Possibly the most comprehensive disclosure of "U.S. decision-making details" regarding the Iran war to date.

From the secret clearing and plotting on the eve of the war, to emergency updates in postwar polling and a surge in oil prices, TIME Magazine’s latest revelations lay out a series of previously unknown internal details from the White House.

According to the disclosure, several senior White House officials, members of Congress, and people familiar with the matter have reconstructed many behind-the-scenes details of the prewar decision-making process and the current predicament.

On the eve of the war, Trump deliberately cleared the room to mislead leakers with false intelligence; Vice President Vance is the strongest internal voice of opposition. And in the face of soaring oil prices, the White House chief of staff has already realized that “the situation may be getting out of control.” She worries that the president, who has been immersing himself each day in watching “battlefield victory video montages,” is being misled by one-sided information, and she is pushing her colleagues to “be more forthright with Trump about the real state of the fighting.”

In addition, the defense secretary is feeling “caught off guard” by the scale of a regional counterattack. His sense is: “Wow, we really got ourselves stuck in it.”

And now, around five weeks after the Iran War erupted, the Trump administration is facing increasingly heavy political and economic pressure; internal discussions at the White House have already begun about how to find an exit for this war.

Eve of the war: clearing the room, false intelligence, and the final small circle

The Middle East War broke out on February 28, 2026, codenamed “Operation Epic Fury.” According to CCTV News, local time on the 28th, U.S. President Trump said that U.S. forces have begun carrying out military strikes against Iran.

This weekly magazine disclosed key details from the eve of the war, February 27 to 28.

On February 27, Trump went to the Mar-a-Lago resort. Assistants gathered in a makeshift intelligence room. After Trump saw how many people were in the room, he was visibly displeased—“He felt there were too many people,” one official recalled, “and some of them he didn’t know, or didn’t think he knew well enough.”

Soon after, Trump announced that the operation would be paused, saying they needed to continue discussions. This was deliberate misdirection: in reality, he had already decided to launch the attack that night.

When the crowd dispersed, he called back a smaller inner circle—the deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, envoy Steve Witkoff, and White House legal counsel David Warrington. They had dinner together on the terrace at Mar-a-Lago, witnessing the first bombs fall.

Vice President Vance was not there. The White House said this was in line with the government’s continuity of government standards protocol—requiring the president and vice president to be separated during sensitive military operations. But according to two people familiar with the matter, Vance was the most forceful voice of opposition to the operation within the inner circle.

That night, Trump told those present: “J.D. (Vance) really doesn’t like this. But once a decision is made, it’s a decision, right?”

A White House source added that before the operation, Vance had laid out both pros and cons to the president: “Once the president signs off, the vice president will be standing right next to him 100%.”

Before that, when The New York Times disclosed part of the details of the operation plan on February 17, Trump flew into a rage and berated his aides. He then publicly said he would decide whether to launch strikes in “10 to 15 days”—but he knew the actual action would be much earlier. “He was intentionally misleading the outside world to protect the mission,” a White House official said.

White House chief of staff worries Trump watches “victory videos” every day

As the war entered its third week, Trump’s longtime polling advisor Tony Fabrizio brought unsettling data.

The survey showed that support for the war continued to decline. At the same time, U.S. gasoline prices had broken above $4 per gallon, the stock market had fallen to multi-year lows, and millions of people were preparing to take to the streets to protest, while 13 U.S. service members were killed.

But according to a senior government official, Trump has recently been watching daily, every morning, “battlefield victory video montages” compiled by the military as he receives information; he told his advisors that eliminating the nuclear threat would be his signature achievement.

The huge economic cost and the optimistic reports from the battlefield are starkly at odds. According to two White House sources, chief of staff Susie Wiles has already realized that “the situation may be getting out of control.”

Wiles worries that the aides have been “reporting good news and not bad” to the president. To that end, she strongly urged that her colleagues must “be more candid with Trump about the state of the fighting,” requiring them to lay out to the president the real political and economic risks that the war has created at home.

Under pressure from multiple sides, a shift is underway. Two advisors and two members of Congress who spoke with Trump in the past week said that Trump is already seeking an “exit ramp,” worrying that a prolonged conflict would hurt the Republican Party’s performance in this November’s midterm elections.

A senior White House official said: “Our window is very narrow.”

