The Dictatorship

Trump named five goals for Iran war but has achieved only one. Is Iran winning?

Published

1 month ago

May 28, 2026

May. 27, 2026, 5:38 PM EDT

President Donald Trump announced the U.S. and Israeli war against Iran three months ago this week. In a brief late-night speech from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida on Feb. 28, Trump laid out five goals for the conflict that he and his aides have since repeated. The president also briefly described a sixth goal that rarely has been mentioned.

Whether the United States has achieved those goals is the focus of fierce debate. Democrats have declared the war a debacle. Trump and his aides have declared it a resounding and complete success and have said media coverage that questions that success is “treasonous.”

“The media here, not all of it but much of it, wants you to think just 19 days into this conflict that we’re somehow spinning toward an endless abyss or a forever war or a quagmire,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said at a March 19 press conference. “Nothing could be further from the truth.”

A review of the current status of the conflict and interviews with experts suggests the Trump administration has achieved only one of the five goals the president himself outlined on Feb. 28. And the administration’s rarely mentioned sixth goal — regime change by way of an uprising by Iranians — appears to have been abandoned.

The final details of any peace agreement will clarify what the U.S. has achieved after striking more than 13,500 Iranian targets. As negotiations drag on and the Strait of Hormuz remains closed, some experts are arguing that Iran, not the U.S., has won the war, an outcome that seemed virtually impossible at its outset.

“I think Iran won the war,” Gregory Brew, a senior Iran and oil analyst at the Eurasia Group, told MS NOW. “Trump did not accomplish any of his goals.”

Below, each goal outlined in Trump’s Feb. 28 speech is followed by analysis from experts regarding whether the goal has been achieved.

‘Annihilate their Navy’

Status: Partially Achieved

Experts agree with publicly released U.S. intelligence assessments that U.S. and Israeli air strikes have decimated Iran’s traditional navy. The overwhelming majority of large surface ships that Iran fielded have been sunk, with more than 160 Iranian vessels struck and 90% of its regular fleet destroyed, according to U.S. Central Command.

CENTCOM Commander Adm. Bradley Cooper told Congress on May 14 that the U.S. conducted more than 700 airstrikes on Iranian naval mine targets, eliminating more than 90% of its mine inventory.

“Iran’s navy can no longer claim to be a maritime power, and it cannot project into the Gulf of Oman or the Indian Ocean,” Cooper said, despite the country’s continued hold over the Strait of Hormuz. “Iran retains nuisance capability — harassment, low-end drone and rocket attacks, and residual proxy support — but it no longer possesses the means to threaten major regional operations or to deter U.S. freedom of action in the air or maritime domains.”

Cooper assessed that the Iranian navy would be unable to rebuild for five to 10 years, adding it “likely will not get back to its previous size for a full generation.”

But U.S. intelligence agencies believe that hundreds of Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps speedboats have not been destroyed, The New York Times reported. And Iranian speedboats were laying mines in the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday before they were sunk by U.S. forces, a U.S. official, who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive information, told MS NOW.

“While the U.S. destroyed Iran’s ocean-going navy,” Brew said, “the much more important small-boat fleet managed by the IRGC Navy remains largely intact.”

‘Destroy their missiles’

Status: Not Achieved

“We destroyed or rendered non-mission-capable Iran’s fixed-wing airfields, hangars, fuel storage and munitions stockpiles, and we knocked out 82% of its air defense missile systems, along with the radar and command architecture that tied them together,” Cooper told Congress. He described Iran’s air defense forces as “functionally and operationally irrelevant.”

Initial U.S. intelligence assessments estimated that air strikes have destroyed or buried 70% of Iran’s land-based, short-, intermediate- and long-range missile stockpiles. But as the current ceasefire has dragged on, Iran has apparently dug out its buried missiles.

More recent intelligence assessments have found that 70% of Iran’s stockpile and its mobile missile launchers have survived the war, The Washington Post reported. And Iran has restored access to 30 of the 33 missile sites built along the Strait of Hormuz, which could attack oil tankers and U.S. Navy ships, the Times reported.

“If those assessments are accurate, it would suggest the campaign imposed real military costs on Iran but did not fundamentally eliminate its missile capability,” David Cattler, a former senior NATO and Pentagon official, told MS NOW. “The larger strategic question is whether the operation produced lasting changes in deterrence and Iranian behavior — or primarily imposed delay and bought time.”

