President Donald Trump announced the U.S. and Israeli war against Iran three months ago this week. In a brief late-night speech from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida on Feb. 28, Trump laid out five goals for the conflict that he and his aides have since repeated. The president also briefly described a sixth goal that rarely has been mentioned.
Whether the United States has achieved those goals is the focus of fierce debate. Democrats have declared the war a debacle. Trump and his aides have declared it a resounding and complete success and have said media coverage that questions that success is “treasonous.”
“The media here, not all of it but much of it, wants you to think just 19 days into this conflict that we’re somehow spinning toward an endless abyss or a forever war or a quagmire,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said at a March 19 press conference. “Nothing could be further from the truth.”
A review of the current status of the conflict and interviews with experts suggests the Trump administration has achieved only one of the five goals the president himself outlined on Feb. 28. And the administration’s rarely mentioned sixth goal — regime change by way of an uprising by Iranians — appears to have been abandoned.
The final details of any peace agreement will clarify what the U.S. has achieved after striking more than 13,500 Iranian targets. As negotiations drag on and the Strait of Hormuz remains closed, some experts are arguing that Iran, not the U.S., has won the war, an outcome that seemed virtually impossible at its outset.
“I think Iran won the war,” Gregory Brew, a senior Iran and oil analyst at the Eurasia Group, told MS NOW. “Trump did not accomplish any of his goals.”
Below, each goal outlined in Trump’s Feb. 28 speech is followed by analysis from experts regarding whether the goal has been achieved.
‘Annihilate their Navy’
Status: Partially Achieved
Experts agree with publicly released U.S. intelligence assessments that U.S. and Israeli air strikes have decimated Iran’s traditional navy. The overwhelming majority of large surface ships that Iran fielded have been sunk, with more than 160 Iranian vessels struck and 90% of its regular fleet destroyed, according to U.S. Central Command.
CENTCOM Commander Adm. Bradley Cooper told Congress on May 14 that the U.S. conducted more than 700 airstrikes on Iranian naval mine targets, eliminating more than 90% of its mine inventory.
“Iran’s navy can no longer claim to be a maritime power, and it cannot project into the Gulf of Oman or the Indian Ocean,” Cooper said, despite the country’s continued hold over the Strait of Hormuz. “Iran retains nuisance capability — harassment, low-end drone and rocket attacks, and residual proxy support — but it no longer possesses the means to threaten major regional operations or to deter U.S. freedom of action in the air or maritime domains.”
Cooper assessed that the Iranian navy would be unable to rebuild for five to 10 years, adding it “likely will not get back to its previous size for a full generation.”
But U.S. intelligence agencies believe that hundreds of Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps speedboats have not been destroyed, The New York Times reported. And Iranian speedboats were laying mines in the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday before they were sunk by U.S. forces, a U.S. official, who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive information, told MS NOW.
“While the U.S. destroyed Iran’s ocean-going navy,” Brew said, “the much more important small-boat fleet managed by the IRGC Navy remains largely intact.”
‘Destroy their missiles’
Status: Not Achieved
“We destroyed or rendered non-mission-capable Iran’s fixed-wing airfields, hangars, fuel storage and munitions stockpiles, and we knocked out 82% of its air defense missile systems, along with the radar and command architecture that tied them together,” Cooper told Congress. He described Iran’s air defense forces as “functionally and operationally irrelevant.”
Initial U.S. intelligence assessments estimated that air strikes have destroyed or buried 70% of Iran’s land-based, short-, intermediate- and long-range missile stockpiles. But as the current ceasefire has dragged on, Iran has apparently dug out its buried missiles.
More recent intelligence assessments have found that 70% of Iran’s stockpile and its mobile missile launchers have survived the war, The Washington Post reported. And Iran has restored access to 30 of the 33 missile sites built along the Strait of Hormuz, which could attack oil tankers and U.S. Navy ships, the Times reported.
“If those assessments are accurate, it would suggest the campaign imposed real military costs on Iran but did not fundamentally eliminate its missile capability,” David Cattler, a former senior NATO and Pentagon official, told MS NOW. “The larger strategic question is whether the operation produced lasting changes in deterrence and Iranian behavior — or primarily imposed delay and bought time.”
