BS Summary: This article contains 22 faulty reasoning types, including Negativity Bias, Hasty Generalization, and Unattributed Quote, with Post Hoc (False Cause) as the most egregious example at 18.1% saturation with 310 hits. Analysis detected 1,821 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,710 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 13.1% and a BS Rank of 3% (22,220 of 22,831 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 97.30% of the article peer group.
Ambiguity—vague language, mixed messaging, frequent policy shifts—has been a hallmark of the United States’ approach to the war in Iran.
From almost the moment the conflict began, U.S.
President Donald Trump has vacillated over its purpose, what risks he might be willing to take, and what the United States would consider victory.
He has threatened to destroy Iranian civilization, then promptly signed a cease-fire agreement.
He has floated the possibility of taking Kharg Island, the hub of Iran’s oil industry, only to quickly walk it back.
And he has discussed imposing a 20 percent toll on shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, only to declare that the waterway must be free to everyone.
In some cases, ambiguity can help countries settle wars.
Leaders, for example, can leverage uncertainty to de-escalate a conflict or reach a stable peace agreement by letting both sides claim victory.
If governments avoid drawing clear redlines, they can avoid pressure to escalate in response to attacks, creating space to cool tensions.
But Washington’s mixed messaging about the war in Iran has done more harm than good.
Trump’s spectrum of threats, for example, prompted Tehran to see the war in existential terms and maximally fight back.
The lack of clarity over the status of the Strait of Hormuz made the June memorandum of understanding negotiated by the two countries impossibly frail.
To reach a more durable truce, the Trump administration needs to be clearer about its goals and more consistent in pursuing them.
Otherwise, Iran and the United States will continue to get their wires crossed—and the next cease-fire could again collapse.
CAN’T GET A READ
When coercing a rival, a government must decide how to convey intent, capabilities, and redlines.
One option is to be clear: explicitly and consistently defining a goal, identifying consequences for noncompliance, and articulating what the other side can count on if demands are met.
Such clarity can let a rival state know what is at stake and encourage it to limit its response.
But too much of it can do the opposite.
If the rival knows just how far it can go toward a threshold without triggering retaliation, it will often escalate all the way to that point.
The other option is to be vague.
Yet this can also have mixed consequences.
If a state does not know how its adversary will respond to a certain action, it might hold back for fear of triggering painful counterattacks.
But too many mixed signals can throw off an opponent’s risk calculus, giving rise to misunderstandings that can produce or worsen a crisis.
This is what happened with the United States’ Operation Epic Fury—its military operation against Iran.
Trump has variously said, at different times, that the goal of the campaign is to degrade Iran’s missile capabilities and navy, prevent the country from obtaining nuclear weapons, and end Iran’s support of its regional proxy network.
On the first day of the conflict, he even suggested he wanted to dismantle the Islamic Republic.
(On February 28, Trump encouraged Iranians to “take over” their government, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has carried out military strikes alongside Trump, echoed that sentiment.)
Other Trump administration officials, meanwhile, avoided explicit mention of a political transformation for Iran, focusing on narrower military objectives.
For Iran, this mixed messaging was the opposite of reassuring.
Uncertain of U.S. intentions, its officials assumed the worst—particularly given that airstrikes killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in the conflict’s opening hours.
The country thus escalated massively, unleashing thousands of missiles and drones at infrastructure and U.S. military bases across the Middle East.
If the United States had been clear from the outset that it was not gunning for regime change, Iran might have responded with more restraint and the conflict might have stayed more limited, as it had after U.S.-Israeli airstrikes on Iran in June 2025.
Ambiguity has not only ramped up the conflict.
It has also undermined efforts at ending it.
The June memorandum of understanding was meant to pause fighting, open the Strait of Hormuz, and start a 60-day period for further negotiations.
But it failed, in part because of its unclear wording.
The memorandum obliged Iran to “make arrangements using its best efforts for the safe passage of commercial vessels.”
The Americans interpreted this clause to mean that Iran would let all traffic through, as it did before the war.
The Iranians, on the other hand, took it as a confirmation that they had authority over the waterway and only needed to open parts of it.
(Iran wants shipping to pass through the part of the strait closest to its territory).
At the end of June, Iran began shooting at commercial vessels for taking what it deemed to be unauthorized routes through the channel.
As these attacks unfolded, Iran’s deputy foreign minister took to social media to announce that safe passage was “not guaranteed under vague arrangements.”
The United States interpreted these strikes as violations of the cease-fire, so it responded by firing at Iran.
