As the U.S. and Iran meet over the negotiating table in Pakistan this weekend, the outcome of Operation Epic Fury remains deeply uncertain. But one thing is clear: The war with Iran has offered a remarkably revealing snapshot of how the Trump administration really operates — inside the West Wing, across Washington and around the world.

The picture that emerges is not a pretty one for President Donald Trump.

The conflict has proved messier and more complex than Trump expected. The resulting energy shocks have damaged the domestic economy and alienated allies. The already-limited political support for the war at home has rapidly eroded, even among some of Trump’s erstwhile supporters. And the prospects for reaching a negotiated resolution that could satisfy both parties’ demands are far from certain.

To help decipher this moment, we convened a roundtable of POLITICO reporters who have been closely covering the conflict: White House reporter Diana Nerozzi, senior Congress reporter Meredith Lee Hill, defense reporter Jack Detsch, national security reporter Daniella Cheslow, White House energy reporter Scott Waldman and senior politics reporter Liz Crampton.

Here’s what our reporters have learned about Trump just over a month into the conflict — and what it suggests about where the conflict and the MAGA movement might go from here.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Our panelists

Diana Nerozzi

White House reporter, POLITICO

Liz Crampton

Senior politics reporter, POLITICO

Jack Detsch

Defense reporter, POLITICO

Daniella Cheslow

National security reporter, POLITICO

Scott Waldman

White House energy reporter, POLITICO’s E&E News

Meredith Lee Hill

Senior Congress reporter, POLITICO

Let’s start with some top-line takeaways from everyone: Briefly, what’s the most important thing that we’ve learned about President Donald Trump and/or MAGA from the war with Iran?

Daniella Cheslow: TACO Tuesday lives on! We learned that while he has the stomach for short, targeted operations in Venezuela and last year, in Iran, he does not have the appetite for long-term intervention in Iran. That’s certainly not something MAGA would be interested in — although I was surprised that some of his supporters were OK with him striking Iran alongside Israel in the first days and weeks of this operation.

Diana Nerozzi: We’ve learned just how deep the fissures are in the MAGA movement on foreign conflicts. Some, like former National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent, quit the administration, while other previous loyalists like Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens got into a fiery exchange with Trump, worse than we’ve ever seen before. This shows that a faction of the GOP is realigning itself, or at least is wavering, and that may have consequences for the future of the party.

Jack Detsch: We learned that despite the “no foreign wars” pledge, this is a hard-power president who is keen to use the tactical power of the U.S. military to go after tough targets that have vexed other presidents. He’s willing to buck the MAGA movement — or bet the farm that they’ll ride along. Whether Trump can tie together military campaigns in Iran and Venezuela into larger U.S. strategic objectives, that’s another problem.

Liz Crampton: In terms of politics, Republicans should not bank on the 2024 coalition that brought Trump back to the White House being permanent: Important blocs are angry with the GOP, particularly young men, and that makes it harder to keep them in the fold in the midterms and in 2028. There’s a much bigger appetite for anti-interventionism in the GOP, and that will determine which candidates will be able to surge in the next presidential election.

Scott Waldman: For years, Trump has tied the success of his policies to gas prices and cutting energy costs. He’s learning now that one quick way to start splintering the coalition that carried you back to the Oval Office is to take actions that cause those prices to spike. Gas prices still have more climbing to do, particularly diesel, which is already near its record high set under Biden. Even the MAGA coalition is reeling from this energy shock and appears to be staying home in some recent primary and special elections.

Meredith Lee Hill: We learned that the vast majority of Republicans in Congress will continue to show deference to Trump on the war and have no interest in serving as a check on Trump’s use of military force abroad. Most publicly argue he’s within his rights as commander-in-chief.

Fascinating — let’s dig into some of this. Diana, it’s been reported that Trump was persuaded to join the war by several figures outside the White House — chiefly Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose case for the war was apparently decisive in persuading Trump to act. Does that align with what you’re hearing?

Nerozzi: The White House has tried to keep the influences under wraps, but reporting suggests that there were voices either pushing or putting doubt on the strikes. Trump himself has said Joint Chiefs chair Gen. Dan Caine and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth were more in favor, while Vice President JD Vance and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard were more skeptical. The New York Times had a lengthy report showing that Netanyahu was a leading figure, as he was in the Situation Room and told Trump about the positives of the strikes, as well as the feasibility and wins it would bring the U.S. —everything Trump likes.

What about Marco Rubio?

Nerozzi: Rubio’s domain has been mostly in the Western Hemisphere, and we’ve seen him less on Iran. He was definitely one of the people advising Trump, and from my sense, gave a more down-the-middle assessment on what would happen if Trump went ahead with the strikes. He is not going to Pakistan for the peace talks despite being Secretary of State, showing again that he’s not at the forefront of those trying to get in the mix on the war.