‘Raze their missile industry to the ground’

Status: Achieved

Expert and U.S. intelligence assessments generally agree this is the one goal the U.S. has achieved. According to CENTCOM’s latest statistics, the U.S. has struck 90% of Iran’s weapons factories and has destroyed 80% of its missile facilities and 80% of its nuclear industrial base.

“With 90% of its defense industrial base destroyed, Iran won’t be able to reconstitute for years,” Cooper told Congress. “We damaged or destroyed over 85 percent of Iran’s ballistic missile, drone and naval defense industrial base. More than 1,450 strikes on weapons manufacturing facilities set the regime’s ability to build and stockpile ballistic missiles and long-range drones back by years.”

‘Ensure that the regime’s terrorist proxies can no longer destabilize the region’

Status: Not Achieved

“The supply chain from Tehran to the proxies has been broken,” Cooper testified, although Iran has not agreed to stop funding or supporting terrorist groups in the Middle East.

One possible positive outcome of the Iran war could be a U.S.-brokered peace deal between Israel and Lebanon. Though the shaky ceasefire has been disrupted by fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, another round of talks between military and political officials is expected in Washington in the coming days, as negotiations have shown more progress — and promise — than the Iran nuclear talks.

Seemingly absent from those talks: addressing Iran’s military and financial support for its other proxy groups across the Middle East. Even if the U.S. can solidify a deal between Israel and Lebanon that results in the disarmament of Hezbollah, Iranian-backed militia groups in Iraq, Hamas in Gaza and the Houthis in Yemen would still pose a threat to Israel, U.S. forces in the region and shipping routes.

‘Ensure Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon’

Status: Not Achieved

The issue of Iran’s nuclear program remains the most contentious part of the negotiations, according to experts. U.S. officials have pushed for a commitment from Iran to hand over its roughly 1,000 pounds of enriched uranium. Iranian officials have apparently declined to make any concession regarding their nuclear program and said they want a 60-day ceasefire and a second round of talks to focus on Iran’s nuclear program.

Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, a moderate Republican and the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a social media post that the “rumored 60-day ceasefire” would be a “disaster.”

The rumored 60-day ceasefire — with the belief that Iran will ever engage in good faith — would be a disaster. Everything accomplished by Operation Epic Fury would be for naught!

— Senator Roger Wicker (@SenatorWicker) May 23, 2026

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, a longtime Iran hawk, said any agreement that allows Iran to retain its enriched uranium or receive “fees” or “tolls” from ships that transit the Strait of Hormuz would be disastrous.

“If the result of all that is to be an Iranian regime – still run by Islamists who chant ‘death to America,’ now receiving billions of dollars,” he said, “being able to enrich uranium & develop nuclear weapons, and having effective control over the Strait of Hormuz, then that outcome would be a disastrous mistake.”

‘To the great proud people of Iran … take over your government’

Status: Not Achieved

Trump has rarely repeated his call for Iranians to rise up and overthrow their government since his Feb. 28 address. But in a confusing statement at his Cabinet meeting Wednesday, Trump said he had not sought regime change, then said he had achieved it. He also said Iran’s new, more hardline leaders are “smarter” and “much more reasonable.”

“We didn’t set out for regime change, but by the fact that we’re dealing with a totally different group of people than we were at the beginning … This is regime change,” Trump said. “How can you have a stronger regime change than that?”

Cooper argued in his congressional testimony that more than 2,000 strikes against Iran’s command-and-control structures succeeded in creating “leadership vacuums, paralysis and internal confusion.”

But some Trump supporters have acknowledged that the Iranian regime could increase its influence in region simply by surviving. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., another longtime Iran hawk, said in an online post that Iran could emerge from the war more powerful because it has shown it has the ability to shut down the Strait of Hormuz.

“If a deal is struck to end the Iranian conflict because it is believed that the Strait of Hormuz cannot be protected from Iranian terrorism and Iran still possesses the capability to destroy major Gulf oil infrastructure,” Graham said, referring to missiles, “then Iran will be perceived as being a dominate[[sic]force requiring a diplomatic solution.”

“Also, it makes one wonder why the war started to begin with if these perceptions are accurate,” Graham added, urging Trump to “get this right.”

Brew stood by his view that, by defying the U.S. and keeping the strait closed for three months, Iran has already won the war at a strategic level.

“The damage done to Iran’s military is significant, but Iran can and will rebuild,” he said. “Iran’s ability to close the Strait of Hormuz and keep it closed, and to retain this position during negotiations with the United States is a huge strategic win for Tehran.”

