TheU.S. and Israeli war with Iranentered is fourth week on Sunday, marking 23 days of continued conflict. Here's a look at what happened in the third week and what to watch in the week ahead:
Time and money
At the start of the conflict, the White House said Americans should expect the war to last as few as four to six weeks. Now in week four, the next steps will be watched closely.
President Donald Trump said Friday night that the U.S. is "getting very close" to meeting its military objectives "as we consider winding down" those efforts.
There is no question the U.S. has overwhelmed Iran militarily. U.S. Central Command says it has struck 8,000 military targets (including Iranian missiles and attack drones) and destroyed 130 Iranian naval vessels.
Yet Trump's own intelligence leaders testified on Capitol Hill last week that the Iranian regime, though battered, is still "largely intact." And while its capacity to build nuclear weapons is set back, it is not eliminated. Questions remain if the operation can wind down amid these realities.
Iran live updates
Not long after suggesting operations could wind down this week, the president threatened Iran with attacks on its power infrastructure.
"Sometimes you have to escalate to de-escalate," Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday.
The White House also confirmed it is seeking a whopping$200 billion in wartime supplemental fundingfrom Congress. It's an enormous sum for the American taxpayer that far exceeds the cost and pace of a four- to six-week conflict. Defense Department officials told Congress it had spent just over $11 billion in the first week.
By that measure, $200 billion would be the cost of a four-month war, not four weeks.
The president told reporters the money is needed to replenish and rebuild stockpiles of military equipment beyond the scope of the Iran war.
"Our manufacturers of military equipment are building at a level they've never seen before," Trump said Thursday. "It's a "small price to pay" to stay "tippy top."
Alliances crack
Week 3 will also be remembered for Trump's failure to strong-arm allies into the war.
Key European alliances in Germany, France and the United Kingdom allpublicly rebuffedthe president's demand for help securing critical passage of commerce in theStrait of Hormuz, leaving the president to lash out at his allies and make escalatory threats against Iran.
GOP Sen. Tillis says objectives of Iran war unclear: 'It's a real problem'
On Saturday night, Trump declared that if Iran doesn't "fully open" the strait within 48 hours, he will "obliterate" Iran's power plants.
But Yechiel Leiter, Israel's ambassador to the U.S., had reservations about the ultimatum.
"Here's the issue. If we're going to take down this regime, we want to leave everything in the country intact so that the people who come after this regime are going to be able to rebuild and reconstitute," Leiter told CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday.
Trump called the decision of his NATO allies a "foolish mistake" and said "We don't need their help." He also called it a test of their loyalty to the U.S., seeming to confuse the body's commitment to mutual defense under Article 5 of the NATO charter, which is applied when one nation is attacked, not when it starts a war.
With the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed, alternative routes pose little help
When a Japanese reporter asked the president on Thursday why he didn't give U.S. allies, including Japan, a heads up before the attack, the presidentequated his decisionto the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor during World War II.
Who knows better about surprise than Japan," he said. "Why didn't you tell me about Pearl Harbor, OK?"
Advertisement
The remark made for an awkward moment in the Oval Office with Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi and left many struggling to unravel the connection.
Not on the same page
Trump broke publicly with Israel for the first time during the three weeks of coordinated strikes, blaming the Israelis for conducting devastating strikes on Iran's South Pars gas field on Wednesday. Those strikes led to retaliatory attacks on Qatari oil infrastructure.
Trump said Washington "knew nothing about this particular attack," in a post on his social media platform on Wednesday. Israel has said the U.S. was given advance warning.
Pentagon seeking $200B more for Iran war, official says
Trump has expressed reluctance to strike Iranian oil infrastructure for risk of escalating the war and sending gas prices at home surging even higher.
And to combat those rising prices, The white House took the remarkable step Friday of lifting sanctions against Iranian oil already at sea and ready to be delivered.
Senior White House officials made the case Sunday that the aim was not to benefit Iran's war effort, but to ease pressure on global markets.
A notable defection
Week 3 also saw the first public defection from Trump's team from one of his most senior national security officials over objections to the war .
Joe Kent, director of the Counterterrorism Center,announced his resignationin an open statement arguing the U.S. was "deceived" by Israel and that Iran never posed an imminent threat to the United States. It was a direct affront to the White House'sstated case for war.
The following day, Kent's boss, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, testified in front of Congress as part of the annual assessment of worldwide threats and declined to state publicly that Iran posed an imminent threat.
Questions about the urgency of the threat Iran posed and accusations that Trump was led into war by Israel have surrounded the White House since the start. So it was significant that the head of the U.S. intelligence community would not make the case herself that Iran posed an imminent threat.
"It is not the intelligence community's responsibility to determine what is and is not an imminent threat,"Gabbard told Congress. "That is up to the president based on a volume of information he receives."
It was also apparent from the testimony this week that the intelligence community had a different view about the current state of Iran's nuclear program and its ability to launch a long-range attacks.
US targets mine-laying vessels in the Strait of Hormuz amid blockade disrupting global oil markets
In his case for war, the president said Iran was attempting "to rebuild their nuclear program and to continue developing long-range missiles." He added those missiles "could soon reach the American homeland."
But in her written testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee, Gabbard said Iran had shown "no efforts" to rebuild its nuclear program after Operation Midnight Hammer last June.
"Iran's nuclear enrichment program was obliterated," she wrote in her opening testimony. "There have been no efforts since then to try to rebuild their enrichment capability."
Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe agreed in his testimony.
"They have been unwilling and incapable of enriching uranium to 60% as a result of Operation Midnight Hammer," he said of Iran.
As for whether Iran was creating missiles that could "soon" reach the U.S., Gabbard testified the Defense Intelligence Agency believes Iran won't been able to produce a missile with the range that could reach the U.S. until 2035.
The fallen
13 American service members have been killed during the war.
Last week, Trump attended the dignified transfer of six fallen airmen who died when their KC-135 refueling tanker crashed over northern Iraq. The crash is still under investigation, but the Pentagon says it was not the result of enemy fire.
ABC News' Nicholas Kerr contributed to this report.
