President Trump rejected the Iranian response to a proposed framework for ending hostilities, posting on Truth Social that he had read it and found it totally unacceptable, after reports indicated the Iranians demanded war reparations, sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz, and the unfreezing of seized assets. In separate interviews, both Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made clear that combat operations are not definitively over, with Trump telling journalist Sharyl Attkisson that he has completed roughly seventy percent of identified targets and could conceivably hit the remaining thirty percent, and Netanyahu telling CBS News that the war is not over because enriched uranium, enrichment sites, ballistic missile programs, and proxy networks all remain as unfinished business.
Steven Bucci, thirty-year Army Special Forces veteran and former top Pentagon official, now visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies, joined Dan Proft on Chicago’s Morning Answer to push back on the growing chorus of skeptical voices suggesting the United States is losing or has already lost.
The skeptical case has been made in recent days by Robert Kagan in Foreign Affairs declaring checkmate for Iran and saying Washington cannot reverse the consequences of losing this war, by retired Lieutenant General Mark Hertling suggesting the best possible outcome is a draw, and by Gregory Brew writing that Iran has demonstrated it can close the strait even against a global superpower with no path back to the previous status quo. Bucci said Hertling has built a reliable media presence by being wrong about Trump consistently, and that Kagan’s analysis amounts to saying we already lost so we should surrender, which he called a ludicrous position given what has actually been accomplished. He said the idea that Iran has proven it can outlast the United States reflects a fundamental misreading of the relative positions of the two parties, and that the only scenario in which Iran wins is if the United States voluntarily walks away, which he said he does not believe Trump is going to do.
He was somewhat more respectful of retired Admiral William McRaven, who appeared on This Week suggesting Trump should lift the blockade as a gesture to draw Iran back to serious negotiations and asking whether America is really better off than it was before February 28th. Bucci said McRaven is a serious figure deserving of genuine respect, but that his prescription is exactly backwards. Lifting the blockade would give Iran what it wants in exchange for nothing, reinforcing the Iranian strategic calculation that holding out under American pressure eventually produces concessions. He said the pattern of American administrations from Obama through Biden offering concessions to Iran in exchange for temporary accommodation is precisely what has brought the world to this point, and that reversing course and hitting more targets rather than fewer is the only language the IRGC and the mullahs actually process.
On investigative journalist Lee Smith’s assessment that Xi Jinping is watching Trump remain dug in despite every media narrative suggesting he should fold, and that this is what will actually worry the Chinese leader heading into the Beijing summit, Bucci said he thinks that analysis is correct. He said Xi is watching Chinese-supplied Iranian military equipment perform catastrophically against the American military and asking his defense industrial base hard questions about what he was told versus what he is seeing. He said Xi’s oil supply has been disrupted, his economy is more fragile than most Western analysts acknowledge, and he is almost certainly not sitting in Beijing rubbing his hands together at the prospect of meeting with Trump the way he might have been anticipating meetings with Biden. He said the American military’s performance in Iran has demonstrated clearly that the United States will not permit any country to seize control of a strategic maritime chokepoint, and that this message is received directly by China with respect to the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea.
On Senator Mark Kelly’s public comments about American weapons stockpile levels following a classified briefing, Bucci said he thinks Kelly crossed a line and that the appropriate response is to stop giving him access to classified briefings rather than necessarily pursuing criminal charges, noting that public officials who receive sensitive briefings and then immediately go public with their contents to generate political pressure are not entitled to continued access. He said the ammunition stockpile question is real and has been a Heritage Foundation concern for years, rooted in drawdowns under Obama that Trump partially reversed and Biden reversed again, but that the Iran campaign has not depleted American weapons stocks to the degree Kelly’s comments implied.
On Putin’s statement that the Ukraine war will soon end, coming alongside the release of a Polish prisoner from Belarus in a negotiation the United States helped facilitate, Bucci said he hopes it is true but views any Putin declaration with the same level of skepticism he applies to Iranian diplomatic communications. He said Russia has been struggling militarily for some time, cannot sustain its current operational tempo indefinitely, and has rational reasons to want an exit, but that Putin is so deeply invested in the conflict psychologically and politically that the statement may be another negotiating maneuver rather than a genuine signal. He said he hopes he is wrong about that.