The question looming in the country today is simple.

What does victory in Iran look like?

Asking the president isn't much use.

He's provided strikingly different answers based seemingly on his mood.

What is definitively true is that Iran remains in control of the Strait of Hormuz,

and it is unclear how President Trump plans to open up this crucial choke point.

Tonight, we'll ask another question as well. Is President Trump's war of choice becoming a war

of necessity? Next.

This is Washington Week with the Atlantic.

Good evening, and welcome to Washington Week. There are at least

two Iran wars taking place right now. There's the war being waged by the U.S. military and the Israelis.

And in this war, Iranian targets are being methodically destroyed according to carefully designed

plans. The other war is playing out inside the brain of Donald Trump.

We don't know the goals of this war, the metrics of success,

or even whether Trump is assimilating information the way his military commanders are.

Trump has been notably inconsistent in telling us what he believes the purpose and the goals of this war are.

On any given day,

he'll threaten to destroy all of Iran's energy infrastructure, and then the next day, he'll tell us that negotiations are taking place to bring about the war's quick end. He'll tell us that the goal

is the overthrow of the Iranian regime, and then he'll say the goal is the opening of the Strait

of Hormuz, which was open before the war. And then he'll let us the opening of the Strait of Hormuz, which was open

before the war. And then he'll let us know that opening the Strait of Hormuz doesn't actually

matter. All wars are covered in a fog of misinterpretation and misinformation and uncertainty.

...