A similar tit for tat played out in mid-July, resulting in the fighting that continues today.
FOG OF WAR
Although all conflicts are confusing and chaotic to some degree—hence the term “fog of war”—the one in Iran seems particularly ambiguous.
Much of this ambiguity stems not from a calculated strategy to leverage obscurity for military or political gain, but from Washington’s struggle to settle on a desired end state.
Deliberate ambiguity increases uncertainty by keeping opponents guessing.
But when a country is ambiguous about its direction because of internal indecision, it tends to routinely back down from threats only to reissue them, eroding its credibility instead of merely throwing off opponents.
Still, the Trump administration is not fully to blame for the United States’ ambiguous posture.
There are factors outside its control that undercut the White House’s ability to send clear and credible signals to Iran.
Weak domestic support for the war, for example, makes it harder to convincingly threaten Tehran.
According to July polling by The Washington Post and Ipsos, 68 percent of Americans believe that the war is “not worth fighting.”
Tehran is well aware of this fact, which functions as a caveat to all of Trump’s statements.
Even when the president makes seemingly clear and direct threats, Iranian officials cannot be sure he will follow through, given his domestic political constraints.
Iran, in turn, may feel emboldened to brush off the administration’s threats and demands.
The United States’ relationship with its partners in the region also clouds its messaging and invites escalation.
American armed forces launched the war alongside Israel, which has different interests, redlines, and objectives.
In April, for example, Washington and Tehran signed a two-week cease-fire to stop the fighting, but Israel’s obligations under the pact were unclear.
The Iranians said the deal required Israel to halt attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon; Israel argued that operations in Lebanon fell outside the pact’s remit.
Washington backed its ally, and Israel ramped up strikes on Hezbollah targets.
Tehran in turn accused American leaders of “oath-breaking” and likely concluded that the United States was not a credible negotiating partner because it could not stop its regional ally.
Iran retaliated with missile attacks on Israel weeks later.
CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF PEACE
Although ambiguity has been an escalatory force in the war with Iran, that does not mean it always worsens conflict.
At times, it provides policymakers with room to maneuver, to downplay hostility, or to exaggerate their own accomplishments.
Indeed, U.S. officials have, on occasion, leveraged ambiguity to achieve this very effect.
Weeks after the April cease-fire was signed, Tehran launched drones and missiles at American warships in the Strait of Hormuz.
This could easily have triggered a descent back into full-scale conflict.
Yet because the exact terms of the April cease-fire were never publicly released, Trump was able to downplay the incident.
The president told reporters that Iran had merely “trifled with us,” insisting the truce remained intact.
When the United States launched retaliatory strikes, Trump soft-pedaled their significance, referring to them as “just a love tap.”
Central Command similarly announced that it did “not seek escalation.”
Iran appeared to accept that narrative and held off on more strikes.
Moreover, whether intentional or the result of incoherent policy, ambiguity can allow both Washington and Tehran to claim wins.
For instance, because the Trump administration has offered a variety of aims for its war, it was able to claim it had successfully achieved several core objectives upon signing the June memorandum—destroying Iran’s missile capacity, degrading its navy, and limiting the reach of Tehran’s proxies—even though the military campaign had failed to compel Iran to change regimes or abandon its nuclear pursuits.
Iranian leaders, for their part, could declare that they succeeded by virtue of staying in power, inflicting damage on U.S. and Gulf infrastructure, and demonstrating their chokehold over the Strait of Hormuz.
Since the conflict began, Trump has vacillated over its purpose.
These mutual declarations of victory ultimately could not save the memorandum.
But similar assertions have de-escalated past crises.
When Iran launched a barrage of missiles and drones at Israel in April 2024, Israel highlighted its success at defending its territory before retaliating with precision strikes against Iranian military targets.
Iran’s government and media glossed over the damage caused by Israeli attacks and focused public attention on the fact that it had directly struck Israel for the first time.
The lack of a clear outcome meant both sides could claim success, averting escalation.
A deliberate degree of ambiguity could also help end this conflict.
If American and Iranian leaders keep their redlines vague when dealing with low-level military interactions, they will create off-ramps.
But on the whole, the best way for the United States to settle the war with Iran is to be clearer about its objectives.
The goals of Iran’s regime are evident: to maintain its grip on power at home, deter future attacks from its enemies, keep control over the Strait of Hormuz, secure release of frozen funds, and gain relief from sanctions.
If Washington can sharpen its demands and communicate them consistently, both sides will be better able to focus negotiations and develop more viable plans for implementation—leading to a more durable agreement.
Analysis
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