President Donald Trump is privately eager to end his war with Iran despite his public boasting that things are “going very well.”
Trump thought his Iran strikes would follow a similar playbook to his invasion of Venezuela, and expected to overthrow the Iranian regime in a matter of weeks or even days.
Instead, he has unwittingly launched a broader regional conflict that has spiraled beyond his control, sending gas prices soaring and sparking a political backlash that threatens Republican prospects in the midterm elections.
The president on Monday vowed to “keep bombing our little hearts out” if talks with Iran didn’t work out, but privately, he has told associates and advisers he wants to end the war in the next couple of weeks to avoid a protracted conflict, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Trump told one associate that the war was distracting from his other priorities, the person told the Journal, while another said the president appears ready to move onto his next big challenge, though it’s not clear what that would be.
The president is also worried about additional U.S. casualties, the Journal reported. So far, 13 Americans have been killed and nearly 300 have been wounded in the war.
The White House expects the war to be over by mid-May at the latest, though Trump would prefer to stick to his original four-to-six-week timeline, sources told the Journal.
In a statement to the newspaper, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump was “extraordinarily skilled at multi-tasking” and is working on multiple challenges at the same time.
“The President is laser focused on fully achieving the military objectives against the terrorist Iranian regime,” she said. “The president’s sole focus is always victory.”
The Daily Beast has also reached out to the White House for comment.
Trump appeared to realize last week that his own war was spiraling beyond his control after he greenlit an Israeli strike on the South Pars gas field, part of the world’s largest natural gas reserve, triggering retaliatory strikes from Iran on oil and gas infrastructure in Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
The South Pars attack marked a major escalation in the war and threatened to deepen an energy crisis that was already hurting Republicans’ chances of keeping their majorities in Congress in November.
The president has been desperate to de-escalate the situation.
On Saturday, the president declared in a Truth Social post that Iran had 48 hours to reopen to the Strait of Hormuz, or else the U.S. would “hit and obliterate” the country’s power plants.
But then on Monday, with the strait still closed, he said he was pausing strikes on energy infrastructure for five days due to “constructive conversations” over the weekend between the U.S. and Iran.
Iran’s foreign minister, however, said the country was not negotiating directly with the U.S. over a war resolution and had “no intention” of doing so.
Instead, the U.S. has been sending messages through intermediaries, Abbas Araghchi told Iran’s state TV news.
The regime is reportedly refusing to engage with Trump’s chosen emissaries to the Middle East, real estate developer Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law Jared Trump, over concerns that the negotiations would not be in good faith and would just be a pretext for further attacks.
Iran prefers to engage with Vice President JD Vance, who has been wary of U.S. foreign intervention.
Despite his diplomatic overtures, Trump has told the Pentagon to keep the pressure on Tehran, a senior U.S. official told the Journal.
He has ordered the deployment of thousands of ground troops to the Middle East, and has not ruled out a land invasion.