David Rohde is the senior national security reporter for MS NOW and a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. Previously he was the senior executive editor for national security and law for NBC News.

Julia Jester covers politics for MS NOW and is based in Washington, D.C.

The Dictatorship

Could feds’ changes put more people with disabilities in institutions?

Published

5 hours ago

July 2, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Could feds’ changes put more people with disabilities in institutions?

WASHINGTON (AP) — For decades, disabled people have fought for their rights to go to school and live alongside peers without disabilities — rights that some fear could be losing ground under the Trump administration.

Last month, the Department of Education announced it would shift oversight of special education to the Department of Health and Human Services, led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose comments on the limits of disabilities such as autism have drawn sharp rebukes from advocates and lawmakers.

Meanwhile, after a White House push to police homelessnessthe Department of Justice released guidance that lowered the barrier to institutionalizing any person with a disability.

Taken together, the actions signal a worrying return to a reality where people with disabilities are pushed to the margins of society, advocates said.

“It’s a direct, frontal assault on the rights of people with disabilities to live their lives the way that people who are nondisabled live their lives,” said Selene Almazan, legal director for the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates. “I can’t imagine that as a country, that would be something that we would agree we should go back to.”

Whitman Althaus, 12, who has autism and a neurological disorder called apraxia, poses for a portrait at his home Wednesday, July 1, 2026, in Luckey, Ohio. (AP Photo/Nic Antaya)

The move away from confining people with disabilities

Since the 1960s, legislation and court decisions have expanded supports and protections for people with disabilities to go to school with nondisabled peers and to live and work in their communities. Before that, people with mental illnesses or developmental and intellectual disabilities were largely confined to institutions.

Advocates have pushed back on what is known as the “medical model,” where an individual’s disability is viewed as a defect to be cured. Instead, under a “social model” of disability, differences can be accommodated and supported, as people with and without disabilities learn and work alongside each other.

Families and advocates have warned that moving special education to a health department marks a return to the medical model. They also have been angered by Kennedy’s attempts to link vaccines to autismgoing against decades of research that show no such link, and his framing of autism as a debilitating disease.

Kennedy’s comments last year, where he said children with autism would never write a poempay taxes or hold a job, raised questions about how he would oversee an agency meant to help students develop those skills. Kennedy later said he was referring to people with ” severe autism ″ or those who are nonverbal.

“Many of the things he said autistic people will never do, (special education) is in charge of making sure students with disabilities have the opportunity to do,” said Zoe Gross, director of advocacy at the Autistic Self Advocacy Network. “Will he execute that faithfully, or does he consider disabled students a lost cause until we find some medical cure?”

The Supreme Court weighs in on disabilities

In 1999, the Supreme Court ruled that segregating disabled people who are otherwise able to live in their community with proper supports was a form of discrimination. The Olmstead v. L.C. decision led to requirements that government agencies provide disability services in the most integrated setting possible — in mainstream schools, homes and workplaces.

But in a memo issued in June, the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel upended that guidance. It argued that neither the Americans with Disabilities Act nor Section 504, two major disability rights laws, requires states to provide services in the most mainstream setting. While the memo does not change the law, it signals how federal agencies may interpret and enforce civil rights issues related to the topic. It could embolden states or school districts to decline to support people with disabilities in mainstream environments.

The White House has already acted on a similar philosophy. Last year, President Donald Trump issued an executive order on homelessness that endorsed civil commitment, where a court orders individuals into involuntary hospitalization or treatment programs. Trump directed HHS to reduce barriers to institutionalizing people with mental illnesses.

In its memo, the Justice Department acknowledged its interpretation of the Supreme Court’s Olmstead decision is “out of step” with the common understanding. If a state starts to provide services in institutional settings, legal challenges likely would follow, the department said.

The Republican administration’s steps fit a worldview in which the government has no obligation to support people with disabilities, said Claudia Center, legal director at Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund.

“It’s dark, and it’s awful,” Center said. “And I think it’s contrary to the majority view in our country. … It’s out of touch with where our society is.”

The application that Whitman Althaus, 12, who has autism and a neurological disorder called apraxia, uses to communicate is seen on a phone Wednesday, July 1, 2026, in Luckey, Ohio. (AP Photo/Nic Antaya)

Families say their kids thrive in mainstream classes

The moves have created a deep sense of uncertainty for students with disabilities.

