In February of this year, President Donald Trump launched an assault on Iran, announcing the operations in the middle of the night. For those watching the news in the weeks before and noting the extraordinary movement of personnel and resources into the region, the attack wasn’t a surprise. For everyone else — most Americans — it was.
Most observers (but not all) thought Trump had an unambiguous success in 2025, achieving his objective while keeping the mission strictly limited. But quietly, the White House had been backing off Trump’s initial unambiguous claims. In November 2025, “completely and totally obliterated” was reduced to “significantly degraded.”
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