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President Donald Trump dubiously claimed on Tuesday that the U.S. and Israel have already “won” their war on Iran, blaming the media for the continuation of the war as news emerges that the Pentagon is deploying 3,000 more troops to the Middle East.
“We’ve won this war. The war has been won,” Trump said in remarks to the media on Tuesday, parroting the same claims of victory he’s asserted for weeks now.
“The only one that likes to keep it going is the fake news,” the president went on. He complained that news outlets aren’t uncritically repeating the administration’s propaganda lines about the Iranian military being “totally defeated” — claims that are clearly false, as Iranian strikes continue from the air and sea each day.
Trump also claimed that the U.S. has already achieved regime change in Iran because the top leaders have been replaced. “The leaders are all very different than the ones that we started off with that created all those problems,” Trump said. “So this was, I think we can say, this is regime change, right?”
This is despite Iran’s government remaining largely intact, and potentially even consolidating power, U.S. intelligence has assessed.
Trump’s claims of victory come as the U.S. continues to escalate the war. On Tuesday, various U.S. outlets reported that the Pentagon is sending at least 1,000 — and up to 3,000 — paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division to the Middle East.
This adds to the 50,000 troops already in the region, and the thousands of other troops that have been sent on warships to the Middle East in recent weeks. The deployment of paratroopers, however, lends more credence to speculation that the Trump administration is prepared to launch a ground invasion of Iran, which experts have repeatedly said would be disastrous for U.S. troops and the people of Iran.
Trump also repeated his assertion that negotiations are ongoing with Iran, and negotiators are “getting fairly close” to striking a deal. This is despite Iranian officials saying that they have not been actively negotiating with the U.S.
“Has the level of your inner struggle reached the stage of you negotiating with yourself?” an Iranian armed forces spokesperson said on Wednesday, mocking the U.S.
Iranian officials said on Wednesday that the U.S. has indeed sent over a 15-point proposal for a temporary ceasefire. However, Drop Site reports that a senior Iranian official has expressed skepticism, noting that the U.S. has now pretended to negotiate and then struck the country anyway twice in the past year.
Meanwhile, on Tuesday, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth redefined the meaning of negotiations. “We see ourselves as part of this negotiation as well. We negotiate with bombs,” he said, as Trump appeared to be dozing off behind him.
Trump’s perception of the war — and perhaps the reason for his often confounding public statements — is seemingly greatly shaped by the propaganda videos and reported lies fed to him by his own staff. NBC reports that military officials compile a video of the biggest strikes on Iran from the last 48 hours to show the president each day.
The typically two minute videos come on top of regular briefings, former and current officials said, but briefings prepared for Trump, too, are tailored to show off U.S. successes. The briefings “tend to draw better feedback from his aides” this way, one current U.S. official noted to the outlet. This means that, overall, “the information Trump gets about the war tends to emphasize U.S. successes, with comparatively little detail about Iranian actions.”
This can mean that Trump isn’t even being informed of strikes on the U.S. military by his own aides, and learns about them from the media. This was the case with Iran’s strikes on an airbase in Saudi Arabia earlier this month that hit five U.S. Air Force refueling planes. After Trump learned about these strikes from the media, aides told him that the planes weren’t badly damaged.
In other instances, Trump is reportedly being told by military officials that footage of Iranian strikes is AI generated, even when this is patently untrue.
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