(CNN) — The bodies of four American service members killed during the Iran war returned to the United States in flag-draped cases on Wednesday, their families and President Donald Trump looking on.
As he threatens an escalation in the conflict, risking retaliation and further danger to the thousands of American troops arrayed across the Middle East, Trump watched as the human toll of his decisions was transferred from the belly of a military cargo plane, walked across the tarmac at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware and loaded into waiting vans.
Trump saluted, staring straight ahead. The silence of the transfer was pierced only by the plane’s auxiliary engine and a final, anguished wail from a family member stationed opposite Trump on the tarmac. It took just under 20 minutes for the four silver cases to move from the plane to the vans, which drove them away.
Perhaps nothing underscores the weight of responsibility for a president more than traveling to Dover for the solemn ritual. Trump acknowledged as much as he was departing Washington.
“For me, it’s one of the hardest things to do as a president, but has to be done,” he said before taking off on his new, Qatari-donated Air Force One.
He also insisted the conflict he began more than four months ago was meeting the so-called “Dover Test” — the unofficial evaluation military leaders and presidents have made for decades to determine whether wars are worth their consequences to the American people.
“Americans aren’t against the war,” he insisted. “A poll just came out. Americans don’t want high gasoline prices, but they’re not against the war.”
In fact, the opposite is true. A Washington Post poll released last week found 68% of Americans believe the Iran war is not worth fighting, compared to 28% who say it is. The negative 40-point split is worse than it was for either the Iraq or Afghanistan wars in Washington Post-ABC News polling.
Trump has used those wars, each of which lasted longer and led to many more deaths than the Iran war has so far, to suggest the roiling conflict he’s overseeing is nowhere near the same level of disaster.
Some of Trump’s visits to Dover during his first term stemmed from the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. In conversations afterward, he was clearly moved by the raw emotions of the families he’d met, but routinely cast blame on his predecessors for getting into wars they could not end.
The Iran war, however, is of Trump’s own making. And American impatience is weighing thin as he struggles to articulate a roadmap for how the conflict might end.
In policy meetings over the last week, the president has heard options for intensifying the conflict, including targeting roads and bridges. And he’s ratcheted up his public threats — vowing on Truth Social hours before going to Dover that the US would “destroy” one bridge or power plant any time Iran hits a ship in the Strait of Hormuz. He also posted an article that reported he’d ordered Central Command to “open the gates of hell.”
But he has so far not approved the most aggressive options, according to officials.
Instead, he has settled into nightly strikes on Iranian positions that have so far failed to shake loose concessions from Iran or degraded its capabilities enough to prevent deadly strikes on US positions.
The recent deaths of the four Americans underscored the risks the war has brought to troops stationed in the region.
The four Americans returning home Wednesday were were 1st Lt. Tyler James Feehan, Staff Sgt. Michael Emmanuel Swinton, Sgt. Angel S. Rampersad and Pvt. Isabella Gonzales.
The ranged in age from 19 to 25, and hailed from the entire breadth of the United States, from Hawaii to North Carolina, New York to Texas.
They died far from home, in Jordan and Iraq. Trump met privately with their families before the transfer, and invited Feehan’s relatives to fly with him aboard Air Force One onward to Georgia.
Speaking at his event in Marietta, Trump said it had been a difficult morning.
“Standing there watching this sight, which is – very, very tough to – very tough to watch,” he said. “To be honest with you, very tough. I think it’s the toughest thing I do. If anything, I do all this stuff, but I think it’s the toughest thing I do.”
To Feehan’s family, who Trump said lived nearby, he described a son with a bright future.
“This is a son who was like a flawless, perfect person. Beautiful, beautiful son, handsome in every way, brilliant, respected by everybody,” he said, as Feehan’s grief-striken family watched from the crowd. “I told them that their beloved son, and it’s Lieutenant Tyler Feehan, and he was a person that was going all the way. He was going to be a general.”
Hours before watching the remains return home, Trump had threatened harsh retaliation against Tehran.
“They’re going to pay a big price,” he told reporters. He wouldn’t weigh in on reports the soldiers killed in Jordan were targeted in their barracks.
Despite what he says are “desperate” calls from Iranian leaders to resume talks, Trump has dismissed the prospect of diplomacy, at least in the near term, calling the Iranians unserious about reaching a meaningful deal. He has declared the memorandum of understanding he signed to much fanfare at the Palace of Versailles last month “over” and “dead.”
That made it somewhat odd this week when the White House posted a survey on its social media accounts declaring “overwhelming support for Iran peace deal,” even though Trump declared it dead two weeks ago.
A few days later, the same accounts posted a video splicing together clips of US jets striking Iranian targets, underplayed by cinematic music, proclaiming Trump was “not a game player.”
What effect his visit to Dover will have on the president’s calculations going forward remains to be seen. Speaking during Senate testimony Tuesday, Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made clear he had spelled out all the potential risks of the war during his briefings to Trump.
“The most important thing that I do is make sure that the president and the other leaders understand the risks and carefully consider the Dover Test,” he said. “Are we willing to go to Dover, as we will tomorrow, to bring back the fallen?”
But even Caine, who was with Trump in a makeshift Situation Room at Mar-a-Lago when the war began and has briefed him on options in the actual Situation Room many times since, was frank in acknowledging the path forward was unclear.
“I can’t answer the question on what it will cost because the enemy has a vote,” he said. “Because I’m not quite sure how this is going to play out yet, it would be unwise for me to comment on what a future cost may or may not be, depending on what they choose.”
This story has been updated with additional developments.
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