Lindsey Althaus says home and community-based services in northwest Ohio have been instrumental to her family. Her 12-year-old son, Whitman, has autism and a neurological disorder called apraxia, in which the brain struggles to tell muscles how to move to form words or perform other motor skills. For some of his school career, with proper support services, Whitman was able to spend much of his school day in a classroom that included kids without disabilities.

Through a Medicaid waiver program, Althaus pays her mother to care for Whitman in her absence. That allows him to spend time out in the community with his grandmother while Althaus and her husband are working or away with their daughter.

Under the Justice Department’s new interpretation of Olmsted, states would have fewer obligations to fund and support those programs. Kennedy, in testimony to lawmakers on Capitol Hill earlier this year, criticized similar programs as subject to fraud.

“We want to be able to have him in the community,” said Althaus, who works as a disability rights advocate. “It’s just starting to feel like Whitman’s not going to be welcome anymore. We’re going back to this: You’re either perfect, or you’re not in the light.”

For many students with disabilities, schools are where they receive the majority of support services and where they are integrated among their peers. Before Magda Nakassis’s 8-year-old son, who is autistic and nonverbal, started public school in Maryland, his preschool experience had largely been defined by being kicked out of things, she said.

In school, Nakassis said, she found teachers and staff members who understood her son’s needs and told her to stop apologizing for them. A program at his school called Fantastic Friends teaches mainstream fifth graders about autism and they spend recesses with children in the autism program. Every year, Nakassis said, there is a waitlist to be a Fantastic Friend.

Nakassis said that it has been difficult to see the ways autism in particular has become politicized. Every child is entitled to a public education in this country, Nakassis said, and special education is a response to the fact that some children have differences that require additional support.

Regardless of his diagnosis, his right to an education is not a medical issue, she said, but rather a question of equity and access in a society that often pushes disabled people to the margins.

“There are lots of kids like him out there, and I sometimes wonder, ‘what did we use to do?’” Nakassis said. “I can’t believe it was better.”

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The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

The Dictatorship

Trump filing shows he took in about $1.2 billion from crypto businesses last year

Published

13 hours ago

July 2, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Trump filing shows he took in about $1.2 billion from crypto businesses last year

NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump took in nearly $1.2 billion from his crypto businesses last year, a federal filing released Tuesday shows, locking in profits while his investors were socked with losses.

Mere startups when he took the oath of office, the new ventures have now eclipsed in revenue much of his vast property portfolio that took him decades to accumulate. Fueling their rise were billionaire investors and Trump’s own move to quash a federal crackdown on the industry.

Trump got more than $500 million from his World Liberty Financial business selling new crypto products, including “governance tokens,” according to the required annual disclosure report with the Office of Government Ethics. It also showed another crypto business, CIC Digital LLC, took in more than $600 million from sales of souvenir-type “meme” coins stamped with his face.

Both the tokens and the coins have plunged in value since the sales.

Trump also took in millions last year from selling Trump-branded Bibles, sneakers and other small items in another unprecedented move for the presidency. The sale of Trump-branded watches alone brought in $4.7 million.

The 927-page disclosure form paints a stark, if incomplete picture of the massive growth of the president’s wealth since taking office last January through a web of business interests — many of which have benefited from the policy moves of Trump’s own government. Trump has insisted that his sons direct his finances but the arrangement rejects the conflict of interest protections that his recent predecessors in office had instituted.

Forbes estimates Trump’s net worth at $6 billion, up from $2.3 billion in 2024.

The Trump business is growing abroad

The rise of crypto relative to Trump’s property is especially noteworthy because he first rode to office boasting of his property wins. It’s also remarkable because that mainstay business also boomed last year. Trump took in tens of millions in fees from a flurry of new hotel, resort and condo deals overseas that amounts to the biggest property expansion ever in the century since the family business was founded.

Many of those countries were negotiating with the U.S. over tariffs, military aid and other important matters while the family business was striking the deals.

A property in the United Arab Emirates generated $10.4 million for the Trump business last year. One in Saudi Arabia being built by a real estate developer close to the ruling family sent the president’s company $9 million. And one in Bucharest, Romania, and another in Qatar sent him $5 million each.

One of his prominent domestic properties, Mar-a-Lago in Florida, notched big growth last year, too.

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Trump took in $77 million from the property, a 50% jump from the year earlier when he was just another citizen, as heads of state and business people flocked to it in his new term.

