U.S. President Donald Trump looks on as he speaks to reporters onboard Air Force One, on travel from West Palm Beach, Florida, to Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, U.S., February 16, 2026. REUTERS Elizabeth Frantz
New York Times reporter and author Jonathan Swan says his sources inside the White House claim President Donald Trump was well aware of the consequences of attacking Iran but marched forth with missile strikes regardless.
“As always, interesting to get a view from inside and what your sources say,” MS NOW anchor Ari Melber told Swan. “Many foreign policy experts and critics would say the list of things you report from them were reasons to be more dubious about starting the war. Do you detect a shift in sort of realism or skepticism about what they're doing over there?”
“All of this was not just predictable, but it was predicted actually,” said Swan, co-author of Regime Change. “He was warned about the munitions supply. He was warned about the potential for the Strait of Hormuz to be shut down. What happened was Donald Trump believed at a very core gut level that none of these things would happen because the war would be over quickly, because he believed that the US and Israeli militaries would crush Iran so quickly that none of these things would come to bear. But of course, that was a miscalculation that we're now seeing play out five months later.”
Swan said that the White House is trying to deny the truth that the US is “running out of weapons,” but it is, in fact, “a really profound problem,” particularly with the supply of interceptors, and Patriot missiles.
“We have depleted our supply. It was already pretty bad before the start of the Iran war, and it's just gotten substantially worse throughout the war. We've hugely drained, America's stockpiles of long-range weapons,” Swan said. “These are the kinds of weapons that, God forbid, if we ever got into a conflict with China, we would potentially need them. So, they're facing real constraints as well.”
Worse, Swan reminded Melber that Trump's own team presented him last week with plans for what would have been “a major escalation against Iran” involving a huge increase in the number of bombs and missiles, while knowing full well the nation’s thinning munitions capabilities.
“You could have a global economic calamity on Trump's watch,” warned Swan. “And that's before you even get to what I was just talking about, which is the very real weapons constraint. So that's the landscape he's facing. And he's in a really difficult position.”