Donald Trump spoke to Fox News this week, and uttered a phrase that will likely live beyond this news cycle: "I don't believe in the word 'regret. When explicitly asked if he regrets his country's approach to its current war with Iran, which it has been waging for six months, the president says he'd do it all the same again even to the point of making a statement that has already been publicly disputed by his own government, that Iran has eliminated its nuclear capability.

He shook off any claims that the war in his country is demoralizing because it began with promises of a quick conclusion and has now become more of an attrition war. He also reaffirms a commitment he has made and reneged upon: The war will end or perhaps even end early around Election Day, if not sooner.

A U.S. official, who spoke to Reuters anonymously, undermined the president's assertion within hours about the high costs of the war. Trump had said Thursday that an attack on Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan by the Iranian state did not damage any American equipment. The official responded otherwise: an A-10 Warthog lost a wing, and about eight F-15s suffered damage which was patched up and they got back into the air.

That one mistake is part of a bigger trend in how the American public has been told the story of the war. It's reported in the New York Times this week that Vice President JD Vance, who had doubts from the get-go about taking on the campaign, made a tour of the Pentagon to hear from field commanders without being subjected to any filters. What he heard was far different from the White House's public messages: Military supplies were becoming dangerously low, and Iran's leaders indicated they had every intention of fighting a long battle before capitulating.

This is no abstract stockpile question. The United States had an estimated total of 2,300 Patriot interceptors before the war, and the estimate by the Center for Strategic and International Studies is that fewer than 850 remain. Those interceptors came into use this week as well: US forces shot down about 30 Iranian missiles during a barrage of rockets fired at the Jordan base, which was in response to American downing five Iranian oil carriers after it was hit by a barrage of missiles launched by Iran, Washington claimed. Strikes on the headquarters of the Fifth Fleet in Bahrain were described by the acting Navy secretary to the Epoch Times as a "hell" scene in Bahrain. According to a Congressional Research Service count made in May, 42 American military planes had been lost or damaged since February — a number that is prior to this week's losses, and will require updating.

A sharp rise in the military bill is accompanied by an economic bill that continues to climb. Washington has targeted an unnamed "large" bank on Monday as part of a pressure campaign that has so far come close to 60 banks, vessels and people in shipping, aviation, technology, gold and digital-asset industries, according to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who said Wednesday Monday's move would be the latest in the series of sanctions. “Let's keep going about this until the last company stops doing business with Tehran,” Bessent said, predicting “an extinction level event” for any company continuing to do business with Tehran.

That campaign has come at a time of actual shortage. Pump prices jumped about a quarter of a dollar for every $10 increase in oil prices in the early days of the war; for the $10 increase, which one bank's research desk estimated at nearly $100 billion, calculated annual growth losses of 0.3 percent in consumer spending and consumer income. The result of a Reuters/Ipsos poll, which shows 36 percent of Americans back the war, is one issue Republicans cannot afford to ignore seven weeks ahead of midterm elections in which they're clinging to narrow majorities in both the House and Senate.

The evidence of disruption is now apparent in ship-tracking data, not opinion polls. The number of large commercial vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz, a choke point that was once used by about 125 ships a day and about a fifth of the world's daily crude and liquefied natural gas (LNG) deliveries, dropped to seven on Thursday from an already low 10-day average. But the total use is probably higher because some of that traffic has simply turned off the transponders, making them undetectable, and it is clear the trend is upwards. Meanwhile, further south, pro-Iranian Houthi rebels took control of the port city of Mocha this week and advanced towards the Bab el-Mandeb Strait which saw some 27 vessels per day pass through another chokeppoint that is also under threat as forces regroup.

But House Speaker Mike Johnson says Republicans can prevail no matter what happens in the war by November because the war is against “the largest state sponsor of terrorism.” The confidence is uneasy alongside his own acknowledgment that a resolution prior to the vote "would be helpful. Between Trump's insistence that he never regretted his decision and VP Mike Pence's whispered hope for a straight answer from the generals lies the reality of a war that was supposed to last only weeks that has become a matter of foreign policy calculations, depleted American missile stocks, and a live factor in a domestic election that is no longer that far away.