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White House goes to war with Republicans over Iran

President Donald Trump has received ample pushback over his decision to launch war with Iran from those outside the GOP, but as a growing number of Republicans question its progress, infighting has broken out between increasingly concerned conservatives and diehard MAGA loyalists. According to the New Republic, glaring evidence of this GOP infighting came over the weekend in the form of social media sparring between Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) and White House advisor Alex Bruesewitz.

“I am deeply concerned about what we are hearing about an Iran ‘deal,’” tweeted Cruz. “If the result of all that is to be an Iranian regime — still run by Islamists who chant ‘death to America’ — now receiving billions of dollars, being able to enrich uranium & develop nuclear weapons, and having effective control over the Strait of Hormuz, then that outcome would be a disastrous mistake.”

Bruesewitz — a dedicated MAGA influencer who helps with the administration’s social media meme needs — jumped in, responding, “Cool, Ted. No one asked you, bro. Stop trying to undermine the President and his administration.”

“Hush, child,” Cruz clapped back. “The adults are talking. I’m not your ‘bro.’ And young political grifters pushing Iran appeasement are not remotely helping the President.”

The response from Bruesewitz strayed from the proverbial high road: “Sorry you’re still salty that I prevented you from getting a picture with Nicki Minaj after you came running after her like a school girl. You’re going to get wiped out in 2028, clown.”

That same day, Trump’s former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo received similar treatment after posting that “the deal being floated with Iran seems straight out of the Wendy Sherman – Robert Malley – Ben Rhodes playbook: Pay the [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] to build a [weapons of mass destruction] program and terrorize the world. Not remotely America First.”

“Mike Pompeo has no idea what the f–– he’s talking about,” said White House Communications Director Steven Cheung. “He should shut his stupid mouth and leave the real work to the professionals. He’s not read into anything that’s happening, so how would he know.”

Pompeo and Cruz are far from the only Republicans raising concerns about the war and Trump’s negotiations, with GOP leaders calling it “disastrous” and suggesting that it could result in a “perception of weakness.” Even Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) — who has been frothing at the mouth for war with Iran for decades — ventured of the latest developments, “It makes one wonder why the war started to begin with.”

All of this, asserts the New Republic, is sign of a GOP breakup, and that the “MAGA coalition is sadder and more dysfunctional than ever.”

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Nobel economist begs NATO for help with Iran: Trump has 'no strategy'

As the consequences of President Donald Trump’s decision to launch war on Iran continue to spiral, Nobel-winning economist Thomas Friedman is begging for help from a group that the floundering U.S. Commander in Chief has “denigrated” again and again: NATO.

Addressing the international security body via the New York Times, Friedman acknowledged, “I get it. You despise President Trump for all the right reasons. He has walked away from Ukraine. He has threatened to seize Greenland and annex Canada. He has coddled Vladimir Putin. He is eroding America’s democratic institutions and norms. He insulted each of you so much that the German chancellor recently barked back that Trump’s America was being ‘humiliated’ by Iran. I get it.”

“Now get over it,” he pleaded. “Get all your navies together and proceed to the Persian Gulf immediately to join the American armada to make clear that Iran will never, ever be allowed to decide who shall pass and who shall not through the Strait of Hormuz. And, if it insists on trying to do so, it won’t just be taking on the United States and Israel, it will be taking on the entire Western alliance.”

According to Friedman, there are two main reasons the U.S. needs NATO’s aid on Iran.

First, there is the fact that, as it stands, the situation has such drastically negative implications for the world, not only in regard to the current issue of Iran and the Hormuz Strait, but in terms of the precedent it sets for other nations in the future.

“The last thing we should want is for those concessions to include any special right for Iran to set up a tollbooth to shake down ships that want to pass through the Strait of Hormuz,” writes Friedman. “That is exactly what the Iranians are trying to engineer… Tehran has already set up a new agency called the Persian Gulf Strait Authority,” which is positioning Iran as “the only valid authority to grant permission to ships transiting the strait… If that or anything like that becomes the new normal for shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, who knows which other countries will add tollbooths on critical sea lanes off their shores?”

