'No plan': GOP insiders fear Trump’s 'bungled' strategy undermines US power

Kevin Cramer at the 2013 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland. (Gage Skidmore, Flickr)

When President Donald Trump launched his war against Iran in late February, he promised that it would be a quick and succinct operation. But after almost half a year, the war rages on. According to NOTUS, frustrated Republican insiders are desperately hoping for an exit strategy from the president. But they aren't getting it.

In NOTUS, reporters Jasmine Wright, Ben T.N. Mause, Hamed Ahmadi, Akbar Shahid Ahmed and Joe Gould explain, "Two House members told NOTUS that they weren't given talking points on the current status of the war by the White House before they left Washington for the August recess. A MAGA strategist who had been invited to private briefings about the war with Vice President JD Vance and other top officials said those meetings have ceased and information is scarce. And it's been more than 100 days since the Department of Defense held a press briefing for reporters."

A NOTUS source close to the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD), interviewed on condition of anonymity, expressed frustration with Trump's lack of a clear message on Iran.

The source told NOTUS, "I don't feel like I have good insight into their messaging strategy. I don't feel like I understand it actually at all."

According to the NOTUS reporters, the "lack of cohesive messaging" on Iran from the Trump administration "has led some to conclude that there is no firm plan to end the conflict "ahead of the midterm elections."

A GOP strategist, also quoted anonymously, told NOTUS, "For an ongoing war, there's not all that much messaging around it. And the messaging around it is just — it's bungled, it's bargled, it's confused."

Sen. Mike Rounds (R-South Dakota), however, voiced his frustrations on the record.

Rounds told NOTUS, "How do we finish the job? It has not been answered yet."

Similarly, Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana) said, "What's the endgame?"

Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-North Dakoka) told NOTUS, "One of the challenges is that people on either end of the spectrum — whether you're a hardcore Iran hawk versus a geopolitical dove — you might get frustrated by the on-again, off-again use of lethality, followed by short stints of negotiation. But that's not surprising to me with Donald Trump because, at the end of the day, he sees things through the lens of a negotiator and a transactional political figure."

Mark Cancian, a defense expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, fears that the U.S. is devoting too many of its defense resources to the Iran war.

Cancian told NOTUS that the U.S. could be fighting Iran "for a considerable amount of time," warning, "Every missile that we use is one fewer that would be available for conflict in the Western Pacific."

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