CNN ONLINE

The Trump administration keeps suggesting that the Iran war could wrap up soon. The reason? Because it’s accomplishing its goals. “We are going to achieve our objectives in a matter of weeks, not months,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio told ABC News on Monday.

But when it comes to precisely what those goals are, the administration has been remarkably inconsistent. Officials have regularly listed four objectives, but they’ve often changed depending upon the date and who’s providing them.

At a briefing, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth described four objectives: destroy Iranian offensive missiles, destroy Iranian missile production, destroy their navy and other security infrastructure and they will never have nuclear weapons.

Those four more or less matched the things President Donald Trump mentioned in a video released the morning of the first strikes. But just hours after Hegseth’s comments, Trump debuted an amended list at a Medal of Honor ceremony at the White House.

Numbers 3 and 4 were the same, but numbers 1 and 2 were merged into one goal — “destroying Iran’s missile capabilities.” And he added a new fourth goal concerning Iran’s Middle East proxy groups like Hezbollah and the Houthis: “Ensuring that the Iranian regime cannot continue to arm, fund and direct terrorist armies outside of their borders.”

Two days later, a similar split was seen. Rubio echoed Hegseth’s list in a social media post. But shortly thereafter, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt echoed Trump’s amended list. She ran through four goals that again included neutralising the proxy threat, which Rubio hadn’t mentioned.

And the split has largely continued along those lines, with Leavitt including the proxy threat but others like Hegseth and Rubio omitting it.

The initial goals suggested success would be achieved only if Iran had no missiles or ability to fire them, and if proxy groups like Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen were cut off.

At a briefing on Tuesday morning, Hegseth pitched the war as different from other recent US wars, where he said the mission was ill-defined. But that’s exactly the sense the administration’s public comments about this war have given.

It makes it very difficult to measure the success of war effort when administration can’t even give a consistent list of four goals. And the fact that those goals have shifted so much probably won’t calm the fears of Americans who don’t seem to understand what this war is about.