Second, Friedman says that NATO must step in because not only does Trump have no strategy for correcting the situation, but “sounds more and more unhinged every day.”

“On Sunday, in a Truth Social post,” noted Friedman, “Trump denounced the response to his peace proposal from ‘Iran’s so-called ‘Representatives’' as ‘totally unacceptable.’ Mr. Trump, if they are ‘so-called Representatives,’ why have you been negotiating with them for weeks and what good would a positive response have been? And maybe they are ‘so-called’ because you and Netanyahu killed their ‘so-called’ superiors, who might have had the authority to cut a serious deal. You thought the regime would collapse, but instead you hardened it.”

“I understand why our NATO allies want to watch Trump and Netanyahu reap what they sowed,” Friedman says. “But these two awful leaders have sowed the wind — and we will all reap the whirlwind if Iran comes out of this stronger.”

While he hopes NATO will come to the rescue for the good of all, Friedman is not optimistic about the likelihood of such an outcome.

“Trump and Bibi have done nothing to earn such high-minded NATO support even though the future of Hormuz so directly impacts every member of the alliance,” he noted. “This leads to my sad conclusion: Our NATO allies will almost surely reject this appeal.”

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Iran has a secret weapon for resisting Trump's blockade pressure

In the early weeks of his war against Iran, President Donald Trump declared that the Iranians had “no cards” to play. First, it turned out that Iran had a major card in the form of the Strait of Hormuz, which it blocked with major economic consequences for the world. Now more than six weeks later, Axios reports that “Iran has more cards to play” than the president would like to admit, specifically in relation to the U.S. attempt to impose its own blockade on the vital waterway.

As Axios notes, “Oil is Iran's economic lifeblood, and President Trump hopes blocking exports — which eventually causes production to halt — will force concessions.” But two key factors disrupt Trump’s plan.

First, Iran has more oil storage capacity than was thought. Estimates made during the first half of April asserted that the country could only store enough oil to maintain production for two weeks, but this has proven false. According to Antoine Halff, chief analyst with the climate and energy data analytics firm Kayrros, "Iran's experience in building stocks during the Covid crisis, available space at other facilities, and efforts to increase alternate storage and export facilities over the past 10 years” has readied it to hold a backstock of oil, which prolongs its ability to continue producing crude even if it’s barred from export. What’s more, Iran has 20 Very Large Crude Carriers capable of holding 2 million barrels that can be easily repurposed for use as floating storage, which would allow the country to continue production for another two months.

Speaking of ships, that brings the second issue: the ineffectiveness of the U.S. blockade. While it was assumed that Iran would be unable to export through the blockade, Iranian ships have been managing to make it through, maintaining a steady flow of revenue to the regime. At the same time, Iran has been smuggling oil overland and in smaller tankers that are harder to block.

"Even if the US blockade is completely successful — and, importantly, right now it isn't — IRGC would be able to rely on these alternatives to keep its troops paid and its position in Iran secure,” says Gregory Brew of the Eurasia Group.

While White House officials like Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent have asserted the blockade’s success, claiming Iran faces oil production shut-in, not only has the country managed to sell oil, but it has proven an ineffective means of forcing the regime to negotiate.

All of this means that the Iranian regime is better equipped to hold out in the face of U.S. pressure than was once thought. And as the war drags on, Americans are making it clear that they do not want it — and Trump is suffering at the polls as a result.

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Trump’s latest boast about Iran war reveals tragic irony: political scientist

Over the past three months, President Donald Trump has scrambled to justify his decision to launch war on Iran in the face of an overwhelming majority of Americans who say he's failed to explain the administration's goals. Through it all, he’s repeatedly asserted the relative brevity of the war in comparison to the Vietnam, Iraq and other past conflicts, insisting that his war has only gone on for a few weeks, and then a few months. Last week, he posted a chart on Truth Social showing the length of previous wars in relation to his, but on Tuesday, a top political scientist pointed out a tragic irony to Trump’s boast.

