Trump aides said urging him to articulate war exit plan; White House denies report

Some of US President Donald Trump’s advisers are privately urging him to publicly articulate an exit plan from the Iran war, The Wall Street Journal reports, citing unnamed sources familiar with the matter.

The aides want him to make the case that the military has largely achieved its objectives for the war, WSJ says.

While US officials have at times offered varying lists for the war’s aims, they have generally been the destruction of Iran’s missile program, the destruction of its navy, a halt to Iran’s support for regional proxies and the blocking of Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

The Journal report is forcefully denied by White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.

“This story is full of crap from anonymous sources who, I can guarantee, are not in the room with President Trump. The president’s top aides are focused 24/7 on ensuring Operation Epic Fury continues to be a tremendous success, and the end of these operations will ultimately be determined by the commander in chief,” Leavitt says.

WSJ says some of Trump’s aides have warned him that a drawn-out war will eat into his support, even if Republicans largely support the strikes against Iran for now.

The concerned advisers have fielded calls from Republicans who have expressed concern about what the war will mean for the upcoming midterm elections, the Journal says.

Accordingly, the aides determined that they needed a more aggressive public messaging plan to sell the war amid rising gas prices, WSJ says.

“The vast majority of Americans support ending the threat posed by the Iranian regime and support killing terrorists, and that’s what President Trump is going to accomplish,” Leavitt says in response to the story.

Polling has shown that a slight majority of Americans oppose the war, with responses largely falling along party lines.

Despite the concern from some of his advisers, administration officials told the Journal that the war was unlikely to end so long as Iran continued attacking regional countries and as long as Israel wanted to continue striking targets in Iran.

Trump won’t stop fighting until he can claim a satisfactory victory, especially when the US has a military advantage, a senior administration official tells WSJ.

The paper cites unnamed people familiar with Trump’s thinking as saying that the president is surprised that Iran hasn’t capitulated amid the unrelenting US and Israeli strikes.