The Iranian government is not about to collapse, U.S. intelligence has found, undercutting Donald Trump’s claim that his war was won.
On the eleventh day of the war, for which Trump has demanded Iran’s “unconditional surrender,” signs point to a protracted conflict if the U.S. and Israel maintain their assault.
The country’s leadership is largely intact and maintains control of the population, three sources familiar with intelligence reports told Reuters.
One source said a “multitude” of reports—the most recent of which was completed in the last few days—found “consistent analysis that the regime is not in danger” of collapse and “retains control of the Iranian public.”
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and dozens of top military officials were killed in the first day of the war. Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei, was chosen to replace him. He has not given any public indication that he is negotiating a surrender.
Yet Trump has consistently maintained America’s success, claiming Wednesday that “they have no systems of control. We’re just riding free range over their country.”
On Monday, he told Republicans at a lawmakers’ retreat in Miami that the war had been “won in many ways.”
“We’ve already won in many ways,” he said, but admitted, “We haven’t won enough. We go forward, more determined than ever to achieve ultimate victory that will end this long-running danger once and for all."
He also told CBS News, “I think the war is very complete, pretty much.”
Then on Wednesday in Kentucky, Trump said, “We’ve won, let me tell you, we’ve won. You never like to say too early you won, we won... in the first hour it was over.”
Just minutes later, though, he was suggesting otherwise. “We don’t want to leave early, do we?” he said. “We got to finish the job, right?”
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Central Intelligence Agency declined to comment to Reuters.
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House and Pentagon for comment.
As the war has continued, Trump has faced questions about its goal and any plans he has for ending it. The growing list of U.S. casualties has compounded pressure.
An attack that killed six U.S. service members also caused traumatic brain injuries, memory loss, and other “urgent” health issues for dozens of others who were sent to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany for care, CBS News reported Wednesday.
Trump, on March 2, refused to rule out U.S. boots in the ground in Iran.
The U.S. appears to be relying in part on Iranian Kurdish militias based on Iraq to destroy the regime. But U.S. intelligence reports, sources also told Reuters, have been skeptical of their odds of success.
Specifically, the groups are short in weaponry and manpower.
The first week of the war cost the U.S. $11.3 billion, the Pentagon told Congress. Part of what U.S. taxpayers ended up paying for, a preliminary military investigation found, was the bombing of an Iranian girls’ school, which killed over 175 people, most of whom were children. Trump had previously claimed that Iran was responsible, but then backtracked. On Monday, he said that “whatever the report shows, I’m okay with that.”