“Past presidents needed years to lose a war,” noted famed political analyst and author Ian Bremmer over a screenshot of Trump’s chart.

Bremmer is pointing out that, for all Trump’s bragging about the duration of the conflict, he is ignoring how quickly it spiraled into a disastrous outcome. The consequences of the war have been far-reaching and will be long-lasting. It has destabilized the global economy, skyrocketed prices, disrupted supply chains, fractured alliances, shattered regional security, revealed major weaknesses in the U.S. military, entrenched, empowered and potentially enriched an Iranian regime that might end up extracting economic benefits from Hormuz on a continual basis and has killed and injured thousands while displacing countless more.

On top of all that, it has failed to achieve any of Trump’s stated goals, as Bremmer noted to commenters who replied to his post attempting to justify the war.

“Trump stated war goals,” reminded Bremmer: “Rescuing the Iranian people, taking the oil, ending Iranian ballistic missile capabilities, ending Iran’s support for regional proxies, removing Iran’s enriched uranium stockpiles, ending Iran’s nuclear enrichment capabilities.”

None of these aims has been achieved, and the war — now estimated to cost at least $29 billion — continues under a tenuous ceasefire. With Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth arguing that Trump doesn’t need congressional approval to renew strikes against Iran, a second irony to the president’s chart is, of course, that all wars start out short.

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Fox News host brings receipts to Trump's optimistic Iran claims

The Trump Administration has offered numerous, sometimes confused justifications for launching war against Iran, with one of the most oft-cited being the reduction of Iranian missile and drone capabilities. But while President Donald Trump has asserted that such programs have been “decimated,” one Fox News host said the government’s public claims of success don’t align with what’s being said behind closed doors.

“In a House Armed Services Subcommittee hearing last week, the director of the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency warned of Iran's remaining missile and drone capabilities, which runs counter to what top Pentagon officials have told the press during televised briefings at the Pentagon,” posted Fox Chief National Security Correspondent Jennifer Griffen. She attached a quote from Lieutenant General James Adams in which he revealed that, “Despite significant degradation of Iranian military capabilities through coalition strikes in operation Epic Fury, Tehran retains thousands of missiles and one-way attack UAV's capable of threatening U.S. and partner forces throughout the region.”

Adams' admission contradicted a previous statement from Air Force General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who in early April declared, “All of these systems are gone.”

Griffen pointed out the inconsistency of these two messages over a retweet of a CBS article, in which it was revealed that Iran's military is more capable than the Trump administration is publicly acknowledging. While on Tuesday, Trump claimed, "We've taken out their navy, we've taken out their air force, we've taken out their leaders,” multiple U.S. officials told CBS that Iran has retained at least 60 percent of its navy, roughly two-thirds of its air force, and half its stockpile of ballistic missiles.

This isn’t the first time that Trump’s military claims have diverged from the facts on the ground. In early April, after declaring that the U.S. had “beaten and completely decimated Iran,” asserting that “they have no anti-aircraft equipment” and “their radar is 100 percent annihilated,” the Iranians successfully shot down two American fighter jets.

On Wednesday morning, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt pushed back against the CBS article, posting that “the vast majority of Iran’s ballistic missiles, launcher vehicles, and long-range attack drones were destroyed,” “the Iranian navy was annihilated,” and that “Iran’s air forces are functionally and operationally irrelevant.”

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Trump melts down over Iran War coverage

President Donald Trump went on the attack against the media and Democrats on Tuesday, furious over coverage of his repeated claims that a deal to end the Iran war was near.

He suggested that even if Iran surrendered unconditionally, the media and “Dumacrats” would claim Iran had won.

