”
Allison Prasch, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor focusing on rhetoric and political communication, said Mr. Trump’s contradicting statements indicated an effort to speak to different factions in his base.
“He can speak to an audience that might support a moral or ethical argument for regime change in Iran,” Ms. Prasch said. But for his more hard-line “America First” supporters, Mr. Trump can “write off this bombing campaign as a temporary blip — as nothing permanent or consequential.”
Of course, the war has already come with significant consequences.
More than 2,100 people have been killed since the United States and Israel launched the coordinated attacks on Feb. 28, including at least 13 American service members. A military investigation preliminarily determined that the United States was responsible for a Tomahawk missile strike on an Iranian elementary school that the Iranians say killed at 175 people, most of them children. The findings contradicted a claim by Mr. Trump, who had suggested without evidence that Iran bombed the school.
And the war has fueled economic concerns, which were already a political vulnerability for Mr. Trump. Oil prices were hovering over $90 a barrel on Monday, a roughly 30 percent rise since the start of the war.
Nicholas J. Cull, a professor of public diplomacy at the University of Southern California, said Mr. Trump was trying to do something else with his “confusing” messages: flexing his “presidential power for a domestic audience.”
“It is too soon to judge the impact of this on world opinion,” Mr. Cull said. “But it seems as if the role of measured superpower statesmanship on the world stage is, for the time being, vacant.”
In the meantime, Mr. Trump has shown little sign of trying to clarify his message. On Monday, he opened another front of confusion when he said he was open to talks with Iran but quickly added that “we don’t even know their leaders,” because the officials the United States knew had been killed.
“We have people wanting to negotiate,” Mr. Trump said. “We have no idea who they are.”
David E. Sanger and Anton Troianovski contributed reporting.
Zolan Kanno-Youngs is a White House correspondent for The Times, covering President Trump and his administration.
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