Though President Donald Trump continues to insist that the war with Iran is a spectacular success, four weeks after the U.S. and Israel attacked, the conflict is still a complete mess with no end in sight. It could also get a lot worse, from the possibility of U.S. troops invading Iran to the likelihood of more extreme global economic consequences. Though the decision to launch the war was his and his alone, the chances of Trump admitting it was in any way a mistake are extremely slim. The chances of him admitting it was his mistake are essentially zero. But if he or other administration officials ever do try to pin the war on anyone, here are the most likely candidates.

The Israeli prime minister has sought war against Iran for more than three decades, and in Donald Trump he finally found a U.S. president willing to go all in on one. He reportedly spoke to Trump at least 17 times in the months preceding the initial attacks, starting with an in-person meeting at Mar-a-Lago in late December, when Netanyahu pitched another round of air strikes targeting Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities. After Iran’s regime conducted a brutal crackdown and massacred thousands of protesters despite Trump vowing to retaliate if that happened, Trump ordered a military buildup in the Middle East and the discussions with Netanyahu shifted to a more extensive joint-operation. As the Trump administration pursued nuclear negotiations with Iran, Netanyahu made the case for decapitation strikes targeting supreme leader Ali Khamenei and other top regime officials.

Among his closing arguments, Netanyahu reportedly told Trump he would never have a better chance to pursue regime change, counter the Iranian threat, and make history. He also sold the idea of getting justice for Iran’s alleged attempts to assassinate Trump. Netanyahu was not alone in personally making the case for war to Trump. It’s also not clear that Netanyahu’s efforts were the decisive factor, and he, Trump, and Trump officials have pushed back on the idea that Trump followed Netanyahu and Israel into the war. But he’s also a literal architect of the war, and whatever rationale he was selling, Trump was happily buying.

The Secretary of War makes a big public spectacle of himself every chance he gets to talk about how great the war is going and how incredible Trump is for launching it. He’s been the guy in the administration who says things like “we negotiate with bombs” and “the world, the Middle East, our ungrateful allies in Europe, and even segments of our own press should be saying one thing to Trump: thank you.”

Hegseth was also, according to Trump, the war’s original proponent in his cabinet. “Pete, I think you were the first one to speak up and you said, ‘Let’s do it because you can’t let them have a nuclear weapon,’” Trump said in an aside to Hegseth during an event on Monday. The next day, Trump told reporters that Hegseth was disappointed that there might be a deal to end the war. “Pete didn’t want it to be settled,” he said.

There may come a time in which Trump finally turns on Hegseth, but for now, the president seems as enthusiastic about his War Secretary as Hegseth is about saying “lethal” and “overwhelming force.”

Senator Lindsey Graham has been calling for the U.S. to go to war with Iran for decades, and had long attempted to convince Trump to pull the trigger. “I told him before he took office … if you can collapse this terrorist regime, that’s Berlin Wall stuff,” Graham told Politico in early March. In the weeks leading up to the war, Graham personally lobbied Trump to act and in television appearances pressed the threat of Iran and praised Trump’s unique potential to counter it. Per Politico, “Privately, he appealed to Trump’s attraction to swaggering action and risk-taking over quieter moves — not to mention the term-limited president’s growing concern with his legacy.”

. The ‘greatest experts’

Trump clearly misjudged how far Iran’s regime would go in its retaliation. The president has said multiple times how shocked he was that Iran targeted neighboring Gulf countries. On March 16, Trump said that “Nobody … the greatest experts, nobody thought they were going to hit [back] … all these countries are getting hit. There was no expert that would say that was going to happen. It’s not a question of like, gee, should you have known?”

It’s also abundantly clear that Trump did not expect Iran’s regime to close the Strait of Hormuz, despite its longstanding threats to do so. And Trump reportedly believed the regime would quickly collapse or capitulate, ending the war within days. It’s not clear which experts Trump was referring to, but credible Iran experts have long warned that Iran could and would do exactly what it has done if faced with an existential threat.

Trump has repeatedly called the leaders of the Iranian regime “stupid,” “sick,” “demented,” “evil,” and “scum” — and he has celebrated and made fun of how many have been killed in air strikes. He has also said that Iran’s military has been 100 percent destroyed, that the country is being obliterated, and that the regime is begging for a deal to end the war — even though the war is already over and the U.S. has won, according to Trump. The White House has said that Trump doesn’t expect Iran to announce its unconditional surrender, but that he will decide when it has “effectively surrendered.”

Meanwhile the regime, despite its losses, remains intact and in power, and it continues to strike back. If the regime does not capitulate to Trump’s demands and continues fighting the war on its own terms, he may blame them for not realizing how badly they have been beaten. (And he will almost certainly blame them for continuing the war if they don’t agree to his terms for ending it.)

