Donald Trump’s mixed messages on Iran leave questions unanswered

One week into the war with Iran, the central questions about the conflict remained largely unanswered: what would constitute victory, how long the crisis might last and whether the United States was responsible for a deadly strike on a girls’ elementary school that has come to embody the war’s early controversy.

On Saturday, leaning against the bulkhead outside the press cabin as Air Force One cruised toward Florida, Donald Trump still struggled to clarify his own message.

Trump has generally preferred the informal setting of an in-flight gaggle and so it felt at times that his meandering answers offered an unusually direct window into his uncertainty about what he wanted from Iran. As a Guardian White House correspondent, I was onboard to hear it as part of the press pool traveling with the president that day.

Trump appeared at the front of the press cabin accompanied by his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, and special envoy Steve Witkoff. And next to him, the two TV screens that had been playing Fox News until then had already swapped to the customary image of the presidential seal centered over an undulating American flag.

Trump had previously said he wanted Iran to accept “unconditional surrender”, though what that meant in practical terms has remained unclear.

“I said ‘unconditional’. It’s where they cry uncle or when they can’t fight any longer and there’s nobody around to cry uncle – that could happen too,” Trump said, a vague response that offered no more indication of whether he expected the Iranian regime to give up power or negotiate an end to the conflict.

On the timeline for the war, Trump had just days before said in interviews that he expected the US campaign to be completed in four or five weeks, or possibly even sooner. But on the plane, he was far more equivocal.

“I don’t know,” Trump said with a shrug. “Whatever it takes.”

And when he was asked whether the United States was responsible for strikes that destroyed a girls’ elementary school in south-west Iran that killed more than 160 people, many of the children, Trump gave a novel answer that stunned the entire press cabin and took his own advisers by surprise.

“No, in my opinion based on what I’ve seen, that was done by Iran,” Trump said. “It was done by Iran. They’re very inaccurate as you know with their munitions. They have no accuracy whatsoever, it was done by Iran.”

It was not immediately clear where the assertion had come from. Videos of the strike appear to show what weapons analysts say resembles a US Tomahawk cruise missile hitting the area near the school – a weapon used by American forces and not known to be possessed by Iran.

The comment seemed to catch even members of Trump’s own team off-guard. Hegseth, asked next about the incident, said only that the matter was under investigation.

All in all, as Trump marked the first week of his war against Iran that has only expanded in scope and drawn in dozens of allies in the region, the only real certainty in the president’s remarks was that the war would continue.

Once upon a time, Trump used to say the hardest part of being president was signing letters to the families of soldiers killed in combat. During his 2024 presidential campaign, he often spoke about the guttural cries of grieving parents to affirm his commitment to avoid the so-called forever wars that dogged his predecessors.

Perhaps Trump has become desensitized over the years, but he does not tend to speak that way any more. Asked on the flight back from the dignified transfer of six American service members killed in Operation Epic Fury about whether the experience had made him reconsider the course of the war, Trump shook his head.

“No, we’re winning the war by a lot. We decimated their whole evil empire. It will continue I’m sure for a little while but I’m very proud of the people,” Trump said. Later, he added matter-of-factly that deaths were a “part of war”.

In many ways, it was a jarring moment, not least because the dignified transfer at the Dover air force base had ended barely an hour earlier.

During the transfer, the hazy, overcast sky seemed to cast a pall over the hulking dark silhouette of the C-17 transport plane that carried the remains of the service members back home.

And then the presidential SUV pulled up to the side. Trump stepped out wearing a bright white baseball cap emblazoned with the letters “USA” – seemingly the same one he wore to announce the start of the war – that punctuated the haze and served as a reminder that much of what happens in this war is ultimately up to him.