“If Iran surrenders, admits their Navy is gone and resting at the bottom of the sea, and their Air Force is no longer with us, and if their entire Military walks out of Tehran, weapons dropped and hands held high, each shouting ‘I surrender, I surrender’ while wildly waving the representative White Flag, and if their entire remaining Leadership signs all necessary ‘Documents of Surrender,’ and admit their defeat to the great power and force of the magnificent U.S.A.,” Trump wrote, “The Failing New York Times, The China Street Journal (WSJ!), Corrupt and now Irrelevant CNN, and all other members of the Fake News Media, will headline that Iran had a Masterful and Brilliant Victory over The United States of America, it wasn’t even close. The Dumacrats and Media have totally lost their way. They have gone absolutely crazy!!!”

In March, Axios reported that Trump had claimed the Iran war was close to an end 12 times.

The current ceasefire is tenuous, as Iran is now warning of retaliation after the U.S. performed limited strikes on Monday, NewsNation reported.

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Former White House official: Iran war has left US dangerously exposed to China

After two months of conflict with no end in sight, Former Undersecretary of State Richard Stengel says that the U.S. is now “poorer,” “less safe,” and “more vulnerable” to its adversaries. His comments were posted along with an article from the New York Times that details how the war has drained stockpiles of “critical, costly weapons.”

“It is difficult to come to any other conclusion,” writes Stengel, “than that this admin's war in Iran has made America less safe and more vulnerable in regard to much more powerful potential adversaries like China. The diminution of expensive and hard to replace munitions is also making us poorer: spending estimates of the war so far are over $30 billion. Iran's military budget, by the way, is 1% of ours.”

Stengel is basing his assertion on some striking numbers. In just two months, the U.S. has fired some 1,100 long-range stealth cruise missiles intended for a war with China, which represented about half the American stockpile. It’s used over 1,000 Tomahawk missiles, which is ten times what it buys in a year. More than 1,200 Patriot interceptor missiles have been fired at a price of $4 million each. And these and other weapons had to be rushed to the Middle East from Asia and Europe, which has “left these regional commands less ready to confront potential adversaries like Russia and China.”

At the same time, while the U.S. has been burning through billions of dollars worth of multimillion-dollar weapons, Iran is using an asymmetric strategy that is exceptionally cheap by comparison.

“A Patriot missile costs between $4 and $4.5 million. An Iranian drone costs about $30,000-50,000,” noted Representative Ted Lieu (D-CA) at a recent hearing. “It’s like shooting Ferraris at frisbees. We cannot match this asymmetrical warfare, and we can never make enough of these defensive munitions.”

In Europe, reports the New York Times, “the war has led to depletions in weapons systems critical for defending the eastern flank of NATO from Russian aggression… But the biggest impact has been on troops in Asia,” where the movement of forces and resources from the South China Sea has provided a strategic boon to China and North Korea.

During a Tuesday Senate hearing on the matter, Admiral Samuel J. Paparo Jr., the head of the military’s Indo-Pacific Command, acknowledged the issue of stockpile shortages by admitting that “there are finite limits to the magazine.”

- YouTube www.youtube.com

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'Definition of a cover-up': Officials say Trump White House is lying about Iran casualties

As of Wednesday, official figures released by the Department of Defense on casualties in Iran place the number of American service members wounded and killed at 411. But according to a new report from the Intercept, that number “erases” 15 wounded from the count, amounting to the very “definition of a cover-up.”

On the first day of the ceasefire, the Pentagon listed American casualties at 385, and though fighting was theoretically suspended, that gradually climbed to 428 by Monday. But the following day, that number dropped to 413 without explanation. The Pentagon has maintained that number since then, though a DOD count places it two lower.

When asked about the discrepancy, two Pentagon officials were unable to account for the change, with one claiming, “As soon as the duty officer comes back to their desk,” an explanation would be provided. But “a day, and multiple follow-ups, later, The Intercept has yet to receive an explanation of why 15 wounded personnel were scrubbed from the War Department’s casualty rolls.”

One U.S. official was blunt about their assessment of what they called a “casualty cover-up.”

