A week into the war with Iran, central questions about the conflict remained largely unanswered: what would constitute a victory, how long the crisis could last and whether the United States was responsible for a deadly attack on a girls’ elementary school that has come to embody the war’s initial controversy.
On Saturday, leaning against the bulkhead outside the press box as Air Force One sailed toward Florida, Donald Trump was still struggling to clarify his own message.
Trump has generally preferred the informal setting of a group aboard a flight, and so at times felt his meandering responses offered an unusually direct window into his uncertainty about what he wanted from Iran. As The Guardian’s White House correspondent, I was on board to hear him as part of the press group traveling with the president that day.
Trump appeared at the front of the press box accompanied by his Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, and special envoy Steve Witkoff. And next to him, the two television screens that until then broadcast Fox News had already changed to the usual image of the presidential seal centered on a waving American flag.
Trump had previously said he wanted Iran to accept “unconditional surrender,” although it is unclear what that meant in practical terms.
“I said ‘unconditional’. It’s when they cry man or when they can’t fight anymore and there’s no one around to cry man, that could happen too,” Trump said, a vague response that offered no further indication of whether he expected the Iranian regime to cede power or negotiate an end to the conflict.
On the war timeline, Trump had said just days earlier in interviews that he expected the U.S. campaign to be complete in four or five weeks, or possibly even sooner. But on the plane it was much more ambiguous.
“I don’t know,” Trump said with a shrug. “Whatever it takes.”
And when asked whether the United States was responsible for the attacks that destroyed a girls’ elementary school in southwestern Iran and killed more than 160 people, many of them children, Trump gave a novel answer that stunned the entire press box and took his own advisers by surprise.
“No, in my opinion, from what I’ve seen, that was done by Iran,” Trump said. “Iran did it. They are very inaccurate, as you know, with their munitions. They are not accurate at all, it was done by Iran.”
It was not immediately clear where the claim came from. Videos of the attack appear to show what weapons analysts say looks like a U.S. Tomahawk cruise missile hitting the area near the school, a weapon used by U.S. forces and not known to be in Iran’s possession.
The comment seemed to catch even members of Trump’s own team off guard. Hegseth, when next asked about the incident, would only say that the matter was under investigation.
Overall, as Trump marked the first week of his war against Iran, which has only expanded its scope and drawn in dozens of allies in the region, the only real certainty in the president’s comments was that the war would continue.
Once upon a time, Trump used to say that 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 of the guttural cries of grieving parents to affirm his commitment to avoiding the so-called forever wars that dogged his predecessors.
Trump may have become callous over the years, but he no longer tends to speak that way. When asked on the return flight from the dignified transfer of six American servicemen killed in Operation Epic Fury if 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 entire evil empire. I’m sure it will continue for a while, but I’m very proud of the people,” Trump said. He later added matter-of-factly that the deaths were “part of the war.”
In many ways, it was a jarring moment, not least because the dignified transfer at Dover Air Force Base had ended just an hour earlier.
During the transfer, the hazy, cloudy sky appeared to shadow the huge dark silhouette of the C-17 transport plane carrying the service members’ remains home.
And then the presidential SUV pulled to the side. Trump emerged wearing a bright white baseball cap emblazoned with the letters “USA.” – apparently the same one he used to announce the start of the war – which accentuated the haze and served as a reminder that much of what happens in this war ultimately depends on him.