Defense secretary is “caught off guard,” Iran’s retaliation exceeds expectations

According to TIME Magazine, citing a person familiar with his thinking, defense secretary Pete Hegseth was “caught off guard” by Iran’s large-scale counterattack.

Iran’s scope of retaliation went far beyond earlier predictions. Not only did it strike U.S. military bases in Iraq and Syria and Israeli cities, it also attacked countries that had long been believed to be “outside the strike scope,” including Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar.

The source said that Hegseth “had expected Iran to retaliate in some form, but when they began attacking almost the entire region, his feeling was: ‘Wow, we really got ourselves stuck in it.’”

In internal discussions before the war, Hegseth had argued, citing Iran’s restrained response to Trump’s past strike actions, that limited use of force could pressure Tehran without triggering a larger-scale war.

In response, the Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell denied it, saying the U.S. military had “long ago anticipated, war-gamed, and fully prepared for all possible responses from Iran, from the weakest to the most extreme escalation,” and adding that “any move by Iran would not surprise us.”

Hormuz blockade: the world’s biggest oil shock

Iran then pulled out a key card: the Strait of Hormuz.

About 20% of the world’s daily oil supply passes through this narrow waterway. Iran announced a de facto blockade of the strait, allowing only “non-hostile” vessels to pass.

This move triggered the largest oil supply shock in modern history. Global economic growth expectations were sharply downgraded; energy shortages appeared in Europe and Asia. Energy traders warned that the full impact of the disruption had not yet emerged. Independent analysts noted that if the blockade persisted, reopening the strait would either require a ground occupation by the U.S. military or a negotiated ceasefire—neither path would be easy.

When interviewed by TIME Magazine, Trump admitted: “They’re very tough; they can endure tremendous pain. I respect that.”

Uncertain strategic goals, internal disagreements

Pentagon figures, issued unilaterally, claim that “Operation Epic Fury” destroyed or weakened about 90% of Iran’s missile capabilities, neutralized about 70% of its launching platforms, and sank or disabled more than 150 naval vessels. Iran’s supreme leader Khamenei and multiple senior officials have been killed. According to Xinhua News Agency, Trump also claimed on his own that Iran had achieved a “decisive victory” in the war, saying that “Iran’s navy has now been completely destroyed, and its air force and missile program have also been severely damaged.”

However, the broader goals Trump initially set—permanently blocking Iran’s path to nuclear weapons, dismantling its ballistic missile program, and pushing for regime change—are becoming more difficult to achieve within the compressed timeline set for them in the White House.

In internal discussions, some national security officials warned that sustained strikes might backfire and, instead, accelerate Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. A White House official said: “They will think that the only way to prevent such strikes from happening again is to have nuclear weapons. For us, that means greater pressure—we must reach a workable, actionable agreement that prevents them from crossing the nuclear threshold.”

According to Xinhua News Agency, Trump said in a nationwide televised address on April 1 that the operation was “nearing completion,” while also threatening more forceful strikes on Iran’s energy infrastructure in the next two to three weeks.

He said: “We’re going to beat them back to the Stone Age.”

But in an interview with the weekly magazine, he also said that Iran is ‘eager to negotiate.’ “Why don’t they call? We just bombed three of their bridges last night,” he said. “They’re being destroyed.”

Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Trump’s timetable game

According to an Israeli official, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman are inclined to extend the conflict, viewing it as a rare opportunity to weaken their common adversary. But they also understand that their room to maneuver depends on Trump’s timetable.

On February 11, Netanyahu traveled to Washington specifically for private meetings with Trump that lasted several hours. A person present said Netanyahu told Trump: “We’ve already gotten to this point, Donald. We must finish what we started.”

In the interview, Trump said: “They’ll do what I say. The Israelis are good team players. I stop, and they stop.”

Trump’s “exit strategy” logic

Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff described the way this war has been handled as an extension of Trump’s business career approach of “keeping options flexible.”

“Donald Trump always has multiple exit strategies,” Witkoff once told colleagues at the White House and the State Department. “He keeps a lot of options and exit routes, then moves forward by figuring things out along the way.”

But war has its own logic and often goes beyond a president’s control. A White House official compared the current situation to “whack-a-mole”—striking a set of leaders, and then needing to find the next viable replacement.

How to wrap things up decently without it looking like you’re getting ‘too little’ out of it is the core challenge Trump faces right now.

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