Six months of the Iran war – as told through Trump’s social media posts

ANALYSISVisualising how a war was announced, prosecuted, declared won, negotiated and then reopened, all in the president’s own words.[Screengrab / @realDonaldTrump/ Truth Social]Published On 27 Aug 2026This week marks six months since the United States and Israel launched joint strikes on Iran.In that time, US President Donald Trump has published at least 319 posts mentioning Iran on Truth Social, his social media platform – roughly one every 14 hours.Read in sequence, these posts, or “truths” as they are known on the platform, form a record of how a war was announced, prosecuted, declared won, negotiated and then reopened, all in the president’s own words.Al Jazeera analysed these posts. Here is what we found.Between February 28 and August 25, Trump posted at least 4,189 times on Truth Social, an average of 24 posts a day, or one every hour. One in every 13 mentioned Iran – 319 posts in total, or one every 14 hours.While he posted at all hours, the most common time for his Iran posts was the morning in Washington, between 8 and 11am (13:00-16:00 GMT), corresponding to early evening in Tehran.The word cloud below provides a snapshot of the most commonly used terms. “Iran” dominates at 510 mentions, more than three times the next word. But the two that follow are not Iran’s leaders or its nuclear programme: they are his own name and his own country.Trump refers to himself as “President Donald J Trump” or “President DJT” 221 times, more often than he mentions the Strait of Hormuz, nuclear weapons and Israel combined.His sign-off, “Thank you for your attention to this matter”, closes one in every four posts.Before the war: ‘MAKE A DEAL!’In the weeks leading up to February 28, Iran was an occasional subject, appearing in 17 posts between January 1 and February 27, roughly one every three days.The messaging blended hardline threats with transactional diplomacy. Trump applauded Iranian leadership for cancelling more than 800 scheduled hangings and expressed support for anti-regime protesters. He also threatened 25 percent tariffs on nations doing business with Iran, and repeatedly urged Tehran to negotiate, declaring: “MAKE A DEAL!”Then, on January 28, he announced that “a massive Armada is heading to Iran”.[Screengrab/@realDonaldTrump/Truth Social]Over the next month, the messaging escalated the threat of force with several mentions of “Operation Midnight Hammer”, the US military operation of June 2025 that targeted and severely damaged Iranian nuclear enrichment facilities towards the end of the 12-day war with Israel.February 28: ‘Major combat operations’On February 28 at 1:35am Eastern Time (06:35 GMT), US Central Command (CENTCOM) announced the commencement of Operation Epic Fury, at the direction of the president of the United States.Fifty-five minutes later, at 07:30 GMT, US President Donald Trump posted an eight-minute video to Truth Social providing more details about the US’s “major combat operations” in Iran.[Screengrab/@realDonaldTrump/Truth Social]Later that evening, Trump posted: “Khamenei, one of the most evil people in History, is dead”, referring to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who had led the country since 1989.Over the next two weeks, Trump posted 40 more times, arguing he was right to launch the strikes and ruling out any settlement short of “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!”The Strait of Hormuz, which would come to dominate the next five months, went unmentioned until March 10.On March 13, Trump announced that CENTCOM had “totally obliterated every MILITARY target in Iran’s crown jewel, Kharg Island,” adding that he had chosen not to destroy the island’s oil infrastructure “for reasons of decency”.March 14: ‘We have already destroyed 100% of Iran’s Military capability.’Two weeks into the war, on March 14, Trump posted: “We have already destroyed 100% of Iran’s Military capability.”Trump spent much of the rest of March and April cataloguing destruction and issuing deadlines to Iran.He announced strikes on Kharg island, bridges and power plants, set 48-hour and 10-day ultimatums over the Strait of Hormuz, and repeated that Iran’s navy, air force and leadership were “gone”.Between the threats, he attacked NATO, France, the United Kingdom, the Democrats – which he repeatedly calls “Dumocrats” – and the “fake news” media.April 7: ‘A whole civilization will die tonight’On April 7, Trump warned that “a whole civilization will die tonight”, as he announced a “final” strike on Iran. It never came. Ten hours and 26 minutes later, he said Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Field Marshal Asim Munir had asked him to hold off, and that he had agreed to a two-week ceasefire on condition that Iran reopen the Strait of Hormuz.[Screengrab/@realDonaldTrump/Truth Social]April 12: ‘BLOCKADING any and all Ships’On the morning of April 12, Trump posted an article floating a naval blockade as the “Trump card the president holds if Iran won’t bend”. Hours later he announced one, writing, “the United States Navy, the Finest in the World, will begin the process of BLOCKADING any and all Ships trying to enter, or leave, the Strait of Hormuz.”The naval blockade, which he later nicknamed “A WALL OF STEEL”, became the one instrument he never traded away.[Screengrab/@realDonaldTrump/Truth Social]April 20: ‘Israel never talked me into the war with Iran’On April 20, Trump posted that “Israel never talked me into the war with Iran”.For a war the two countries launched together, however, Israel is almost absent from his account of it, appearing just 32 times, fewer than in one in 10 posts. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is named just twice.The following day, Pakistan asked Trump to extend the ceasefire. He agreed, but kept the blockade. Iran, he repeated, was losing $500m a day as a result of his blockade.The next three weeks are mostly attrition. At about 4am on April 29, Trump posted that “Iran has just informed us that they are in a ‘State of Collapse'” and wanted the strait to be opened before posting an AI-generated image of himself holding an assault-style rifle.[Screengrab/@realDonaldTrump/Truth Social]May 3: ‘Project Freedom will begin Monday morning’On May 3, Trump announced Project Freedom, a US Navy operation to escort ships from uninvolved countries out of the strait, before pausing it three days later “Based on the request of Pakistan and other Countries”.Between May and June, the war became a negotiation, conducted in public.On May 18, Trump said he had cancelled a planned attack at the request of Gulf leaders. Five days later, he posted from the Oval Office after a call with the same leaders as well as officials from Pakistan, Turkiye, Egypt, Jordan and Bahrain, negotiating a Memorandum of Understanding on peace. Israel was not on the call. Trump said he had spoken to Netanyahu separately.For the next four weeks, the war is fought through the blockade rather than by air, with Trump setting out his terms on May 29 and later going on to describe Iran as a “FAILED NATION” unable to pay its own military.On June 11, Trump promised to hit Iran “VERY HARD TONIGHT”, then cancelled a few hours later.June 14: ‘The Deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran is now complete’On June 14, Trump declared the agreement complete and told the world’s ships to start their engines. The same day, he criticised an Israeli strike on Beirut, saying it “should not have happened”.[Screengrab/@realDonaldTrump/Truth Social]The deal started fraying immediately. On June 26, in between two posts about how good his approval ratings were, Trump said Iran had fired at least four drones at ships in the Strait, one striking the deck of a cargo carrier.