The Wall Street Journal: What happened behind the scenes at the White House during the war on Iran

The Wall Street Journal, citing sources, revealed that US President Donald Trump shouted at his aides for hours after learning that Iran had shot down an US fighter jet over its territory.

According to the sources, Trump feared a repeat of the 1979 hostage crisis (when Iranian students took 66 American diplomats and staff hostage during their storming of the US embassy in Tehran) and demanded an immediate search and rescue operation to save the crew of the F-15E aircraft that was shot down in early April.

Here, the WSJ revealed that Trump’s aides received real-time updates on the progress of the operations, but, fearing that Trump’s haste would undermine the process, they limited themselves to informing him of the main points only, and refrained from holding discussions with him.

The newspaper’s sources also confirmed that Trump opposed the ground operation on Iran’s Kharg Island, fearing that the US military would be an easy target and that the operation would lead to unacceptable heavy losses.

In a related context, the WSJ newspaper reported that Trump’s advisors are recommending that he reduce his press interviews, because such interviews further highlight the contradictory nature of his statements.

The newspaper’s sources stated that Trump agreed to this and then reverted to his previous practices.

In fact, “Trump would sometimes joke with White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt, telling her that he had spoken to a journalist and briefed him on important news, and that Leavitt had to wait to find out about it from a published report”.

Sources indicated that Trump also regularly resorts to improvisation when posting on Truth Social.

For example, a US official stated that a post published on April 7, 2026, in which he threatened to destroy Iranian civilization, was improvised and not part of a national security plan.

Following a series of contradictory statements regarding Iran and numerous other issues, psychologists have questioned the US president’s mental health.

Psychologist John Gartner, a former professor at Johns Hopkins University, stated that “Trump has been showing signs of frontotemporal dementia since 2019”.

MSNBC medical analyst Vin Gupta wrote that Trump is “moody… He can’t finish sentences… He is often confused”.