White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles has privately urged senior aides to stop presenting President Donald Trump with an overly optimistic picture of the US-Israel war against Iran, warning that growing political and economic costs have left the administration a narrow window to find an exit from the conflict.
According to a TIME Magazine investigation citing two White House sources and a senior administration official, Wiles told colleagues to be “more forthright with the boss” about the political and economic risks of the ongoing campaign — a direct pushback against aides who had been filtering or curating information reaching the president.
The warning came after Trump’s own pollster, Tony Fabrizio, delivered a stark assessment that public support for the war sank sharply as gas prices climbed above $4 a gallon and US stock markets hit multi-year lows.
Trump launched Operation Epic Fury on February 28 in a joint strike with Israel that killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Iran’s response was sweeping: missiles and drones struck US bases in Iraq and Syria, barrages hit Israeli cities, proxy militias launched coordinated attacks across the region, and Iran harassed commercial shipping in the Persian Gulf.
The strikes caught Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth off guard. He had expected Tehran to absorb the attack with limited retaliation, based on how previous rounds of strikes had played out. “When they started attacking virtually the entire region, it sort of hit him like, ‘Whoa, we’re really in this now,'” a person familiar with his thinking told TIME.
Thirteen US service members have died in the conflict. Trump privately told at least two advisers and two members of Congress that he wants to wind down the military campaign, even as he publicly pledged to continue airstrikes for another two to three weeks and threatened to bomb Iran back to the “stone ages.”
Each morning, Trump watches video clips compiled by military officials showing only battlefield successes, a senior administration official told TIME. A separate NBC News investigation — citing three current US officials and one former official — confirmed the practice, describing the daily two-minute montages as clips of US Central Command strikes on Iranian equipment and military sites. One official described the footage bluntly as “stuff blowing up.”
Officials told NBC News the curated nature of the briefings has raised concerns that Trump may not be receiving or absorbing the complete picture of the war.
In one instance, Trump was not briefed on an Iranian strike that hit US refueling aircraft at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia, learning of the attack through media reports instead. He has told aides that leading the campaign to eliminate Iran’s nuclear program could stand as a defining achievement of his presidency.
Pentagon chief spokesperson Sean Parnell rejected the suggestion that the administration had been caught unprepared. The US military had “anticipated, war-gamed, and fully prepared for every possible Iranian response,” Parnell said in a statement, adding that US forces “are winning.”
The political damage to Trump’s party, however, has been significant. Democrats have flipped more than two dozen congressional seats since Trump’s reelection, while Republicans have flipped none. Wiles told the president that a protracted war risks steepening those losses ahead of November’s midterm elections.
A senior official summed up the White House’s situation as a “narrow window,” with Trump looking for a way to declare victory and pull back from the conflict before the costs deepen further.
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