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President Trump Wednesday declared “Mission Accomplished” in Iran even as the unpopular and costly war drags on with no end in sight and no sign that the U.S. is close to achieving any of the lofty goals he set for the conflict.
Trump posted an image of himself along with Iran’s slain former Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei against a stylized landscape background of punishing U.S. air and missile attacks.
“2026 Mission Accomplished” a caption reads.
The slogan evokes former President George W. Bush’s infamous premature declaration of “mission accomplished” in Iraq, a conflict that continued for years afterward. Trump even includes a photo of Bush in the image with the caption “Mission not accomplished 2001-21.”
A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll showed Trump’s handling of Iran is supported by just 31% American voters and his failure to end the the conflict on terms that show a clear victory could cost Republicans at the ballot box in the November midterm elections and beyond.
A big chunk of his own base opposes the war, which some see as a clear violation of his campaign pledge to end overseas entanglements.
Trump’s claim of victory comes without any apparent movement on key war aims he set out, like permanently ending Iran’s nuclear program, preventing Tehran from attacking neighbors and funding terror proxy groups. Trump vowed to engineer regime change but Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei, took power after his father’s killing and the regime appears little changed and more firmly entrenched in power than ever.
Most Republican strategists believe Trump should focus on kitchen table issues like tax cuts and the fairly resilient U.S. economy rather than trying to put a positive spin on the Iran war, which has caused the price of gas to skyrocket.
Trump himself is badly underwater in polls, with less than 40% of the American voters approving of his performance in the White House, raising the question if he will drag down congressional Republicans to defeat especially if he focuses on unpopular issues like Iran.
Non-partisan analysts predict Democrats will retake control of the House of Representatives and have a decent chance of flipping the Senate, though they would need to win daunting races in several red states to do so.
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