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Trump's big Iran pause after weeks of victory claims: What his many ‘Truths’ reveal
Trump's latest ‘Truth’, as posts on his platform Truth Social are called, came after he made a threat last week asking Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz
When US President Donald Trump claimed on Monday that US and Iran have been holding “direct” and “productive” talks over the past two days, he also announced that he was postponing by five days his threat to hit energy sites. Iran mocked him in turn, saying he's “backed down”; and denied any such talks.
Yet, Trump continued to say Iran “wants to make a deal badly”. He even gave a timeline: “within five days or less”.
After Iran said no such talks were on, Trump spoke again of extracting its enriched uranium to stop it from making a nuclear bomb: “It's very easy. If we have a deal with them, we're going down and we'll take it ourselves.”
He has made it difficult to keep track of what he says, or means, at different points.
Trump's ‘Truth vs Iran's rebuff
His latest ‘Truth’ — as posts on his platform Truth Social are called — came two days after he'd made a threat asking Iran to reopen the global oil trade route Strait of Hormuz, or face attacks on its power infrastructure.
He pointedly said he was pausing his threat because of the "tenor and tone" of those talks.
Iran's mocking reply spoke directly to Trump’s dramatic shift in tone instead, after more than three weeks of his claims that the US and Israel have either won already or are winning.
Beginning with the US-Israeli strikes on Tehran on February 28, the conflict has seen wider retaliation by Iran. This has disrupted global oil supplies and strained alliances across the Gulf region that house many US bases.
And it has produced a string of contradictory claims from the White House.
What Trump announced on ‘talks’
In his post on Truth Social on Monday, March 23, Trump described “discussions” with Iran as "very good and productive". He said the two sides had talked about "a complete and total resolution of our hostilities in the Middle East”. He used adjectives like "in-depth, detailed, and constructive". And he vowed that the talks would continue through the week.
As recently as last Friday, Trump had said he wanted to talk to Iranian officials but was struggling to find interlocutors: "Nobody wants to be a leader over there anymore. We're having a hard time. We want to talk to them, and there's nobody to talk to.”
On Monday, he told TV channels he was now talking to a “senior leader” but not the Iran Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, whose father and predecessor was killed on the first of the US-Israeli attack in Tehran.
Contradictions began as soon as the US launched its Operation Epic Fury on February 28, when Trump said on Truth Social that it’ll be “swift and decisive”. He said the action was aimed at preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, though he has oscillated on clear objectives.
Iran has maintained it had no intention of building any atom bombs anyway, something it told the US in talks that were on until the sudden launch of airstrikes.
In less than a week, he said the US "destroyed and sunk 9 Iranian Naval Ships, some of them relatively large and important”. He even added sarcasm: “Other than that, their Navy is doing very well!” He then demanded "unconditional surrender”, as he did back in June 2025 when the fighting stopped after 12 days.
At this, Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian told the US to take the surrender demand "to their grave”.
Two days after this, Trump claimed Iran's military had been "wiped out — very completely”. He also spoke of sending ground troops at one point.
Iranian forces then struck US bases across the Persian Gulf, widening the war to the UAE, Saudi Arabia and other oil-rich countries.
All of this within a week.
Plus, there was another thing that happened in that week, which is now at the nub of the war.
Winding through Strait of Hormuz
Catalysing many of Trump's swift changes in tone — though it is his signature in general too — is Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.
The 33-km-wide waterway between Iran and Oman is the route for a fifth of the world's oil.
By March 2, it was effectively closed, at least to US and Israel-linked vessels. By March 9, as oil prices surged above $100 a barrel and ripples were being felt from America’s domestic markets to Europe and the Indian subcontinent, Trump said the war would end "very soon”.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) spokesperson responded: "Iran will determine when the war ends." He called Trump "the delusional president”.
By March 11, with the strait closed and oil crunch in many parts of the world, Trump tempered his claims. "Let me say, we've won… in the first hour, it was over… We've already won in many ways, but we haven't won enough,” he said.
His statements on the strait, in particular, have been inconsistent. He initially claimed US forces were keeping it open, calling that effort "a gift" to China and other countries that depend on it for oil. He then called on China, France, Japan, South Korea and the UK to send warships to help reopen it — despite having previously written that the US would not need any help. Then he said the US won’t need any help, as the UK, Australia and Japan publicly refused any.
By the weekend that just went by, he said the strait would “open on its own” at some point.
Iran's foreign minister Abbas Araghchi had clarified on March 14 that the strait was closed only to American and Israeli ships. Indian vessels, for instance, passed through without incident around that time.
Trump then made a series of Truth Social posts declaring the US had "destroyed 100% of Iran's Military capability”. He also spoke about how US forces struck military sites on Kharg Island, Iran's principal oil export terminal.
In the very next post, he said Iran was still capable of sending "a drone or two, drop a mine, or deliver a close range missile”.
As of Monday, March 23, according to a Bloomberg report citing sources in Tehran, Iranian officials were not willing to even discuss reopening the strait, and reserved the right to defend itself in the “war of aggression”.
Dissent within his administration
Trump’s constant stream of contradictions has led to friction within his administration too.
Joseph ‘Joe’ Kent, who resigned as Director of the US National Counterterrorism Center, also spoke on Monday after Trump's climbdown. He said on X: “Step 1 in deescalation must be restraining the Israelis, otherwise all efforts to negotiate will follow this pattern: POTUS publicly announces deescalation. Israel takes major strikes to destroy the negotiations & in turn weaken our ability to negotiate. The war accelerates.”
An 11-time combat veteran, Joe Kent resigned last week and became the most senior official to publicly break with the White House over the conflict.
In his resignation letter, Kent argued that Iran posed “no imminent threat” to the US, and that the war had been started "due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby”.
Trump dismissed the resignation as "a good thing" and called Kent, whom he had appointed, "always very weak on security”.
Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, for his part, appeared on social media shortly after Kent's resignation to declare that Israeli forces had killed Ali Larijani, described as the de facto leader of the Iranian regime, and other senior Iranian figures. He promised further military action and gloated how the US, the world’s “foremost superpower”, stands with Israel.
Democratic opposition has been vocal, with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer saying that Trump had "created a mess in the Middle East" with no clear plan to end it. Democrats have also called for an investigation into a strike on a girls' school in Iran that reportedly killed over 100 children.
A poll by NBC News two weeks into the war found 54% of American voters opposed to the war.
Trump’s pattern, if one can follow it, has been consistent on one count: he claims total destruction of Iran, then acknowledges that it remains capable; then repeats the loop.