Meredith — as you mentioned, congressional Republicans seemed largely content to let Trump do Trump here. What are you hearing about the mood among Republicans now? Is there any second-guessing of Trump’s instincts?

Lee Hill: We’ve seen some reticence from a sliver of Hill Republicans, including some younger GOP lawmakers who have served in the military and campaigned on the promise that Republicans wouldn’tpursue endless wars. Rep. Eli Crane, a Republican from Arizona who is deeply MAGA-aligned, told me his biggest concern is this turning into another long Middle Eastern war. He’s a former Navy SEAL who served five wartime deployments. And he noted that a lot of supporters and members of Congress are concerned about the idea of troops on the ground in the region. A lot of these younger Republicans, especially those who are at risk of losing their seats this fall, came to power raging against the war machine — and now I think they’re grappling with the fear that they’re becoming part of it.

Other concerns I’ve started to hear is over the ceasefire negotiations — and how worried some Hill Republicans are if Iran starts tolling oil and fertilizer shipments long-term, which would be a “worst-case” scenario, one House Republican told us.

Are there any signs that those younger, war-wary Republicans are prepared to act on their concerns in any way?

Lee Hill: I think we’d only see those wary Republicans break with Trump if he deployed troops on the ground in Iran or in a significant way nearby. The real deadline for many of them is not for several more weeks — when the conflict hits the 60-day mark. That’s when at least a small group of them have said they would consider making the rare break with Trump to defy him on a war powers vote.

What about the Democrats, Meredith? Are they unified in pushing back against the war, or are we seeing divisions in their response? If so, who has the upper hand? 

Lee Hill: Democrats now are pretty unified in their pushback of the war. We did see some early splintering among a group of moderate House Democrats who opposed an earlier war powers resolution to rebuke Trump’s initial strikes against Iran. But now that the war is lasting longer than they expected, those Democrats are now backing an effort by Rep. Gregory Meeks, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffriesand others to force another war powers vote in the House next week.

Scott, the severity of the energy shock from the closure of the Strait of Hormuz seems to have caught the administration on the back foot. What does your reporting indicate about how prepared, or not, they were for the consequences of closing the strait?

Waldman: The administration has consistently said for the last month that they were prepared for all possible outcomes and, in particular, the closing of the Strait of Hormuz. The military has conducted exercises wargaming the potential closure of Hormuz for many years, across different administrations. Before the war, Caine did warn the president about the likelihood that Hormuz would be closed.

But we’re clearly seeing that the Iranians are now using control of Hormuz as their primary lever of power. All the experts I’ve talked to have said that Iran didn’t fully appreciate how much global economic pain they could cause by closing the strait, and they expect that this will be Iran’s main deterrent going forward rather than nuclear weapons.

While the administration insists that they were fully prepared to deal with the closure of the strait, the fact remains that it’s basically still fully closed and there’s no clear indication as to when it will reopen despite the fragile ceasefire. Iran has stated that they will enact a toll going forward. Trump has urged the owners of oil tankers and other countries to use the strait, but has thus far refused to send any U.S. vessels through it as a demonstration of its openness.

Pentagon team — any thoughts on this?

Cheslow: This brings us to one of the major tension points between Trump and NATO allies. Trump has urged these allies to use force to open the Strait. But this is not something they are interested in. We have been seeing some very sharp words from France and from Spain, for instance, on the closure of the strait. By and large, European countries don’t want to secure the strait during active conflict. You do see some eastern European countries being more open to helping the U.S., but the three largest European economies — the UK, Germany, France — have been a lot colder. 

Scott, there seems to be a real possibility that the war will backfire on Trump’s anti-renewable energy agenda by convincing other countries that they need to transition even faster away from oil and gas. Are you seeing any preliminary indications of that happening?

Waldman: The shift to more clean energy is already being talked about by a number of world leaders, particularly in Asia and Europe, where the government is asking people to work from home in some countries and gas stations are running out of fuel. The Philippines is fast-tracking 1.4 gigawatts of renewables, which is a roughly 40 percent increase in the country’s wind and solar capacity. Some European leaders are calling for the need to ramp up nuclear energy as well as solar and wind. South Korean President Lee Jae Myung said recently that relying too much on fossil fuels puts the country at risk.

Last year, Trump told world leaders gathered at the United Nations that their countries would be ruined by what he calls “the green new scam” of more clean energy. The war in Iran is proving him wrong in the eyes of a growing number of world leaders.

Jack, what has this taught us about where power really resides in the Pentagon?

