The Trump administration’s objectives for the Iran war keep changing | CNN Politics

The Trump administration keeps suggesting that the Iran war could wrap up soon. The reason? Because it’s accomplishing its goals. “We are going to achieve our objectives in a matter of weeks, not months,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio told ABC News on Monday. But when it comes to precisely what those goals are, the administration has been remarkably inconsistent. Officials have regularly listed four objectives, but they’ve often changed depending upon the date and who’s providing them. And even the frequently mentioned ones have been adjusted and scaled back. When the US launched strikes on Iran on February 28, the administration had done remarkably little legwork in building a case for war or laying out its objectives. But it finally clarified the latter on March 2. At a briefing, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth described four objectives: Those four more or less matched the things President Donald Trump mentioned in a video released the morning of the first strikes. But just hours after Hegseth’s comments, Trump debuted an amended list at a Medal of Honor ceremony at the White House. Numbers 3 and 4 were the same, but numbers 1 and 2 were merged into one goal — “de