“These numbers, it is obvious, are important. That they don’t want the public to have them says something,” said the official. “That’s the definition of a cover-up.”

According to two sources who worked with the Defense Casualty Analysis System, or DCAS, which is used to count casualties, it is unusual to see “lag between a casualty occurring in the field and its inclusion in the system.”

“We got it very quickly. We could report the number of casualties very fast,” Joan Crenshaw, who worked on DCAS during the war on terror said, explaining that the data was refreshed on a daily basis.

The Department of Defense and relevant administration officials have refused to address “hard questions about undercounts of dead and wounded personnel, the slow-walking of statistics, faulty accounting measures, and arcane casualty-counting procedures.” Aside from the erased wounded, The Intercept also asserts that the casualty numbers provided by the government “offer a distorted image of the conflict” as the DCAS tally doesn’t include “non-hostile injuries,” such as the over 200 sailors treated for smoke inhalation and lacerations due to a fire aboard the USS Gerald R. Ford on March 12, as well as other injuries.

“That should have been entered into DCAS,” said Crenshaw. “My concern is why that piece is now missing.”

A second source who also worked on DCAS and spoke on the condition of anonymity expressed similar concerns, wondering what the Pentagon “had to hide.”

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WSJ warns Trump could be handing Iran an economic bailout

Amid reports that a new ceasefire deal was imminent, the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board warned President Donald Trump to avoid a deal that functions as an economic bailout for Iran.

Over the weekend, Trump claimed that the U.S. and Iran were close to reaching a deal for a 60-day ceasefire in the conflict that has ravaged the world economy and sent oil prices skyrocketing. Iranian officials confirmed that talks were progressing, but stressed that major sticking points were still holding it back, adding that a deal was nowhere near as close as the president suggested. Nevertheless, news of an impending reprieve sent oil prices tumbling slightly.

In response to these reports, the WSJ board — which is commonly viewed as a major conservative voice on economic and political issues — published a new piece, warning Trump that one aspect of the supposed plan would amount to an economic bailout for Iran, and would leave the U.S. with only the most extreme leverage to get a final deal made, calling the notion a major potential "strategic setback."

In particular, the board took issue with the proposed portion of the deal that would end the U.S. blockade of Iran's port and allow them to resume selling oil to foreign markets.

"The preliminary deal, as mooted in the press, is for both sides to end their blockades, and perhaps for the U.S. to sweeten the pot financially, while talks on nuclear issues and further sanctions relief continue for 60 days or more," the board wrote. "A U.S. official says, but Iranian officials deny, that the regime gave assurances a final deal would include 'disposal' of its enriched uranium."

The end of the blockade, they warned, would destroy a key piece of U.S. leverage over Iran before its nuclear program is properly dealt with. The only remaining leverage — threatening to renew the fighting — will ring hollow after his previous backtracks.

"The basic problem lies with ending U.S. pressure before dismantling the nuclear program," the board added. "If the blockade ends and Iran can sell its oil, all that’s left to coerce it into nuclear concessions is the threat of renewed war."

It continued: "But Trump wasn’t willing to do that after Iran reneged on reopening the Strait of Hormuz and attacked U.S. forces and Gulf allies. How credible will the threat be 60 days closer to midterms, when it would trigger a new Iranian blockade of Hormuz? A pledge not to build a nuclear weapon means nothing because the regime has always said that while doing the opposite... Iran’s regime went into this war facing domestic political and economic crises. War has made these worse. Saving such a regime now with an economic bailout would be the real betrayal—of the U.S. interest even more than the Iranian people.”

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Intel community debunks Trump commander’s sworn testimony on Iran

Newly uncovered U.S. intelligence reports have debunked claims made by a leading Trump administration admiral during sworn testimony about the damage done to Iran, per CNN, with new estimates showing that they are much closer to rebuilding key military capabilities than once thought.

Admiral Brad Cooper, commander for U.S. CENTCOM under President Donald Trump, testified before the House Armed Services Committee on Tuesday. At one point, he made a claim about the extent of the destruction that Trump's war had caused for the Iranian military, and asserted that they would need years to rebuild.

