How Trump's timeline for the war on Iran keeps shifting, and why that matters

U.S. Chairperson Donald ruff and secretarial assistant of state of war Pete Hegseth feature given multiple and often contradictory descriptions of how long they expect the military operation against Iran to continue.

While there are clearly valid strategic reasons for not wanting to telegraph to the enemy a definitive end date for the war, Trump and Hegseth have been more than willing to put timelines on the combat mission.

Those timelines, however, have been all over the map.

Since the bombing began on Feb. 28, here are some examples of what the U.S. President and his secretary of war have said about how long the war will last:

On Tuesday, the 11th day of the joint U.S.-Israel military operation against Iran, Hegseth and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt each made statements that appeared to be aimed at brushing away the contradictions.

Trump delivers mixed messages about ending war on Iran

Both Hegseth and Leavitt said Trump has chosen the objectives for the war and will decide when it's over.

"Ultimately, the president gets to determine the end state of those objectives," Hegseth told a news conference at the Pentagon on Tuesday morning.

"He gets to control the throttle, he's the one deciding ... When we're achieving those particular objectives," Hegseth said. "So it's not for me to posit whether it's the beginning, the middle, or the end."

Speaking a few hours later at a news conference at the White House, Leavitt struck a similar tone.

"Ultimately, the operations will end when the commander-in-chief determines the military objectives have been met, fully realized, and that Iran is in a position of complete and unconditional surrender, whether they say it or not," Leavitt said.

There are so far no signs of imminent surrender from the Iranian regime. The decision to name Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei to be the country's supreme leader suggests Tehran is maintaining a hardline approach, according to analysts.

A post by the speaker of Iran's parliament also signalled defiance.

"Certainly we aren't seeking a ceasefire," Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said Monday in a post on X. "We believe the aggressor must be punished and taught a lesson that will deter them from attacking Iran again."

Trump's call for Iran to 'unconditionally surrender' contradictory: analyst

Thomas Juneau, a professor of public and international affairs at the University of Ottawa, says until now, the only consistency in the Trump's administration's messaging on the war's endgame has been its inconsistency.

Juneau says Trump is "waiting to see where the dust settles" from the military operation.

"Whenever he decides that it's enough that he can seize a personal political advantage, he will call an end to the strikes. That could be later this week, it could be next week or next month," he said.

It's more likely that Trump will decide that he's had enough of the war because of domestic political pressure — such as concern over rising oil prices or tumbling stock markets — than because he's achieved a specific goal in Iran, according to Juneau.

In recent days, Trump and his team have shown a little more consistency in specifying their military objectives: destroying Iran's missile production, its navy, its ability to develop a nuclear weapon and its support for militant proxies such as Hezbollah and Hamas.

Yet the administration has continued to send mixed signals about its political objectives for the war. In particular, it's still unclear whether toppling the Islamic regime is or is not a goal.

Colin H. Kahl, who served as undersecretary of defence in the Biden administration and now leads the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University in California, says it matters that the purpose of the war be clearly defined.

"The history of American military intervention offers a consistent lesson: wars begun without clear political objectives rarely end well," Kahl wrote Tuesday in an article for Foreign Affairs.

Kahl says there's no logical stopping point for a war if its political goals are undefined or contested.

"Achieving regime change, behaviour change, ending Iran’s nuclear program and degrading Iran’s ability to project power are not variations on the same goal," Kahl wrote.

He said such different goals "require fundamentally different wars," including different timelines, definitions of victory and post-conflict planning.

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