Trump insiders fear Operation Epic Fury is suddenly at risk over a new threat they're struggling to contain: MARK HALPERIN
In its initial days, the public story of the conflict with Iran was one of force, momentum and success. The briefings stressed what had been hit, what had been degraded, what had been decapitated. Naval assets damaged. Command-and-control disrupted. Missile capacity diminished. Villains eliminated. On paper, and in the early headlines, it looked like a campaign moving with confidence and purpose.
But in the last two days, based on my reporting and conversations with people in and around the administration, including some who support the mission, I have developed real doubts about where things stand.
Let me be careful here, because this is the kind of subject where people hear what they want to hear. I am not saying the original objective was foolish. I am not saying the mission cannot still succeed. And I am certainly not saying that to question the execution of a war effort is somehow to root against the United States or its military. That is not serious thinking and it is not patriotic thinking either.
There is an old standard for journalists in wartime, and Walter Cronkite remains the emblem of it.
In 1968, after Vietnam had revealed itself to be bloodier, murkier and less tractable than the public had been led to believe, Cronkite offered his famous judgment that the war appeared headed for stalemate and that negotiation was the only rational way out. He did not sound hysterical. He did not sound ideological. He sounded burdened by facts.
I am not Walter Cronkite. But the lesson of that moment still matters. A reporter can support America’s interests, support the troops, even support the stated aims of a mission, and still say plainly when the underlying theory begins to look shaky. Indeed, that is a central part of the job.
And right now, the biggest problem is not abstract. It has a name: the Strait of Hormuz.
If the United States and its allies cannot reopen that waterway to commercial shipping, then much else about this effort becomes secondary, maybe at least somewhat useless. The credibility of the operation, and to some extent the credibility of the United States itself, now runs through that narrow corridor.
Based on my reporting, I have developed real doubts about where things stand. (Pictured: Thai oil tanker burns after an Iranian strike in the Strait of Hormuz on March 11, 2026)
Washington has said, in essence, that Iran will not be allowed to menace the region, blackmail the global economy and close one of the world’s most vital maritime chokepoints. That, like the overall mission, is a righteous goal. It is also now a test.
The difficulty is that opening the strait is not a matter of issuing a stern statement or holding a triumphant press conference. It is a matter of actual control. It means neutralizing drones, missiles, mines, submarines and coastal threats. It means persuading shipping companies, insurers, captains and crews that passage is genuinely safe, not merely declared safe by people at podiums. It means proving that the 51st ship will be as protected as the first.
And that is where the doubts have grown.
Iran does not need to win a conventional military contest with the United States. It only needs to retain enough asymmetrical capacity to keep the waterway dangerous, the markets rattled and the White House under pressure. That is the grim arithmetic of this kind of conflict.
A superpower can dominate the skies and still find itself vulnerable to the cheap, deniable and unnervingly effective tools of the age: drones, cyberattacks, sabotage and terrorism. We have entered the era in which a relatively weak adversary can still inflict strategic pain and force a stalemate.
The prewar cogitation by Team Trump about the strait and how to keep it open seems, at best, to have been insufficiently planned for. And a failure to open the strait in a fortnight or so, many analysts and sources say, could lead to world oil prices rising to $200 a barrel, which would likely create catastrophic consequences.
One question being asked now, including by some allies of the administration, is how the United States could enter a conflict of this magnitude without a more fully developed answer on two obvious fronts: Hormuz and drones. That does not mean there was no planning. It does mean that, in the view of many sources, there is now visible improvisation. And improvisation in war is not always a sign of nimbleness. Sometimes it is a sign you have discovered the map was missing a few key mountains.
There are other concerns as well. The regime in Tehran, though battered, still stands. There are no clear signs of a popular uprising sweeping it away, no obvious fracture at the center, no convincing evidence yet that the system has begun to collapse under the blows it has taken. If anything, the regime appears to be showing one of the oldest traits of revolutionary governments: a talent for absorbing punishment while projecting menace.
It can still strike back. It can still use proxies. It can still threaten shipping. It can still widen the field of battle.
And widen it, perhaps, it will. Cyberwarfare is an obvious danger. So is the prospect of sleeper-cell activity or attempted attacks on American soil by drones. So is the vulnerability of infrastructure in the region, including desalination plants and other targets whose destruction would spread panic far beyond the conventional theater of war. The modern battlefield is not neat. It seeps, shifts, and spreads.
On Thursday, the crash of a US military KC-135 refueling aircraft over Iraq and the death of four of its six American crew members demonstrated the unavoidable rising costs of prolonged conflict. The Pentagon says the plane was not brought down by enemy or friendly fire; an investigation is underway.
All of this would be challenge enough even with a unified domestic front. But that is not what President Trump has. His base remains broadly supportive. That matters. It is not enough.
Mark Halperin is the editor-in-chief and host of the interactive live video platform 2WAY and the host of the video podcast 'Next Up' on the Megyn Kelly network
Because Abraham Lincoln was right: public sentiment is everything. With it, nothing can fail; without it, nothing can succeed. Woodrow Wilson understood the same truth. Harry Truman did too. Wars are not sustained by rhetoric alone. They require public consent, public patience and public understanding of the goal.
And here is where Trump may be hurting himself. His instinct for strategic ambiguity, for saying different things to different audiences, has often served him well in politics. I praised its efficacy only a week ago. That method can create room. It can keep opponents off balance. But in war, especially once events begin to darken, excessive flexibility can begin to look like evasiveness. If the President says the strait is in great shape and people can see that it plainly is not, then the issue becomes not merely military performance but presidential credibility.
That is a dangerous turn.
For now, I am not predicting defeat. I am not prescribing surrender. I am saying that the last few days have been bad for this effort, and that anyone looking honestly at the landscape ought to admit it.
The central question is no longer whether America can hit Iran hard. It can. The question is whether it can translate battlefield success into strategic success before the costs mount, the public sours and the mission becomes one more chapter in the long American book of getting in deeper because getting out became politically, psychologically and geopolitically harder than staying in.
That is the trap in war. The first step can be decisive. The next ten can be muddy. History is littered with leaders who confused motion with progress.
Today, no matter how supportive you are of President Trump, and no matter how legitimate you believe the aims of this conflict to be, there is reason for concern. Not panic. Not despair. Concern.
And, for the moment, concern is the most honest word.
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