Iranian state and reformist channels are amplifying a Wall Street Journal report detailing President Donald Trump's pre-war delusion that Iran would surrender before successfully blockading the Strait of Hormuz.
Iranian media across the political spectrum are heavily circulating a newly published Wall Street Journal report detailing President Donald Trump's pre-war dismissals of military warnings. State-aligned channels, including فارس بینالملل و سیاست خارجی (Fars News) and the hardline کانال اخبار سپاه پاسداران 🏴 (IRGC News Channel), framed the revelations as evidence of Trump's vain imagination regarding Iran's surrender. According to these sources, Trump confidently told his military commanders that Iran would capitulate before executing any blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.
Prior to the massive US and Israeli strikes on Iranian military infrastructure earlier this month, General Dan Keane warned Trump that attacking Iran would prompt Tehran to seal the critical waterway using mines, drones, and missiles, according to messages shared by اخبارفوری خبرفوری جنگ امریکا فوری and the reformist-aligned حامیان پزشکیان (Pezeshkian Supporters). Trump reportedly accepted this risk, asserting that the US military was fully capable of thwarting such countermeasures even if Iran attempted them.
The reality of the ongoing conflict has diverged sharply from the White House's initial assumptions. Two weeks into the war, Iran has refused to retreat, and the Strait of Hormuz has solidified as Tehran's primary leverage point, notes the channel خبرفوری ࡆ اخبارفوری مذاکره ࡆ جنگ فوری. Against the backdrop of global oil prices surging past $120 a barrel due to the closure, the channel خبری پلاس|خبرفوری 🔖فوری highlighted that the US Ministry of War is now deeply concerned that any American attempt to forcefully reopen the strait will result in military warships and oil tankers being targeted by Iranian forces.
With the blockade firmly in place, the WSJ report indicates that Trump lacks any concrete exit strategy. While his team has presented him with polling data suggesting the war remains popular among his political base, skeptical US allies are secretly appearing on television networks like Fox News to warn against deeper American involvement. According to the IRGC News Channel, Trump's own advisors are now urgently pushing him to find a way out of the conflict, but he currently possesses no plan to do so.
The Farsi channels across both hardline (IRGC) and reformist (Pezeshkian) alignments are uniformly seizing on the WSJ report to project strength and highlight US strategic miscalculations. The term 'Ministry of War' is used by Khabari Plus as a pejorative translation for the US Department of Defense (Pentagon), a common rhetorical choice in Iranian media that was preserved in the English translation. Additionally, Fars and IRGC channels utilize the loaded phrase 'خوش خیالی' (vain imagination/delusion) to explicitly mock Trump's pre-war confidence.