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March 20, 2026

By Stephen Collinson

A plume of smoke rises after a strike on the Iranian capital Tehran, on March 3, 2026. (Atta Kenare/AFP/Getty Images)

Who is winning the Iran war?

The question is no longer whether President Donald Trump has lost control of the narrative of his new war in Iran.

It’s whether he’s lost control of the war itself.

Wars, once begun, create their own insidious momentum that can outpace a White House’s political messaging.

After the thunderclap opening of the conflict with the assassination of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Trump’s team might have hoped to be in a better place three weeks in.

While the United States and Israel have undeniably visited huge destruction on Tehran’s military industrial complex and machinery of repression, Iran has seized the initiative by widening the impact of the war. Its closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a vital oil shipping route, threatens to paralyze the global economy. Americans are already hurting, with average gasoline prices heading towards $4 a gallon.

Gulf states hit by days of missile and drone alerts are frustrated that the economic miracle exemplified by their futuristic cityscapes is in danger from a war their US ally started that they didn’t want. 

Trump meanwhile is fuming that he can’t simply order Europeans to send ships to open the Strait. “This is not our war,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said this week.

The regime’s goal is survival. That means raising the economic price for the rest of the world — and therefore the political heat on Trump. 

Reopening the Strait will be dangerous. Aerial bombardment can only do so much. A substantial ground force might be needed to flush out drone and missile launch sites in mountainous terrain bordering the Strait.

Trump therefore is nearing a fateful choice almost every modern commander in chief has faced: To get out of a war, must he escalate first?

Iran might be losing Trump’s war. But it’s winning its own.

The US president doesn’t control how long the war will last, where it will spread, how much it will cost and how badly it will complicate the lives of inflation-weary Americans.

He said what?

Trump clearly likes and admires Japan's Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi — not least because of her huge recent election victory and past ties to one of his true political friends — the assassinated former Japanese leader Shinzo Abe.

This makes his bizarre reference to World War II — and decision to break a taboo against talking about bitter historical animosities — even stranger.

Trump was telling reporters that he wouldn't tip his hand over his next moves in Iran, then turned to his visitor.

“One thing, you don’t want to signal too much. You know, when we go in, we went in very hard, and we didn’t tell anybody about it because we wanted surprise,” Trump said.

“Who knows better about surprise than Japan?” Trump said. “Why didn’t you tell me about Pearl Harbor? OK?”

Takaichi, sitting with Trump in front of a garish display of gold trim on the Oval Office fireplace, kept her composure — but the surprise was visible in her eyes.

Again it shows, you never know what you are going to get when you visit Trump.

Iranian leaders killed in the ongoing US-Israel war with Iran are seen from left to right: Esmail Khatib, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and Ali Larijani. (AP, Getty Images, Reuters)

Killing the cephalopod

Israel compares its assassinations of the top level of Iran’s leadership to severing the head of an octopus.

A campaign unmatched in modern warfare started by taking out Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. As it targets the tentacles of the regime, Israel on Wednesday killed intelligence minister Esmail Khatib, a day after the country’s security chief Ali Larijani also perished.

Israel has previously killed leaders of terrorist groups, including Hezbollah and Hamas — and even Iranian officials in places such as Syria.

But now, by escalating against leaders in a direct state-on-state war, it is making a statement of military might and showing that its enemies have nowhere to hide. It is also reflecting the evolving reach of combat enabled by new precision weapons and remarkable intelligence penetration.

The latest strikes represent an attempt to change the political realities in Tehran while thousands of air attacks, alongside US forces, devastate the Islamic Republic’s capacity to threaten the outside world with missiles and drones.

Assassinations of foreign leaders have long been considered illegal under US and international law. Many critics view the Iran war itself as an insult to a fast-eroding rules-based global system.

Killing leaders might weaken the regime by deterring lower-ranking officials from stepping into jobs that come with a death sentence.

But while such assassinations hold powerful symbolism, their long-term political and strategic impacts are less clear. For one thing, martyrdom is embedded in the ideology of the Iranian Islamic Republic.

While eliminating a top seam of leadership might shorten the conflict, it might also incite vengeance while closing diplomatic off-ramps — dragging the war on longer.

Read CNN's latest coverage of the war with Iran here.