What did Donald Trump do today?

He tried wishing his way out of his Iran quagmire again.

Today, at a Veterans' Day address at Arlington National Cemetery, Trump declared that the war in Iran is over. "We fought back," Trump said of a war he started, "and we won."

He then immediately backtracked, saying that it would take time to get a "total victory—not a 93% victory." 

Trump is now in his ninth month of promising the war will be over soon, and it is almost impossible to count how many times he's declared that it has already been won. 

But in reality, virtually nothing about the conflict has changed since this summer. The country is still controlled by the same hardliner regime. Trump's muddled fantasies about having destroyed their "nuclear dust" to the contrary, Iran retains the highly enriched uranium it needs to make a nuclear weapon—and now has a greater incentive than before to develop a deterrent.

Oil flow out of the Persian Gulf remains disrupted, potentially on a permanent basis, even as the total output returns to something like prewar volume. Insurance premiums on tankers are still at sky-high wartime levels. Iran continues to attack ships and infrastructure in the Gulf at will, making what used to be a routine transit something more like a game of Russian roulette. Trump still has no viable means of ending the war by force, short of (more) bombing of civilian targets. 

Eighteen American servicemembers have died in the conflict.

Why does this matter?

• One way to honor America's veterans would be to not lie to them about whether a war is over or won.