'Remarkably vague and impulsive': Tapper obliterates Trump's supposed '4-D chess'

CNN anchor Jake Tapper questioned President Donald Trump's ultimate game plan in Iran, calling out the president and his administration for mixed messaging.

Tapper was responding to Secretary of State Marco Rubio's claims about objectives in the war and what the United States had aimed to achieve in its military strikes that first launched on Feb. 28. Now weeks into the war, Americans were unsure what the actual objectives were following confusing communications over what prompted the military action in the Middle East.

"If the mission is just as Secretary Rubio noted, the destruction of the air force and the navy and missiles and missile-making capability, it would seem that the U.S. would be close to accomplishing that," Tapper said. "But according to reports in The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, the Trump administration is preparing for more. The Pentagon is preparing for weeks of ground operations in Iran, troops on the ground. President Trump is weighing deploying another 10,000 more ground troops to the Middle East region in general. And they are also considering a complex operation to extract with boots on the ground."

Trump hasn't made clear what his next decision will be — and that has left Americans confused, Tapper explained.

"Again, one can want a denuclearized and democratic Iran and still wonder if President Trump is kind of making some of this up as he goes along," Tapper said. "One can support President Trump and wonder if he's fully aware of how often wars spiral out of control little by little, with unanticipated responses by the enemy requiring increasing commitment."

"President Trump said he would end the Iran war when he, 'feels it in his bones,' when so many lives are on the line. That is a remarkably vague and impulsive metric... Some people believe Trump's constant back and forth is street strategic, four-dimensional chess," Tapper added.