Trump contradicts himself on Iran repeatedly in just a few hours

President Donald Trump’s rhetoric about the war with Iran has been confusing and contradictory since well before the first strikes began.

But on Monday he managed to say some very different things about the same subjects in the span of just a few hours.

The war being over

The big news Monday afternoon was that it sounded like the war might be just about over — at least judging by Trump’s comments.

In a phone interview with CBS News, Trump declared, “I think the war is very complete, pretty much.”

But around the same time, the Defense Department’s rapid response account posted on X, “We have Only Just Begun to Fight,” without any additional context. (And just days ago, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth emphasized to CBS’ “60 Minutes” in an interview taped Friday that “this is only just the beginning.”)

And Trump’s comment in that Monday interview was also quite different from what he would say later that afternoon.

“We’ve already won in many ways, but we haven’t won enough,” he said in a speech to House Republicans in Florida. “We go forward more determined than ever to achieve ultimate victory that will end this long-running danger once and for all.”

Minutes after that speech, Trump at a news conference again cast the victory as not-so-complete.

“We’ll not relent until the enemy is totally and decisively defeated,” he said.

“We could call it a tremendous success right now — as we leave here, I could call it,” Trump added. “Or we could go further, and we’re going to go further.”

The state of Iran’s defenses

Trump also offered some contradictory commentary on the state of Iran’s firepower.

In the same CBS interview, he suggested Iran had no means to fight anymore.

Iran has “no navy, no communications, they’ve got no air force,” Trump said.

He added: “They’ve shot everything they have to shoot.”

And: “If you look, they have nothing left. There’s nothing left in a military sense.”

In his news conference, he also said, “They have no radar, they have no telecommunications. … It’s all gone.”

But elsewhere at that event, he cast the same capacities as greatly diminished rather than gone.

While he previously said that Iran had “no navy,” he instead said, “Most of Iran’s naval power has been sunk.”

(Trump also quickly increased the number of Iranian ships he claimed the US military had sunk, from 46 during his speech to 50 and then 51 in his news conference.)

While he had said Iran shot basically everything it had, he at another point said its missile capacity was “down to about 10%, maybe less” and at another point said “most” missiles had been used or destroyed.

“The drones are down to probably 25%, and they’ll be soon be down to nothing,” he added.

Iranian leadership

As Trump played up the successes of the war effort at the news conference, he initially claimed Iran’s leadership was completely gone.

“Everything they have is gone, including their leadership,” he said.

“They have no leadership,” he added.

But then it was that “two levels of leadership are gone,” and that “most people have never even heard about the leaders that they’re talking about.”

But one of the names is pretty familiar. Iran’s new supreme leader is Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of the recently killed supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

And despite having cast Iran’s leadership as irretrievably gone just seven minutes earlier, Trump painted the new Khamenei as basically a continuation of that leadership.

“I was disappointed, because we think it’s going to lead to just more of the same problem for the country,” he said. “So I was disappointed to see their choice.”

The bombing of the elementary school

Trump turned heads Saturday by wagering that Iran was responsible for the attack on an elementary school on its own soil, despite plenty of evidence that it was the United States.

“In my opinion, based on what I’ve seen, that was done by Iran,” the president told reporters aboard Air Force One.

He was eventually firmer, saying that “it was done by Iran.”

When pressed on the subject at his Monday news conference, Trump implied it was Iran, but not as strongly — suggesting Tehran might have gotten its hands on a “generic” Tomahawk missile — a weapon the country isn’t known to have.

But then, when it was noted that Hegseth, who was standing beside him on Saturday, declined to back up Trump’s claim about Iran being responsible, the president conceded, “I just didn’t know enough about it. I think it’s something that I was told is under investigation,” before going on to repeat his claims that other nations have Tomahwaks.

“But I will certainly — whatever the [investigation’s report] shows, I’m willing to live with that report,” he said.