A Fox News pundit has likened Donald Trump’s early declaration the Iran war was “won” to his predecessor George W Bush’s notorious “mission accomplished” moment in Iraq.
Former CEO of UBS Americas Robert Wolf was asked about the latest spike in global oil prices after Iran-backed forces resumed their attacks on tankers in the Persian Gulf, on Special Report.
“There’s a lot to unpack about what’s happened in the past week,” he answered. “Obviously, the MOU [memorandum of understanding agreed between Iran and the U.S.] wasn’t worth the paper it’s on…
“If you think about March 2026, when President Trump was in Kentucky, he said in the first hour it was over but ‘we won.’ I hate to say this, but that’s like a ‘mission accomplished’ moment.”
Trump was speaking in Hebron, Kentucky, on March 11 – just 12 days after the U.S. and Israel launched their Operation Epic Fury airstrikes on Tehran – when he confidently declared: “You never like to say too early you won. We won. In the first hour it was over.”
Four months on – and following the collapse of the fragile ceasefire agreement forged with Tehran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz – the U.S. now looks to be entrenched in yet another long-term conflict in the Middle East, despite Trump’s campaign promise to end “forever wars.”
The pundit’s comparison is with the famous moment Bush strode onto the USS Abraham Lincoln off California on May 1, 2003 and delivered a triumphant address, hailing the defeat of al-Qaeda beneath a banner reading, “Mission Accomplished,” which proved equally wide of the mark.
“Major combat operations in Iraq have ended,” Bush announced. “In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.”
However, the U.S. military remained bogged down in the country for another eight years and was forced to return in 2014 to combat the resurgent Islamist terror threat posed by ISIS.
NBC News reported earlier this month that Trump had declared the war “over” or “almost over” on at least 32 occasions, either on Truth Social or in his public remarks, over the course of the conflict, his comments frequently followed by claims that Iran is desperate to make a deal or by warnings of more strikes to come.
The president is not the only member of his cabinet to make the claim Secretary of State Marco Rubio made the same pronouncement before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing June 3, only to be immediately challenged by New Jersey Democratic Sen. Cory Booker.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was pulled up on his past overconfidence earlier this week when he appeared before the Senate to ask for $67 billion in additional funding, causing Georgia Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff to confront him on whether or not the war’s objectives had really been achieved, as he had previously stated.
Wolf continued his damning assessment on Fox by saying: “Right now, it doesn’t feel like we have an exit strategy. Yesterday was a brutal day for America, with the dignified transfers. I mean, any parent out there – we saw a young woman, 19, we saw a man, 25, who were deceased from this war that, unfortunately, the administration isn’t calling a war.
“I think that we have to resolve this. I don’t think it should be boots on the ground, and I think we should really put a chokehold on everything economic with them. They are at 85 percent inflation.
“There is no way that our ally should be sitting on the sidelines, when actually the closing of the Strait of Hormuz doesn’t even impact the U.S. – it impacts APAC [Asia-Pacific] and India.
“And I think that it’s time that we resolve this the right and smart way. And if that means we have to battle a little longer, so be it, but I’m not for putting more men and women in harm’s way with boots on the ground.”
