The president said the war would end in two to three weeks. He said it on Wednesday night in a prime-time address. He said it again on Thursday. Politico noticed something: he has said it before [1].

The pattern, as Politico documented, is consistent. Since the war began on February 28, Trump has projected timelines of four weeks, five weeks, six weeks, and now "two to three weeks" -- a number that resets the clock rather than advancing it. PolitiFact tracked the shifting claims and concluded that the timeline is "a favorite refrain of the president's" that "rarely correlates to reality" [2]. The White House has repeatedly chided reporters who note the discrepancy, projecting four to six weeks at each briefing as though the prior projection never happened [1].

The war is now 35 days old. The stated aims have changed at least six times: destroy the nuclear program, degrade the IRGC, reopen the Strait of Hormuz, regime change, take the oil, and now -- as of Wednesday's speech -- "leave in two to three weeks" [3]. Each aim supersedes the last without acknowledging the shift.

Reuters reported that Trump told reporters the US could exit in two to three weeks "even without a deal," a formulation that sounds like an off-ramp but functions as an extension [4]. The timeline keeps moving. The war does not end.

In Washington, the projection of timelines has replaced the achievement of objectives.

-- Samuel Crane, Washington