Current and former officials close to Trump predict that he is close to a major escalation or that he is “bored” with the war.

This confusion may be just the way Trump likes it.

“I know it doesn’t sound right for me to say this, but I’d love my legacy to be made as a great peacemaker — because I really believe I’m a peacemaker,” Trump said at a Saudi-backed investment summit in Florida. “It doesn’t seem it right now, but I think I’m a peacemaker.”

But at the same event, Trump said that Iran was “begging to make a deal,” echoing comments he made at a Cabinet meeting earlier in the week. “They are begging to make a deal, not me,” he told reporters at the White House, later adding, “In fact, we have other targets we want to hit before we leave.”

There are several factors at play here. One is that Trump likes to maintain the element of surprise. Both last year’s Operation Midnight Hammer and the current Operation Epic Fury were launched after negotiations with the Iranians. The talks seemingly failed to produce a settlement acceptable to Trump, but also may have been conducted to facilitate sneak attacks on Iran, keeping the ayatollahs off-base and giving the U.S. more time to get resources in place. 

This strategic ambiguity isn’t unique to Trump’s approach to Iran. “It is clear from his public statements that he views foreign relationships realistically as ‘good deals’ or ‘bad deals,’ and he doesn’t feel the need to strictly adhere to those that disadvantage his client, the United States,” the Sagamore Institute’s Jerry Hendrix wrote in National Review during Trump’s first term. “In nearly every case, from China to Europe to North Korea, Trump has attempted to use rhetoric, often in the form of tweets, to introduce doubt and instability into ongoing conversations, using the subsequent uncertainty to create space for new dialogue.”

Trump has been both a longtime critic of “endless” U.S. wars in the Middle East and of the Iranian regime. In his first term, he pursued “maximum pressure” on Tehran, ripping up former President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal, but only limited military actions. During the 2024 campaign, Trump simultaneously vowed that Iran would never acquire a nuclear weapon on his watch and also that he would end rather than start wars.

There are also domestic considerations. MAGA elites are divided over the war, which is also unpopular with Democrats and independents. But Trump has mostly kept his grassroots supporters united behind it, partly because they can see what they want to see in the president’s varied promises about its duration: either a brief “excursion” or a sustained campaign for regime change that won’t stop until the mullahs fall.

All this is happening months before the midterm elections, when Trump needs his coalition to turn out to protect fragile Republican congressional majorities.

Finally, Trump doesn’t want reporting about his eagerness to strike a deal to end the war to make him look weak or undermine his bargaining position. “And just so we set the record straight because I’ve been watching the Wall Street Journal‘s fake news and all these stories that get printed, like, oh, I want to make a deal,” he complained at the Cabinet meeting.

Trump’s obvious desire to end the war between Russia and Ukraine has arguably hurt his diplomatic posture there.

“I mean, I read a story today that I’m desperate to make a deal,” Trump said later. “I’m not — I don’t — if I was desperate, [Secretary of War Pete Hegseth would] be the first to know. Pete, let’s get the hell out of there. I’m the opposite of desperate. I don’t care.”

TRUMP JOKES HEGSETH DOESN’T WANT IRAN WAR TO END

At some point, you can only keep people guessing for so long. That includes allies and negotiating partners abroad as well as voters at home. You run the risk of the strategy itself becoming confused.

But for now, the story Trump is telling about the war in Iran is like a choose-your-own adventure book.