"Operation Epic Fury significantly degraded Iran's ballistic missiles and drones while destroying 90 percent of their defense industrial base, ensuring that Iran cannot reconstitute for years," Cooper said during the testimony.

This claim was cited during a Thursday segment on CNN's News Central, where host Brianna Keilar discussed newly uncovered intelligence reports that revealed estimates that Iran is actively "rebuilding key parts of its military," including its "expansive drone program." Sources who spoke with the network said that Iran could have these capabilities in a matter of months, not years.

"We're learning some new details about how quickly Iran appears to be rebuilding key parts of its military, and that includes its expansive drone program, which, according to a source, could be fully rebuilt in as little as six months," Keilar said. "Multiple sources telling CNN, U.S. intel indicates during this now six-week ceasefire, Iran is reconstituting its military capabilities a lot faster than expected, one official saying the Iranians have, quote, exceeded all timelines."

Senior national security reporter Zachary Cohen joined the broadcast to dig in deeper on this report, and how it conflicts with Cooper's claim.

"We're told that Iran is actively rebuilding production facilities and military capabilities that were destroyed by U.S.-Israeli airstrikes, and they're doing so much more quickly than the U.S.intelligence community initially thought they could," Cohen explained. "And that's something that we're hearing concerns about from U.S. officials, who are saying that Iran is reconstituting and doing so on a very rapid timeline. And that includes things like trying to replace missile sites, launchers and their industrial base writ large, which the U.S. and Israel did inflict serious damage on."

He continued: "So not only does Iran still maintain significant ballistic missile and drone capability, but we're told that they are already producing more drones to replace the ones that they've lost during the conflict. One U.S. official [told] me that they could completely reconstitute their drone attack capability in a matter of six months. So a much more accelerated timeline than the one Cooper was laying out..."

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Expert warns Trump falling into 'escalation trap' as he sends 10,000 more troops to Iran

Since launching war against Iran, President Donald Trump has gradually shifted tens of thousands of troops to the Middle East. Now upon the latest news that he’s sent another 6,000 amidst failing peace negotiations, a respected international security expert has a warning for the president: be wary of the “escalation trap.”

“Victory rhetoric is noise — Troop movements are signal,” posted Robert A. Pape, Political Science Professor at the University of Chicago and author of two books on military strategy, warning that the “US is getting deeper into the Escalation Trap.”

Pape is referring to a pattern the U.S. has seen play out in conflicts around the world repeatedly over the past 80 years.

In the early years of the Vietnam War, for example, American troop numbers were low, growing from around 800 to 23,000 between 1959-1964 before exploding up to 184,000 one year later, reaching a high of nearly 540,000 in 1968, and finally withdrawing in 1973. Then in Afghanistan, U.S. troop levels grew gradually to 30,000 between 2002-2008, before leaping up to 110,000 by 2011, leaving after nearly 20 years in 2020. In the second Iraq War, the American military showed up in force more or less from the beginning in 2003, expected the conflict to end quickly, famously “surged” troop numbers up to nearly 170,000 four years later hoping to force a conclusion, but continued fighting for another several years.

Because of this legacy of escalatory wars that drag on for years of even decades, many in the U.S. have learned to be wary of such military adventures.

Now Trump is sending 6,000 troops aboard the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush along with another 4,200 amphibious troops arriving later in the month. That suggests an approaching coastal invasion, boots on the ground, and a protracted fight.

Regardless, Trump continues to declare that “we’ve won” while negotiations flounder as the end of the already tenuous two-week ceasefire approaches. Few seem to agree with the president, with even members of his own party expressing doubt over declaring "mission accomplished."

“We will not have won,” said Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) on Sunday, “until we have completely defanged the Iranian regime.” He offered a long list of conditions that he says would need to be met — from halting nuclear weapon production to reopening the Strait of Hormuz — admitting, “We have not yet finished the job.”

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