(CNN) — One of the Trump administration’s biggest problems in extracting itself from the Iran war is the list of very absolutist goals that President Donald Trump and his team laid out.
The goals have included complete Iranian surrender, regime change, Iran never getting a nuclear weapon and ending Tehran’s support for its Middle East proxy groups like Hezbollah.
As the war — now in its sixth month — has dragged on, this list of goals has conspicuously shifted and been pared back. And Vice President JD Vance appears to have pared it back recently in a remarkable way, offering the latest indication that the administration might be preparing to settle for less — maybe even a lot less.
Appearing on Fox News on Thursday, Vance was asked how the war might end. And he laid out two goals.
“It’s ensuring that the Gulf countries continue to send oil and gas to the world economy so that we have energy price stability,” he said, adding: “That’s goal number one: Keep oil and gas cheap for Americans all over our country.
“And then, obviously, goal number two is ensure that Iran never gets a nuclear weapon.”
This is not the administration’s old list of goals — and the order Vance placed them in is striking.
When asked about Vance’s comments on Friday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt maintained that “both goals are equally as important to the president.”
The administration has almost always characterized Iran never getting a nuclear weapon as the overriding concern.
And even if the goals are truly equal in the administration’s mind, including oil and gas prices at all — and not other items — is a notable shift.
In fact, Trump explicitly rejected this as a goal back in May. When asked if he considered Americans’ financial situation when trying to resolve the war, Trump responded, “Not even a little bit.” He signaled that denuclearization was so important that he didn’t factor in anything else.
(Trump echoed that line on Friday, saying he would “never apologize” for Americans paying a little more for gas, given the stakes in Iran.)
Then on Monday morning, he put a different spin on things than both Vance and Leavitt had, posting on social media: “The number one Goal is, and always will be, that Iran cannot have, in any way, shape, or form, a Nuclear Weapon.”
I wrote in March about how the administration frequently listed four goals for the war — but how the four goals frequently differed depending upon who was speaking.
Some lists included ending funding for proxy groups, for example, while others did not. Some mentioned destroying Iran’s missile infrastructure, while others omitted that. Some mentioned getting rid of Iran’s air force and navy, but others only mentioned the navy.
It was like the administration was workshopping the list in real time.
But the key point here is that none of those lists included keeping oil and gas prices low in the United States.
And given the Strait of Hormuz was open before the war started, that particular goal could just be read as a return to the pre-war status quo — with denuclearization being the only goal that would represent a new achievement.
Indeed, the new emphasis on low gas prices from some in the administration seems like the latest sign of relaxing the goals to prepare for a conclusion to the war that comes up well shy of Trump’s initial aims.
By May, it became clear the administration was no longer going to emphasize certain goals.
By June, the Trump administration entered into a memorandum of understanding with Iran that barely mentioned previously central US goals.
And for the last two-plus months, Trump has been saying things that sounded a lot like he might scale back his nuclear demands.
While the administration previously emphasized Iran turning over its enriched uranium, Trump’s spoken about how perhaps enough damage was done to its nuclear program and its nuclear materials are buried too far underground to be accessed. The president has also talked about how the US government could simply monitor from space to make sure Iran didn’t try to retrieve them.
He’s even claimed that Iran was already denuclearized.
In other words, Trump sounded a lot like a guy who knew he might not be able to cow Iran into accepting a really restrictive nuclear deal.
His administration talking about energy prices as “goal number one” — even if Trump isn’t — would fit neatly with this progression away from the hard-and-fast goals that the administration set out to achieve.
If a return to the pre-war status quo really is “goal number one” right now, that says a lot about how little this war has accomplished.
This story has been updated Monday with additional information.
The-CNN-Wire
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