Inside the Oval Office this week, after a crowd of jostling reporters departed into the Rose Garden, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz tried to get an answer fromPresident Donald Trump: how, exactly, did he envision thewar with Iranending?
Despite some pressing by the chancellor, the answer from the president — as it has been since the conflict began a week ago — wasn't quite clear, according to a person familiar.
As the US military operation against Iran shifts into a new phase following last Saturday's opening salvo, how the war ends remainsthe top questionfor many officials, lawmakers and US allies.
In briefings with lawmakers and congressional staff in recent days, Pentagon officials have leaned into the US military mission being narrowly focused on destroying Iran's ballistic missile launchers, people who attended the briefings said, rather than on targeting Iranian nuclear facilities or taking out regime figures or military personnel. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has spoken dismissively of repeating the "nation building" exercises of past administrations.
At the same time, Trump has offered far more expansive goals that appear to extend beyond the military's stated remit. On Friday, he lumped in the "UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER" of Iran's current regime as an additional requirement for the war to conclude.
The apparent disconnect has only fueled questions about where the conflict, which is alreadybroadly unpopularamong Americans, is headed. In conversations with their US counterparts, Arab and European officials say they haven't detected what exactly Trump's endgame looks like, or if it exists at all.
Emerging from briefings with senior administration officials this week, lawmakers similarly professed little understanding of how Trump will know he has achieved all his goals in Iran, or whether he has a plan for what comes afterward. Some lawmakers also appeared unnerved by the fact that Hegseth would not rule out putting US troops on the ground in Iran.
Who will take over?
The US has so far rejected Iranian overtures to begin talks that could suss out ways to end the conflict. Iranian intelligence sent word this week to the US it could be prepared to open talks on how to endthe war, according to people familiar with the indirect messages, but US officials say there were no negotiations underway and that potential "off-ramps" are unlikely to materialize in the near term.
"Since this thing went kinetic, we've had a number of reach-outs," a senior Trump administration official said this week, putting the number of nations at nearly a dozen. "It's not dissimilar to what we had before, people wanting to see if they can help solve it, and we've talked to them."
To date, that has not resulted in any robust exchange of messages between the United States and Iran. "We're not using anyone as an interlocutor. This is a military action, and it's got to run its course," the official said.
Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said Trump alone would determine when Iran was in a state of "unconditional surrender."
"What the president means is that when he, as commander in chief of the US Armed Forces, determines that Iran no longer poses a threat to the United States of America and the goals of Operation Epic Fury has been fully realized, then Iran will essentially be in a place of unconditional surrender, whether they say it themselves or not," she told reporters on Friday in the White House driveway.
"Frankly," she went on, "they don't have a lot of people to say that for them, because the United States and the state of Israel have completely wiped out near more than 50 leaders of the former terrorist regime, including the supreme leader himself."
Trump said he expects to be heavily involved in choosing Iran's next leader. But US intelligence agencies have long warned it is difficult to assess the outcome of a regime change scenario, and some US and European officials do not see a clear option for replacing the current regime.
Multiple sources said Trump appears content with allowing an Iranian government led by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — a similar model to what the administration used in Venezuela in replacing Nicolás Maduro with his Vice President Delcy Rodríguez.
"It's gonna work very easily. It's going to work like did in Venezuela," Trumptold CNN's Dana Bashin a brief phone interview on Friday.
But that option risks installing a potentially more extreme power center — something Trump suggested earlier this week would amount to the "worst case scenario." US and foreign officials have also cast doubt on the viability of establishing some kind of coalition government, believing that option could quickly turn Iran into a failed state akin to Iraq in the early 2000s, sources said.
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"We've heard…mixed messages about what the strategy is here, what the endgame is here, and how we're going to get out of Iran," Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said this week. "No one in the free world misses the ayatollah," the New Hampshire Democrat said. "But what is not clear is how long this is going to go on, the extent to which it's escalating."
And across the board, the Trump administration has not clearly articulated an end game or an off-ramp, according to four sources from allied countries.
"We have no idea what they actually want to accomplish when this war is over. It doesn't seem like Trump even knows," said one European diplomat.
That has fed concerns the war could drag on for weeks or months — a timeline the president, in many telephone calls to news outlets this week, hasn't explicitly shrugged off.
Instead, Trump has focused on the immediate successes, including degrading Iran's missile capabilities, sinking its ships and taking out its senior leaders.
Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters on Wednesday that as the war enters a new phase, the US will begin "striking progressively deeper into Iranian territory and (create) additional freedom of maneuver for US forces."
Caine also claimed that Iran's ballistic missile launches have plummeted by 86% since the operation began, and that their one-way attack drone launches are down 73%. One person familiar with the matter, however, said those drops can largely be attributed to the US' destruction of Iranian command and control centers in the opening hours of the war.
But while the US military is narrowly focused, there is also an increasing recognition among military planners that destroying Iran's enriched uranium stockpile, which Iran would need to produce a nuclear weapon, would require US forces on the ground to find, exfiltrate and destroy it since it is buried so deeply underground — out of reach even of US bunker-buster bombs, sources said.
There are no plans for that right now, so sources said the administration has steered clear of discussing it.
Kurdish involvement
At the same time, the Trump administration has quietly tried to enlist the help of Iranian and Iraqi Kurdish opposition groups. For months, the CIA has been in discussions with multiple Iranian Kurdish groups about carrying out a potential ground offensive intended to help foment a popular uprising inside the country, multiple sources told CNN.
The CIA is working to arm some of those groups and the US has discussed providing air-support for Kurdish ground forces if they were to launch an offensive,CNN previously reported.
Discussions between the CIA and Iranian Kurdish groups have also included political proposals for if the regime ultimately does collapse, according to Amir Karimi, co-chair of the PJAK, which is one of the Kurdish groups in talks with the US.
PJAK is supportive of the US-Israeli operations but has reinforced to the CIA that overthrowing the regime can't be done by military force alone, Karimi told CNN in an interview this week. The group has also told the CIA it wants a political relationship with the US and Trump administration — which includes having a say in who would ultimately become Iran's next leader.
"We believe it is a legitimate war, however we want support for forces on the ground who are fighting for democracy in Iran. This is not something that can be done by bombardment alone," Karimi said, adding that the US could help unite Kurdish groups so they can fight the regime together.
Trump appears to be working to do that, holding multiple calls with the leaders of Iraqi and Iranian Kurdish groups in recent days. But during at least two recent calls, he's grown frustrated with the Iraqi Kurdish leaders — who are keenly aware that participating in a US-backed offensive carries significant risks — telling them to "pick a side," according to a source familiar with the discussions.
Karimi also said his group has made clear to the Trump administration they do not believe anyone from outside Iran should be "helicoptered in to lead this fight," and voiced strong opposition to any efforts that involve backing exiled Iranian activist Reza Pahlavi, the son of the last shah, in the short or long term.
Trump himself downplayed him as an option earlier this week, saying, "It would seem to me that somebody from within maybe would be more appropriate."
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Inside the Oval Office this week, after a crowd of jostling reporters departed into the Rose Garden, German Chancellor Fr...
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