White House 'unraveling' as Trump realizes he doesn’t 'hold the cards': DC insiders
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U.S. President Donald Trump with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio in the White House in Washington, D.C., March 6, 2026. REUTERS/Nathan Howard
U.S. President Donald Trump and his cheerleaders, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, insist that the war against Iran is going well. But critics of Operation Epic Fury are warning that Iran's far-right Shiite fundamentalist regime is a much stronger adversary than Trump realizes.
The Atlantic's Jonathan Lemire, during a Tuesday morning, March 17 appearance on MS NOW's "Morning Joe," argued that Iran, its "diminished" capacity, could be even more dangerous — from holding up the flow of oil in the Strait of Hormuz to the possibility of terrorist attacks in the United States. And some Washington insiders interviewed by Politico fear that Trump in way over his head with Iran.
Politico's Megan Messerly, in an article published on March 17, reports, "When the U.S. started firing Tomahawk missiles at Iran late last month, many of President Donald Trump's allies hoped it would be a quick, surgical operation, similar to last year's strike against Iran's nuclear facilities or the ouster of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro in January. Though uneasy, they were reassured by the belief that Trump's open-ended objectives gave him the flexibility to declare victory whenever he saw fit. Now, more than two weeks into the campaign, some of those allies believe the president no longer controls how, or when, the war ends."
Messerly adds, "They fear Iran's attacks on oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, which have rattled global crude markets and threaten broader economic distress, are boxing Trump into a situation where escalating the conflict — potentially even putting American boots on the ground — becomes the only way to credibly claim victory."
A Trump White House source, interviewed on condition of anonymity, told Politico that although U.S. forces "kicked (Iran's) a—— in the field," they "hold the cards now."
According to that interviewee, "They decide how long we're involved — and they decide if we put boots on the ground. And it doesn't seem to me that there's a way around that, if we want to save face."
Another anonymously quoted source, described by Messerly as someone "familiar with the U.S. operation in Iran," told Politico, "The terms have changed. The offramps don't work anymore because Iran is driving the asymmetric action…. For the White House, now the only easy day was yesterday. They need to worry about an unraveling."