‘Raze their missile industry to the ground’
Status: Achieved
Expert and U.S. intelligence assessments generally agree this is the one goal the U.S. has achieved. According to CENTCOM’s latest statistics, the U.S. has struck 90% of Iran’s weapons factories and has destroyed 80% of its missile facilities and 80% of its nuclear industrial base.
“With 90% of its defense industrial base destroyed, Iran won’t be able to reconstitute for years,” Cooper told Congress. “We damaged or destroyed over 85 percent of Iran’s ballistic missile, drone and naval defense industrial base. More than 1,450 strikes on weapons manufacturing facilities set the regime’s ability to build and stockpile ballistic missiles and long-range drones back by years.”
‘Ensure that the regime’s terrorist proxies can no longer destabilize the region’
Status: Not Achieved
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“The supply chain from Tehran to the proxies has been broken,” Cooper testified, although Iran has not agreed to stop funding or supporting terrorist groups in the Middle East.
One possible positive outcome of the Iran war could be a U.S.-brokered peace deal between Israel and Lebanon. Though the shaky ceasefire has been disrupted by fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, another round of talks between military and political officials is expected in Washington in the coming days, as negotiations have shown more progress — and promise — than the Iran nuclear talks.
Seemingly absent from those talks: addressing Iran’s military and financial support for its other proxy groups across the Middle East. Even if the U.S. can solidify a deal between Israel and Lebanon that results in the disarmament of Hezbollah, Iranian-backed militia groups in Iraq, Hamas in Gaza and the Houthis in Yemen would still pose a threat to Israel, U.S. forces in the region and shipping routes.
‘Ensure Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon’
Status: Not Achieved
The issue of Iran’s nuclear program remains the most contentious part of the negotiations, according to experts. U.S. officials have pushed for a commitment from Iran to hand over its roughly 1,000 pounds of enriched uranium. Iranian officials have apparently declined to make any concession regarding their nuclear program and said they want a 60-day ceasefire and a second round of talks to focus on Iran’s nuclear program.
Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, a moderate Republican and the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a social media post that the “rumored 60-day ceasefire” would be a “disaster.”
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, a longtime Iran hawk, said any agreement that allows Iran to retain its enriched uranium or receive “fees” or “tolls” from ships that transit the Strait of Hormuz would be disastrous.
“If the result of all that is to be an Iranian regime – still run by Islamists who chant ‘death to America,’ now receiving billions of dollars,” he said, “being able to enrich uranium & develop nuclear weapons, and having effective control over the Strait of Hormuz, then that outcome would be a disastrous mistake.”
‘To the great proud people of Iran … take over your government’
Status: Not Achieved
Trump has rarely repeated his call for Iranians to rise up and overthrow their government since his Feb. 28 address. But in a confusing statement at his Cabinet meeting Wednesday, Trump said he had not sought regime change, then said he had achieved it. He also said Iran’s new, more hardline leaders are “smarter” and “much more reasonable.”
“We didn’t set out for regime change, but by the fact that we’re dealing with a totally different group of people than we were at the beginning … This is regime change,” Trump said. “How can you have a stronger regime change than that?”
Cooper argued in his congressional testimony that more than 2,000 strikes against Iran’s command-and-control structures succeeded in creating “leadership vacuums, paralysis and internal confusion.”
But some Trump supporters have acknowledged that the Iranian regime could increase its influence in region simply by surviving. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., another longtime Iran hawk, said in an online post that Iran could emerge from the war more powerful because it has shown it has the ability to shut down the Strait of Hormuz.
“If a deal is struck to end the Iranian conflict because it is believed that the Strait of Hormuz cannot be protected from Iranian terrorism and Iran still possesses the capability to destroy major Gulf oil infrastructure,” Graham said, referring to missiles, “then Iran will be perceived as being a dominate [sic] force requiring a diplomatic solution.”
“Also, it makes one wonder why the war started to begin with if these perceptions are accurate,” Graham added, urging Trump to “get this right.”
Brew stood by his view that, by defying the U.S. and keeping the strait closed for three months, Iran has already won the war at a strategic level.
“The damage done to Iran’s military is significant, but Iran can and will rebuild,” he said. “Iran’s ability to close the Strait of Hormuz and keep it closed, and to retain this position during negotiations with the United States is a huge strategic win for Tehran.”
David Rohde is the senior national security reporter for MS NOW and a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. Previously he was the senior executive editor for national security and law for NBC News.
Julia Jester covers politics for MS NOW and is based in Washington, D.C.