Detsch: Hegseth is running the show, but he has typically been deferential in administration debates and has never bucked the president. Caine has been somewhat skeptical of U.S. interventions in the Middle East  — he also pushed back about the adverse impacts that last year’s Operation Midnight Hammer would have on air defenses and munitions stockpiles — but he’s not a chair of the Joint Chiefs that’s going to stand in the way of Trump, especially after what happened to Mark Milley.

It’s been striking the degree to which it’s been business as usual for Hegseth. He’s still purging top officers of the military — he fired Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George last week and two of his top aides — and the Pentagon is continuing to push back against a U.S. court ruling that would curb his press restrictions, all in the middle of the largest American war in more than two decades.

Cheslow: What I’m hearing from an administration official was that what bent Trump toward a ceasefire was the realization that maybe the war aims wouldn’t be as easy as he thought. The rescue of the downed weapons systems officer last weekend was “messy,” the official told me. The U.S. lost a lot of aircraft. Iran kept firing missiles. Trump realized that maybe he was getting an overly optimistic picture of this war from the DoD than the reality on the ground.

Daniella, which of America’s international partners, aside from Israel, are flexing their muscle here? As you’ve reported, Pakistan in particular seems to be asserting itself in the current negotiations.

Cheslow: It’s a moment for Pakistan. I spoke to a journalist based in Karachi, and I’m told the mood there is jubilation — there’s a sense of Pakistan being upgraded. And there’s many reasons for that, from Pakistan catching the suspect in the 2021 “Abbey Gate” bombing in Afghanistan that killed 13 Americans, to them nominating Trump for a Nobel, to the recent crypto deals they’ve signed with a firm that Trump’s family and special envoy Steve Witkoff’s son are involved with.

It’s not clear if Pakistan can deliver. But even having these talks in Islamabad over the weekend is a major step forward.

Do you think that Trump and his diplomatic team have a firm grasp on the domestic political considerations driving the Iranians’ stance in the ongoing negotiations?

Cheslow: I spoke to Hamidreza Azizi, who is a sharp observer of Iranian internal dynamics. His view is that the very fact that Trump believed he could initiate regime change revealed a huge gap in his understanding.

There are countervailing pressures in Iran, from the hardliners who want Iran to break the ceasefire and back up Hezbollah in Lebanon against Israeli strikes, and the majority of the population that wants a ceasefire so they can live their lives. Now we have Vance playing a higher-profile role in these negotiations, adding another person to the Steve Witkoff-Jared Kushner duo that was negotiating before the strikes. Perhaps Vance and Pakistan — especially the influential army chief Asim Munir — can change the trajectory. But they’re going to be working through a weekend where we’re likely to see many challenges to the ceasefire, including Israel continuing to pound Lebanon even as it has agreed to talk directly with Lebanon in Washington next week.

Liz, let’s talk a bit about the politics. You went to CPAC recently to report on how the war was playing with the base. What was the reaction like among Trump’s supporters, especially the young men who loom so large in the MAGA imagination?

Crampton: The diehard MAGA base is with Trump no matter what. But even at CPAC, some Republicans voiced concerns about the war being a betrayal of Trump’s America First promises, and the reason whyyoung voters are growing disaffected with Republican leaders. One CPAC attendee who voted for Trump in 2024 told me that MAGA is now the party of boomers.  Republicans are well aware that they’re in a difficult spot with this demographic, and the longer this conflict lasts, the more trouble Trump and those who went along with it are in.

What have you been hearing at CPAC or elsewhere about how various 2028 contenders like Vance and Rubio are weathering the storm? Is one benefiting more than the other?

Crampton: Both Vance and Rubio will be saddled with the legacy of this war. As an outspoken America First voice, Vance especially is in a tricky spot: He’s risking losing the trust of Republicans who latched onto that message, but he can’t cross the president. The upcoming talks will be a huge test of his leadership and whether he can credibly maintain that reputation.

Detsch: Yep, I have been hearing the same from the restrainer camp, Liz. Vance may have resisted going to war behind the scenes, but he was with Trump on Iran 100 percent when the attacks started. It’s left MAGA restrainers asking themselves who will have the credibility to carry the torch for them going forward, and that might not be Vance.

As a parting thought, I wonder if each of you could finish this sentence in a few words: “As a result of the war in Iran, MAGA is ______.”

Nerozzi: Uneasy.

Cheslow: Disoriented.

Waldman: Reckoning with a more expensive cost of living that likely hasn’t peaked.

Crampton: A tenuous coalition.

Lee Hill: Still publicly behind Trump from Capitol Hill.

Detsch: Feeling whiplash. Former administration officials who came in under the MAGA banner thought the gameplan was “peace through strength” and Trump going to war as a last resort. Now we’vewatched the largest U.S. military campaign since the Iraq War, and it’s not clear the forecast for U.S. foreign policy in the region — or the world — is much better now than it was a month ago.