The disclosure report doesn’t give profit figures, just revenue, so it’s impossible to know how much he is earning.

Trump is now the billion-dollar crypto man

Trump said Wednesday that most of his gains last year came from the stock market and he’s just riding along with everyone else.

“We’re all profiting,” he said. “I’m profiting because I have a lot of money and a lot of cash.”

But crypto was clearly the big revenue generator last year in part due his own moves since taking office — pushing policies friendly to the industry and reversing a Biden administration regulatory crackdown.

The regulators are still worried. Before Trump’s World Liberty began selling “governance tokens,” they issued warnings about this new kind of crypto asset, saying that unlike stocks, the tokens offer no ownership stake in the issuing company, just voting power on certain corporate policies, and are difficult to value.

Buyers pounced anyway, including a Chinese billionaire who spent $75 million on the tokens and $200 million on the souvenir coins. In February last year, a federal lawsuit charging him with duping investors was paused before being settled for a $10 million fine.

The billionaire, Justin Sun, has repeatedly denied his spending on Trump businesses had anything to do with his federal case, while World Liberty has dismissed the notion of a conflict of interest.

Meanwhile, investors have seen the value of their Trump-tied holdings drop significantly.

The price of World Liberty tokens has fallen 80% since they started trading in September. And the Trump souvenir coins that spiked to more than $74 in the days after launching in January 2025 now sell for $1.68.

The White House says Trump only acts in the public interest

The White House has repeatedly said Trump put his business in a trust managed by his sons and is not involved in its decisions and that there are no ethics issues to discuss.

“Neither the President nor his family has ever engaged — or will ever engage — in conflicts of interest,” spokeswoman Anna Kelly said. “All actions by President Trump and his administration are taken in the best interest of the American people.”

The Trump umbrella company, the Trump Organization, has said its deals overseas were with private companies, not with governments.

Still, it is difficult to know what is truly private in countries ruled by authoritarians, royal families and one-party governments.

For a new Trump resort in Vietnam, the report shows Trump took in $5 million last year after the ruling Communist Party sent its deputy prime minister to sign off on the deal and, according to The New York Times, pushed farmers off the land to make way for the construction.

Whether the deals played any role in changing U.S. policies in ways these countries sought is nearly impossible to know, but the countries did get what they wanted.

Vietnam got tariff relief. Qatar got access to advanced U.S. technology previously off limits, and Saudi Arabia got U.S. fighter jets it had coveted for years.

___

AP White House reporter Josh Boak contributed from Washington.

The Dictatorship

‘REGIME CHANGE’ sold 300,000 copies…

Published

13 hours ago

July 2, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

It turns out readers still want to learn more about President Donald Trump after all.

“Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump,” the l atest book on the Trump presidencywritten by political journalists Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, has sold more than 300,000 copies in its opening week, according to publisher Simon & Schuster.

They’re the kind of sales that numerous works about Trump reached during his first term, but had been rare during his second term. Publishers had speculated that the public had tired of Trump books, believing there was little left to know.

The total figures include preorders, print book sales, ebooks, and e-audiobooks and orders that have yet to be fulfilled because of demand, the publishing house said. Simon & Schuster said the book is into its third hard copy printing, with 200,000 copies on order, after it sold out quickly in bookstores and on Amazon. It’s the best first-week clip of any hardcover nonfiction book in 2026.

The book covers the first 14 months of Trump’s second presidency and takes readers inside the West Wing, White House residence and Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, aboard Air Force One and on foreign trips with the president.

Trump, who has a long history with Haberman from her days covering him as a New York City business and society figure, has trashed the book as “mostly made up.” Haberman and Swan are now New York Times reporters.

Their manuscript depicts meticulous details of Trump’s military decisions, how he’s wielded the power of the Justice Department against his political opponents, his conversations with other power players, and the time and attention he’s devoted to remaking the aesthetics and structure of the White House.

The book spells out a thesis that Trump himself believes: Had he not lost the 2020 election, he would not be as powerful in his second term as he is now — emboldening him to trample norms, dismantle established institutions and push the limits of presidential power.

Haberman and Swan have been featured regularly across news talk shows promoting the book and sharing details of their reporting, including a sit-down with Trump in which he boasted about being compared to some of history’s great villains.

Sean Manning, vice president and publisher at Simon & Schuster, said the book “has entered the national conversation” and will hold up as “a work of historic importance.”