‘We were surprised’: Trump admits one ‘aggressive’ shift in the Iran war changed everything

The US and Israel have a considerable early advantage in the war in Iran. The first strike on the top members of the regime in Tehran was undoubtedly seismic, but the new leaders of Iran’s response might have made things even harder for themselves. Donald Trump shared that he inadvertently set up Iran against its own neighbors, but he’ll take whatever help he can get.

“We were surprised,” Trump reportedly told CNN’s Jake Tapper about the members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) fighting back “aggressively” against Iran. The GCC includes Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, which are all turning on Iran. The first thing to understand about this conflict is that while the current administration is speaking about the region in black-and-white terms — referring to one country as a terrorist regime and the other as an unassailable ally — they’re all complex humans with ever-shifting needs and alliances.

When Iran confirmed through state media that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was dead, they followed up by declaring total war. What that basically means is they now consider all US interests viable targets. Military bases in neighboring Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and other countries in the region are now in play. As a result, Iran has kicked off a multi-front offensive war across the entire region.

But they haven’t just been targeting embassies and military bases. It’s grown to civilian locations such as hotels and apartment buildings. The GCC has also been warming up to Western influence in recent years, particularly the banking structures of Qatar and the UAE’s Dubai. Saudi Arabia has always had close ties with the US, but things have only gotten closer under Trump, with multimillion-dollar jets being traded as gifts to the POTUS as key evidence of that.

Iran has reportedly dropped 165–186 missiles on the UAE alone in the past four days. It’s worth noting that whenever the US negotiates with Iran, the conduit has always been Qatar, Jordan, and Kuwait. These are their historic allies. But once Iran started attacking them beyond just the military bases the US has in these countries, they had no choice but to start fighting back.

“They were going to be very little involved, and now they insist on being involved,” Trump continued telling Tapper about the Middle East leaders who have joined the operation. “They were living under that dark cloud for years. That’s why you could never have peace.”

Iranian missiles have a long way to go before they reach Israel, which is their primary target. They somehow have to pass through all the military bases in the three countries that separate them and then deal with Israel’s nearly impenetrable Iron Dome and a US Army warship deployed in the Mediterranean Sea.

Iran has its own strategies of retaliation, but Secretary Pete Hegseth has insisted that they will all be futile. Most experts expect that Iran’s next step will be to keep releasing its cheap and surprisingly effective missiles until the expensive Iron Domes of the US and Israel can no longer hold, with the goal of goading them into putting boots on the ground. The deaths of American soldiers that could result from that would make the Trump administration more unpopular than it already is.

The Iranians have taken a huge gamble on this war, but it was this or waving a white flag.