Iran war rages on heading into fifth week, as Trump maintains that U.S. has ‘already won’

The U.S.-Israeli war with Iran continued to upend markets, cause death and destruction across the Middle East and elude diplomatic resolution before entering its fifth week on Friday – even as President Trump claimed victory and an imminent end to the conflict.

“We’re doing very well in Iran, just so you understand,” the president insisted to a group of farmers gathered for a White House agricultural event. “I mean, how good is our army? How good is our army?”

“Our military operation in Iran is going wonderfully! “” he posted on social media shortly after, as he prepared to deliver an economic speech in Miami.

Trump’s remarks — echoing others Thursday in which he said the United States had “already won the war” — came as Israel continues to bomb Iran and as Iran reports new strikes on its nuclear facilities and accuses Israel and the United States of having a “clear intent to commit genocide.”

His remarks came after U.S. stocks fell sharply again on Friday, as Wall Street neared the end of its fifth straight week of losses – the longest such streak in nearly four years – and as oil prices were on the rise again.

Iran contradicted Trump’s claims that the two countries were conducting productive negotiations to end the war, continued its own retaliatory strikes and warned workers at U.S.-aligned industrial companies in the region to leave their workplaces for fear of being injured or killed in upcoming strikes.

Iran has also strengthened its grip on the vital Strait of Hormuz – where reports indicated the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had begun imposing a heavy toll on oil ships hoping to pass through.

Since the start of the war, Trump administration officials have accused the media and others of ignoring American victories on the battlefield. At the same time, Trump has painted an overly rosy picture of a war won and nearing its end, even as ongoing fighting and messages of defiance from Iranian officials suggest the opposite is true.

He has always done so using a casual, casual tone – a stark change from previous wartime presidents.

For weeks, Trump has fended off criticism of the war campaign and questions about why it was justified and how long it would last. He ridiculed reporters who asked about tactics and whether he would deploy troops on the ground as inappropriate and foolish, and repeatedly responded to concerns about the war’s human toll by ignoring them or changing the subject.

On Thursday, in his first Cabinet meeting since the war began, Trump spent 10 minutes talking about the price of White House ceremonial pens — which he claimed to have lowered, from $1,000 to $5, by switching to his favorite Sharpie brand.

Trump was trying to argue that he is a big money saver. He seemed cheerful, joking with the other leaders of his administration around the table.

Later Thursday, when asked on Fox News’ “The Five” whether Iranians had access to basic necessities such as clean water and food, Trump complimented the appearance of Dana Perino, the Fox host who asked the question, compared to the one he had met years before.

“Now I’m not allowed to say that anymore, it’s the end of my political career, but maybe you’re even more handsome, okay?” » Trump said. “We no longer have the right to say that a woman is beautiful.”

He then talked about Iranian authorities killing protesters, but said he had been pleased about them more recently because they had given him a “gift” by allowing oil ships to pass through the Strait of Hormuz.

Meanwhile, the war has cost the United States billions of dollars and depleted its global reserves of critical weapons systems such as Tomahawk missiles, which cost millions of dollars each and are necessary to maintain American security around the world, according to the Washington Post.

Markets have fluctuated with Trump’s changing messages about ending the war, planned and then postponed U.S. strikes on Iranian power plants, strikes on oil and gas infrastructure in the Middle East and Iran’s takeover of the Strait of Hormuz, through which a quarter of the world’s oil usually passes.

Trump has spoken in recent days of an imminent deal to end the war, but so far that deal has not materialized, with Iran downplaying the seriousness of the negotiations and stepping up efforts to control the strait.

The number of American deaths in the conflict has remained stable for days – at 13 – but the war continues to take a devastating daily toll on the Middle East. In Iran, thousands of targets continued to be hit, with the death toll approaching 2,000.

On Friday, the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran reported that the Shahid Khondab heavy water complex in Arak and the Ardakan yellowcake – or concentrated uranium – production plant in Yazd province were hit, while saying there were no casualties or risk of contamination.

Speaking by video at a Human Rights Council meeting in Geneva on Friday, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi accused the United States and Israel of having a “clear intention to commit genocide” in Iran, saying more than 600 schools had been damaged or demolished and more than 1,000 students and teachers “had been martyred or injured.”

The discussion focused in part on a Feb. 28 strike on an elementary school in Minab that killed more than 165 people, most of them children, which evidence suggests was the work of the United States and which the United States says is under investigation.

Losses also continued in U.S.-allied Gulf countries, where Iran continues to strike U.S. military installations and other infrastructure, as well as in Lebanon, which Israel has invaded and relentlessly bombed in its own war against Iran-aligned Hezbollah.

And yet, Trump continued Friday to oscillate between his speeches and more formal meetings with apparent lightness — appearing unbothered by the weight of the conflict and acting as if American victory was already near.

A woman speaks on the phone as rescuers search through the rubble of a residential building hit in an airstrike Friday morning in Tehran.

(Majid Saeedi/Getty Images)

“We have already won the war. Militarily, we have totally won the war,” he told “The Five” on Thursday.

After Trump’s exchange with Perino, fellow host Greg Gutfeld began changing the subject, saying, “I’m wondering if I should be serious or not serious.” »

“Do you think Biden would do this interview? Can you imagine? You think Biden – Sleepy Joe – would do it?” » Trump said.

He called the war a “small detour” from what he said was his otherwise winning economic policy, and claimed once again – without providing evidence – that Iran was on the verge of possessing nuclear weapons and would have used them to wreak havoc across the Middle East and in the United States if the United States had not struck first, including when it bombed Iranian nuclear sites last summer.

“You can’t let a crazy person or a crazy ideology have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said.

He repeated his long-standing lie that he won the 2020 election and suggested his support among his MAGA base remained 100%.

An AP-NORC poll released this week found that most Americans believe the U.S. military campaign in Iran has gone too far — including about a quarter of Republicans — and many are concerned about the price of gas.

At Thursday’s Cabinet meeting, Trump appeared extremely confident, but also aware that the conflict was far from resolved.

He said the United States was “extremely — really, way ahead of schedule” in its war effort, and that “the Iranian regime now admits that it was decisively defeated.” But he also said that “even right now we don’t know if there are mines” in the Strait of Hormuz, although the United States has eliminated Iranian “mine widths,” and acknowledged that “if you think there might be a mine, that’s a bad idea and it stops things.”

He said the United States has “decimated” about 99 percent of Iran’s capabilities, but that “the problem with the strait” is that the remaining 1 percent threat “is unacceptable, because 1 percent is a missile penetrating the hull of a ship that cost $1 billion.”

“If we do 99 percent decimation, that’s not good,” he said.

During “The Five” interview, Trump was also asked whether the CIA told him that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei — who assumed the role of Iran’s leader after his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed in the first strikes — was gay, which would constitute a crime under Iranian law.

“Well, they said it, but I don’t know if it was just them. I think a lot of people say that. Which gets him off to a bad start in this particular country, you know?” Trump said, in a stunning acknowledgment of a previously rumored intelligence briefing.