Will Trump ‘TACO’ on Iran?
By AFP
March 10, 2026
US President Donald Trump has given shifting timelines for the Iran war - Copyright AFP SAUL LOEB
Danny KEMP
US President Donald Trump has built a potential off-ramp by suggesting the Iran war could end soon, but the world is still guessing about whether he will take it — and whether Tehran will let him.
With surging oil prices threatening the global economy and his political fortunes at home, Trump’s tone appeared to shift abruptly on Monday as he called the war “very complete” and a “short-term excursion.”
But the 79-year-old commander-in-chief continued to send mixed messages about when the war could end — and what its goals are — leaving it far from clear what he will ultimately settle for.
For Trump, that calculation will almost certainly involve November’s US midterm elections, with gas prices likely to fuel voter anger at his Republican Party over the cost of living.
Polls so far show historically low support among Americans for the war.
“I think he’s going to keep going until his advisers tell him that the economic pain is going to risk the midterms,” Colin Clarke, executive director of the Soufan Center in New York, told AFP.
“He’s going to make a political decision about a military operation.”
For some observers, Trump’s comments on a short Iran war timeline was evidence of what traders have dubbed the TACO phenomenon — “Trump Always Chickens Out.”
“What they did communicate clearly, to the delight of markets, was that Trump is looking for an exit,” wrote Robert Armstrong, the Financial Times journalist who first coined the term TACO.
In the opening days of the US-Israeli strikes, Trump suggested the war could last four or five weeks, but markets surged at his hints on Monday that it could be shorter.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Tuesday that Trump, and Trump alone, would determine the timeline. “It’s not for me to posit whether it’s the beginning, the middle or the end. That’s his,” said the former Fox News host.
Clarke said he believed Trump would “go hard for the next two weeks tops, then things are so messy he’s going to declare victory.”
– ‘Wounded animal’ –
Victory will then be in the eye of the beholder.
Both Trump and his administration have publicly given a panoply of shifting goals for the war, ranging from seeking regime change in all but name, to securing the flow of Gulf oil.
But on paper it has listed some core military objectives — ensuring Iran has no nuclear weapon, eliminating its ballistic missiles and its navy, and curbing its regional proxies — that could be easier for Trump to sign off on.
But Iran will likely see any such declaration as Trump blinking first.
Despite the significant damage from the US-Israeli air campaign, Tehran has stepped up its defiant tone since Trump’s remarks, vowing to block Gulf oil supplies and mocking the US leader’s claims to be in control of the timeline of the conflict.
“It is we who will determine the end of the war,” Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) said in a statement, while the Islamic republic’s security chief Ali Larijani warned Trump himself to be careful “not to be eliminated.”
Israel meanwhile has its own timeline, which Trump also has only limited control over. Differences have already emerged over both the long-term goals and Israel’s strikes on Iranian energy infrastructure.
And while Trump insists he must have a role in choosing Iran’s new leader, there is no sign yet of large-scale internal resistance to supreme leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, chosen at the weekend to replace his slain father.
If Mojtaba Khamenei and the regime survive, Operation Epic Fury would be “remembered as the Mother of All Lawnmowers” for having only skimmed the surface of things, Walter Russell Mead wrote in The Wall Street Journal.
Trump could then leave an even more dangerous situation, the Soufan Center’s Clarke said, with a “rump IRGC” going all out for a nuclear bomb, and the risk of various ethic groups launching a huge insurgency in the heart of the Middle East.
“If it’s Khamenei’s son or another hardliner, what’s different?” said Clarke. “It’s now like a wounded animal, which is arguably more dangerous.”
By AFP
March 10, 2026
US President Donald Trump has given shifting timelines for the Iran war - Copyright AFP SAUL LOEB
Danny KEMP
US President Donald Trump has built a potential off-ramp by suggesting the Iran war could end soon, but the world is still guessing about whether he will take it — and whether Tehran will let him.
With surging oil prices threatening the global economy and his political fortunes at home, Trump’s tone appeared to shift abruptly on Monday as he called the war “very complete” and a “short-term excursion.”
But the 79-year-old commander-in-chief continued to send mixed messages about when the war could end — and what its goals are — leaving it far from clear what he will ultimately settle for.
For Trump, that calculation will almost certainly involve November’s US midterm elections, with gas prices likely to fuel voter anger at his Republican Party over the cost of living.
Polls so far show historically low support among Americans for the war.
“I think he’s going to keep going until his advisers tell him that the economic pain is going to risk the midterms,” Colin Clarke, executive director of the Soufan Center in New York, told AFP.
“He’s going to make a political decision about a military operation.”
For some observers, Trump’s comments on a short Iran war timeline was evidence of what traders have dubbed the TACO phenomenon — “Trump Always Chickens Out.”
“What they did communicate clearly, to the delight of markets, was that Trump is looking for an exit,” wrote Robert Armstrong, the Financial Times journalist who first coined the term TACO.
In the opening days of the US-Israeli strikes, Trump suggested the war could last four or five weeks, but markets surged at his hints on Monday that it could be shorter.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Tuesday that Trump, and Trump alone, would determine the timeline. “It’s not for me to posit whether it’s the beginning, the middle or the end. That’s his,” said the former Fox News host.
