This is the updated tracker. When this paper published the six-aim version on Monday, the seventh had not yet arrived. It arrived Tuesday afternoon. Here is the complete record.

Aim 1 — Destroy the nuclear program. February 28. Trump's address to the nation: "We are ending Iran's nuclear threat forever." Strikes hit Fordow, Natanz, Isfahan. Pentagon briefings for the first 72 hours centered entirely on nonproliferation. This was the stated casus belli [1].

Aim 2 — Regime change. March 5. Leavitt: "The strikes have achieved the conditions for a new Iran." Trump on Truth Social: "Khamenei is gone." The word "nuclear" disappeared from daily briefings. The war became about liberation [2].

Aim 3 — Reopen the Strait of Hormuz. March 8. Iran closed the Strait. Hegseth's morning briefing: "The free flow of commerce through the Strait of Hormuz is a core American interest." For two weeks, the Strait was the justification. Every Pentagon graphic showed shipping lanes [3].

Aim 4 — Destroy military capacity. Mid-March. Waltz: "The systematic degradation of Iran's ability to project force." Target lists expanded to IRGC bases and command infrastructure unrelated to the nuclear program. The Strait receded from briefings [4].

Aim 5 — Take the oil. March 29, Sunday. Trump to the New York Post: "My preference would be to take the oil in Iran." He described Kharg Island as a strategic prize. The Financial Times ran the quote at the top of Monday's edition [5].

Aim 6 — End without reopening Hormuz. March 30, Monday. Hegseth on Fox News: the United States "can conclude operations without that necessarily being part of the final arrangement." The Strait — the stated justification for three weeks of escalation — became optional [6].

Aim 7 — Leave in two to three weeks. March 31, Tuesday. Trump in the Oval Office: "Two weeks, maybe three. We've had regime change. We've done what we came to do." A deal with Iran is not required: "Iran doesn't have to make a deal, no." Gas prices will fall: "All I have to do is leave" [7].

The acceleration is the story. Aims 1 through 4 arrived over roughly three weeks. Aims 5 through 7 arrived in 72 hours. The contradiction is no longer measured in weeks or days. It is measured in news cycles. On Sunday the president wanted to seize Iranian oil. On Monday his defense secretary said the Strait was optional. On Tuesday the president said the U.S. would leave in two to three weeks. These three positions cannot coexist.

PolitiFact's tracker, updated Monday before the seventh aim arrived, described the trajectory as a "full flop" on regime change and a "half flop" on the Strait [6]. The Guardian's day-by-day timeline of the war now exceeds 47 entries [1]. The Congressional Research Service has not yet published an updated analysis; the last one, from March 21, identified four stated aims. It is already three behind.

The institutional consequence is that no one downstream of the president — not the military planner, not the diplomat, not the ally — can build a plan around a stated aim. By the time the plan is drafted, the aim has changed. The velocity of contradiction does not produce ambiguity. Ambiguity is a stable uncertainty. This is unstable certainty: the president is always certain, always specific, and always different from what he was certain about yesterday.

April 6 is five days away. The deadline to obliterate Iran's energy grid was set when Aim 3 (Hormuz) was operative. Now Aim 7 (leave) is operative. Whether the deadline survives the aim that created it is the question that no market rally can answer.

-- Samuel Crane, Washington