Report: CENTCOM Suggests Trump's War in Iran Will Likely Last Through September

Truthout is a vital news source and a living history of political struggle. If you think our work is valuable, *support us with a donation** of any size.*

A new report suggests that the U.S.’s war on Iran could last several months or potentially even longer — despite Trump administration officials suggesting that it will last only a few days or weeks.

According to reporting from Politico, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) officials at the agency’s headquarters in Tampa, Florida, have made a request to the Pentagon for more intelligence officers. CENTCOM says the ask is based on the belief that support for the war on Iran will be needed for “at least 100 days” and likely “through September,” the publication wrote.

The administration’s failure to lay out a specific timeline for the war — in which U.S.-Israeli bombings have already killed more than 1,000 Iranian civilians — has prompted some observers to anticipate yet another lengthy U.S. military conflict in the Middle East. On Monday, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth whined about critics making comparisons to the Iraq war, which U.S. politicians had also vowed would be short-lived.

“To the media outlets and political left screaming ‘endless wars,’ stop. This is not Iraq. This is not endless,” Hegseth said. “Our generation knows better and so does this president.”

However, Hegseth refused to provide reporters at that press conference with an estimated timeline for the war. Trump has suggested that the war — which he has waged without congressional approval — could take four to five weeks, or even “far longer than that” if he deemed it necessary. And in a Truth Social post this week, Trump alluded to wars that can be fought “forever,” compounding concerns that the administration has no plans for ending the war anytime soon.

The Trump administration’s promises that the war in Iran will be short — which have been coupled with statements indicating there is no definitive end in sight — indeed mirror promises made in the run-up to the U.S. war on Iraq. That war started in the spring of 2003 and lasted until 2011, killing approximately 200,000 Iraqi civilians.

“[The Iraq war] could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months,” then-U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in February of 2003.

Critics of the U.S. and Israel’s unprovoked attacks on Iran have questioned whether the Trump administration even has an idea of what a “successful” end to the war might look like.

“What we’ve seen is a completely ad hoc operation where it appeared that nobody actually understood or believed that military action was imminent. It seems like they woke up on Saturday morning and decided that they were going to start a war,” said Gerald Feierstein, a former senior U.S. diplomat and Middle East expert.

“We have seen the goals for this operation change now, I believe, four or five times,” Sen. Mark Warner (D-Virginia) said in a recent interview. “It was about the Iranian nuclear capacity, a few days later it was about taking out the ballistic missiles, it was then — in the president’s own words — about regime change … and now we hear it’s about sinking the Iranian fleet. I’m not sure which of those goals, if met, means that we’re at an endgame.”

“They don’t have a goal, there’s no strategic plan, there’s no timeline, and what this is likely to lead to is, again, a long war with a lot of dead Americans and no rationale,” Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Arizona) said.

“What we’re seeing is going to be more complicated than the White House may have hoped. … I am not optimistic that we’re going to see a quick end to this conflict,” said Suzanne Maloney, Brookings Institution vice president and director of foreign policy.

Complicating matters further is Hegseth’s announcement that the U.S. will soon be employing so-called “gravity bombs,” a less precise type of bomb.

Using those types of bombs will “anger the local population,” University of Chicago political science professor Robert Pape told CBS Chicago. “That pro-democracy movement’s not going to like being killed by the American bombs. You can call it friendly fire, it doesn’t matter. They aren’t going to like it.”

“This is how the wars widen,” Pape added.

Press freedom is under attack

As Trump cracks down on political speech, independent media is increasingly necessary.

Truthout produces reporting you won’t see in the mainstream: journalism from the frontlines of global conflict, interviews with grassroots movement leaders, high-quality legal analysis and more.

Our work is possible thanks to reader support. Help Truthout catalyze change and social justice — make a tax-deductible monthly or one-time donation today.