Clarke said he believed Trump would “go hard for the next two weeks tops, then things are so messy he’s going to declare victory.”
– ‘Wounded animal’ –
Victory will then be in the eye of the beholder.
Both Trump and his administration have publicly given a panoply of shifting goals for the war, ranging from seeking regime change in all but name, to securing the flow of Gulf oil.
But on paper it has listed some core military objectives — ensuring Iran has no nuclear weapon, eliminating its ballistic missiles and its navy, and curbing its regional proxies — that could be easier for Trump to sign off on.
But Iran will likely see any such declaration as Trump blinking first.
Despite the significant damage from the US-Israeli air campaign, Tehran has stepped up its defiant tone since Trump’s remarks, vowing to block Gulf oil supplies and mocking the US leader’s claims to be in control of the timeline of the conflict.
“It is we who will determine the end of the war,” Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) said in a statement, while the Islamic republic’s security chief Ali Larijani warned Trump himself to be careful “not to be eliminated.”
Israel meanwhile has its own timeline, which Trump also has only limited control over. Differences have already emerged over both the long-term goals and Israel’s strikes on Iranian energy infrastructure.
And while Trump insists he must have a role in choosing Iran’s new leader, there is no sign yet of large-scale internal resistance to supreme leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, chosen at the weekend to replace his slain father.
If Mojtaba Khamenei and the regime survive, Operation Epic Fury would be “remembered as the Mother of All Lawnmowers” for having only skimmed the surface of things, Walter Russell Mead wrote in The Wall Street Journal.
Trump could then leave an even more dangerous situation, the Soufan Center’s Clarke said, with a “rump IRGC” going all out for a nuclear bomb, and the risk of various ethic groups launching a huge insurgency in the heart of the Middle East.
“If it’s Khamenei’s son or another hardliner, what’s different?” said Clarke. “It’s now like a wounded animal, which is arguably more dangerous.”
By AFP
March 10, 2026
Critics have hit out at the rhetoric deployed by US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth (left), while Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine has adopted a more restrained tone - Copyright AFP/File Brendan SMIALOWSKI
Frankie TAGGART
When the top US general spoke Tuesday of his “respect” for Iranian fighters, the remark underscored a striking divide between the restrained language of the military brass and the swaggering rhetoric used by President Donald Trump and his administration.
From Trump joking that it was “more fun” to sink Iranian warships than capture them, to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth boasting that US forces were “punching them while they’re down,” critics say the administration’s messaging — reveling in the destructive power of the US military — has been jarring.
Professor Rachel VanLandingham, a retired Air Force judge advocate who teaches the law of war, said the tone amounted to a “crass trivialization” of combat operations that suggested a “bloodthirsty” administration that “revels in the carnage.”
“This type of dangerous language is unusual for modern American leadership, and it demonstrates an extremely cavalier attitude toward the death and destruction that war entails,” she told AFP.
The rhetoric has also been amplified online, where official accounts circulate slick videos celebrating US strikes, blending real combat footage with imagery drawn from Hollywood films and video games.
It has marked a departure from the more restrained language traditionally used by American leaders during wartime, even when describing battlefield success.
– War as spectacle –
Hegseth has emerged as the administration’s most outspoken public voice since Washington joined Israel in launching the campaign against Iran.
At press briefings and public events, the former television host has adopted an at times boastful, mocking tone in describing the offensive.
“This was never meant to be a fair fight, and it is not a fair fight. We are punching them while they’re down, which is exactly how it should be,” Hegseth said last week.
In a television interview, he described the sinking of an Iranian vessel as “a quiet death,” while declaring that “the only ones that need to be worried right now are Iranians that think they’re going to live.”
He has also mocked allies uneasy about the widening conflict, referring to those who “wring their hands and clutch their pearls, hemming and hawing about the use of force.”
Trump himself has used similarly combative language.
Recounting a discussion with a military official, the president said he had questioned why Iranian ships were sunk rather than seized.
“‘We could have used it. Why did we sink them?'” Trump said he had asked.
“He said, ‘It’s more fun to sink them.'”
Critics say repeating the remark publicly reinforced the impression of a White House treating war as spectacle.
– Military contrast –
Pushback intensified after the official White House account posted a video montage celebrating US strikes.
Cardinal Blase Cupich, the archbishop of Chicago, condemned the clip as turning real violence into entertainment.
“A real war with real death and real suffering being treated like it’s a video game — it’s sickening,” he said.
“Hundreds of people are dead, mothers and fathers, daughters and sons, including scores of children who made the fatal mistake of going to school that day.”
Top Democrats have accused the administration of sending contradictory messages about the conflict and demanded Tuesday that Trump, Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio testify before Congress on the war’s objectives.
Military leaders, by contrast, have largely maintained a more traditional tone.
General Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, drew attention when he was asked for his assessment of Iran’s military capability and noted the commitment of its fighters.
“I mean, I think they’re fighting, and I respect that,” he told reporters.
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