Trump advisers work to mitigate a political nightmare on Iran as president fuels messaging chaos

By Adam Cancryn, CNN

(CNN) — President Donald Trump insists he’s willing to wage war on Iran “forever.”

But just days into the fight, many of those around him are already itching to get out.

The US assault on Iran has stoked fears among Trump’s aides and advisers about the political consequences of being drawn into a prolonged war with no clear endgame and little buy-in from the public, according to several people familiar with the matter.

The conflict has already cost six American lives, with officials bracing for the toll to climb higher in subsequent days. The stock market is in turmoil and gas prices are rising, endangering key pillars of Trump’s midterm pitch. And inside the administration, aides are still struggling to explain why the nation went to war — and what exactly comes next.

“It’s a political risk, no ands, ifs or buts,” one Trump adviser said of an attack that the president has forecast could continue for weeks. “Let’s just hope something doesn’t go really wrong. Because if that happens, it’s going to be a problem.”

Trump has touted the initial strikes as an overwhelming success, casting them as proof of US military prowess and justification for his decision to abandon diplomacy in favor of a show of strength.

He’s been particularly energized by the killing of Iran Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as well as the destruction of key targets meant to decimate the country’s nuclear ambitions and open the door to regime change.

Still, while Trump has taken that early progress as a sign that the public may support a continued offensive, some advisers and close allies are quietly arguing the opposite, pressing him to accelerate his timeline and declare victory as soon as he credibly can.

Political realities of an unpopular war

The war with Iran is broadly unpopular in early polling, with voters wary of another entanglement in the Middle East and unclear on the administration’s objectives.

It has also driven a split among prominent figures in a MAGA movement built in part on Trump’s 2016 vow to “abandon the failed policy of nation building and regime change” — fueling worries that the backlash could eventually spread to Trump’s broader base.

Those troubling dynamics are only likely to worsen as the death toll rises and the risk of a wider regional war remains front and center, allies and advisers have warned, further jeopardizing Trump and Republicans’ already-grim chances of avoiding a wipeout in November’s midterms.

“No one thinks this war is popular,” said Matthew Bartlett, a GOP strategist and former Trump State Department official. “At best, this is a distraction from the priority of the economy. But at worst, this could be political disaster, and it could be a disaster for generations in Iran and for the Republican Party.”

White House officials have so far downplayed the war’s political significance in public, insisting their approach is being driven solely by the need to protect Americans’ security.

“The president’s main priority was acting in the best interest of the American people and our national security,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told CNN. “Those priorities outweighed any other issue.”

But behind the scenes, aides and advisers have been acutely aware of the danger that the war poses to Trump’s presidency and the myriad ways the situation could spiral out of control.

Chaotic messaging

Trump officials in the lead-up to the weekend’s strikes warned the president that striking Iran could generate unpredictable political repercussions, stressing that it was difficult to pinpoint how the offensive would play out over time, people familiar with the matter said.

Trump opted to press ahead anyway. And while he has since personally dismissed the negative public sentiment as inconsequential, those around him have scrambled for days to construct and sell a belated rationale for the attack.

That’s resulted in a range of conflicting explanations from even the most senior administration officials and an extremely muddled communications strategy from the White House. The issue is further plagued by Trump’s own shifting justifications and the lack of any strong sense within the administration for how it plans to ultimately bring the war to an end.

In the hours after the first strikes, Trump officials rushed to brief Hill Republicans who were already scheduled to appear on the Sunday news shows, Leavitt said. The administration later distributed messaging guidance to lawmakers across the party.

But the administration’s talking points have shifted repeatedly, with Trump and his top officials offering contradictory explanations on several key fronts: how urgent of a threat Iran posed to US, whether the regime was on the brink of having nuclear weapons or just ballistic missiles, and crucially, which country — the US or Israel — made the initial decision to push ahead with an attack.

On Monday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio suggested that the US joined Israel after concluding that its ally was determined to strike Iran, and that Iran would likely retaliate by targeting US forces in the region. But Trump pushed back on that notion the next day, saying “if anything, I might have forced Israel’s hand.” Rubio then walked back his remarks Tuesday, instead falling in line with Trump’s explanation and denying that he had suggested the decision was in any way led by Israel.

On Wednesday, Leavitt said Trump decided to go to war due to his “feeling” that was “based on fact” that Iran was already preparing to attack the US. The precise timing of the strikes were then determined by intel showing Khamenei and other senior Iranian officials were gathering together.

No endgame plan

Trump allies have urged the administration to lay out a more specific plan for eventually extracting the US from the Middle East, amid worries the war is upending a GOP midterm strategy dependent on convincing voters the party is focused on economic issues closer to home.

After initially suggesting the goal of the offensive was to force regime change in Iran, the White House has sharply dialed back its ambitions, setting a lower bar that party officials now hope the administration can achieve in a matter of weeks.

“It’s very much about managing expectations,” one GOP official helping to coordinate the party’s midterm efforts said of the messaging around the war. They added that while the administration would welcome stable new leadership in Iran, accomplishing that remains “a pretty daunting task.”

Still, the White House has offered lawmakers and allies little clarity on how the next several weeks might play or how long the open-ended conflict might dominate the political landscape, refusing even to rule out the potential for putting troops on the ground. Trump himself has gone back and forth, suggesting at times the war would only last four to five weeks, then saying the offensive effort was ahead of schedule, then insisting the military was prepared for the war to go on “forever.”

Addressing the immediate fallout

Trump officials instead have been consumed by the need to contain more immediate fallout, including stabilizing oil markets spooked by the sudden threat to one of the world’s most significant supply routes and aiding thousands of Americans stranded in the Middle East who the administration had no advance plan for contacting and evacuating.

“It happened all very quickly,” Trump said Tuesday.

Amid the chaos, some worried allies have noted that perhaps the only aspect of the war that has not gone wrong is the fighting itself.

They’ve clung to a best-case scenario that would allow Trump to effectively wrap up the US’ primary role in the region within a few weeks, having destroyed Iran’s offensive capabilities and dramatically weakened its political leadership. That would provide the administration an opportunity to declare a definitive victory and, with the initial combat operations largely over, shift its focus back toward its domestic matters in the months ahead of the midterm elections.

Among advisers and allies, that scenario has been referred to in hopeful terms as a “Venezuela-style” outcome, mirroring the risky offensive that Trump launched in January to oust the South American country’s leader and seize greater influence over its government. Trump himself has cited Venezuela as the “perfect” example of how he would want to see regime change play out in Iran.

But Iran is far more complicated than Venezuela, with fewer clear outcomes and a wider range of pitfalls. And even under ideal conditions, the political upside is sharply limited.

Despite his foray into Venezuela being widely viewed within the administration as a success, Trump got no measurable credit from voters who want him focused on their own economic concerns — and are only likely to view foreign entanglements as yet another needless distraction.

“What’s going to matter to normal people is where we are three to four months from now,” a Trump adviser said. “And as always, it’s the same: Is the price of electricity going down, are the price of groceries going down?”

This story has been updated with additional developments.

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