In the beginning of the war, Trump told Iranians “the hour of freedom is at hand” and that after the U.S. and Israeli air strikes stopped, they should rise up and overthrow their government. This was apparently part of Trump’s failed assumption that killing supreme leader Ali Khamenei and other senior Iranian leaders would quickly topple the regime. It didn’t, the air strikes have continued, the civilian death toll keeps rising in Iran, and there has been no uprising amid the war. (If there had been, it’s likely it would have ended in another mass slaughter.) Regardless, it isn’t hard to imagine Trump blaming Iranians for not seizing the chance to oust their ruthless, well-armed government. (Benjamin Netanyahu sort of already has.)

Trump, Hegseth, and other administration officials continue to attack the media for any coverage that suggests the war isn’t a blockbuster success. “If you read the New York Times, you would think we are doing badly against Iran. … It is almost treasonous,” Trump said on Friday. And a regular feature of Hegseth’s Pentagon press briefings has been his breathless broadsides at CNN and others for reporting on the costs, confusion, casualties, and consequences of the war.

Put another way, they already blame the media for the perception that the war may be a mistake.

. General Dan ‘Razin’ Caine

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff reportedly advised Trump before the war about the many risks — including widespread retaliation by Iran, significant American casualties, and Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz — while also assuring the president that the U.S. military would be able to handle whatever Trump decided to do. In a February 23 Truth Social post, Trump insisted that Caine was not against going to war with Iran, adding that “if a decision is made on going against Iran at a Military level, it is his opinion that it will be something easily won.” Trump has repeatedly expressed his own confidence in U.S. military superiority. He has also repeatedly made it clear that he is a big Razin’ Caine fan and says he loves the job he’s doing in the war.

The Secretary of State and National Security Adviser is widely seen as one of Trump’s only competent foreign policy advisers, but that doesn’t mean he can escape a share of blame for how the administration has handled the war. For instance, the State Department made virtually no preparations for evacuating U.S. diplomats or American citizens caught in harm’s way once the war broke out. And in the first week of the war, he publicly suggested that Israel had dragged the U.S. into war, only to later walk it back. Rubio has always been an Iran hawk, and it’s not clear how much pushback he offered or how else he may have influenced — or failed to influence — Trump’s magical thinking about the war. But if he gets too much credit for not being as incompetent as his colleagues, that could draw some internal ire, too.

Trump has repeatedly complained about how America’s European NATO allies haven’t jumped on his Iran War bandwagon and joined the fight. He has vowed vague consequences against them and is openly questioning whether the U.S. will participate in the alliance anymore. He also says the U.S. doesn’t need their help, so forget he ever asked.

Aside from how almost anything that goes wrong in Donald Trump’s America is somehow Joe Biden’s fault, Trump has already blamed his predecessor for sending Europe and Ukraine some of the U.S. munitions the Pentagon now suddenly needs against Iran.

Trump rarely misses an opportunity to knock “Barack Hussein Obama” and the nuclear deal his administration made with Iran. Trump promptly tore that agreement up during his first term in office, arguably setting some of the events in motion which directly led to this war. In Trump’s mind, Obama is “not a smart man” who set the world on a path to an Iran-perpetrated nuclear holocaust which Trump has now prevented. In this sense, the war is already Obama’s fault.

They have played no role in the war or its planning, but if he ever blames anyone for the war not succeeding, Trump will probably find some way to blame them.

Trump has long been obsessed with how Carter handled Iran, including his failed effort to rescue the American hostages there in 1980, and the unbearable humiliation Trump believes America suffered as a result. In Trump’s mind, if Carter had dealt with Iran like he thinks he should have at the time — invading it and taking its oil — none of this would have been a problem in the first place.

Nobody knows for sure where vice president J.D. Vance, who was once a loud-and-proud America First isolationist, truly stands on the war, though he is allegedly one of the few skeptics about it in Trump’s inner circle. Trump himself has said that Vance, when it came to the war, “was, I’d say, philosophically a little different from me” and “maybe less enthusiastic about going, but he was still quite enthusiastic.” The latter comment could be a line in Vance’s political obituary if this war ends up sinking his electoral prospects.

He was definitely in the room where the pre-war debate happened, and reportedly argued for a “go big and go fast” opening to resolve the conflict quickly, but Vance was conspicuously not in the ad-hoc situation room at Mar-a-Lago when the war started. Since then, he’s more than toed the administration line, albeit while keeping a slightly lower profile, whether it’s all an act or not. Vance’s biggest risk probably isn’t getting blamed for the war, but getting caught with too much distance between himself and Trump about the war, especially if the president senses any disloyalty. It’s also possible Vance could become the administration’s blame issuer, rather than its target.

This post has been updated.

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