Fox News hosts this week have assured viewers that the end of the Iran war is at hand — or even that the U.S. has already won it. But according to a new report, President Donald Trump’s top advisers have told him that the war could continue for more than two years.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday:

In the Oval Office and Situation Room, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and others have discussed with the president that Tehran could continue to resist U.S. pressure under the blockade and other military tactics, potentially extending the conflict past Inauguration Day in January 2029, the officials said.

The closed-door discussions come as Trump told reporters Wednesday that the war will end “immediately” after the midterm elections in November “because they can’t hold out any longer.”  

A yearslong conflict would strain military resources and risk long-term disruptions to global oil markets in the midst of a U.S. presidential election in 2028. Vance and Rubio are both considered presidential election hopefuls, although neither has said whether they will run.

That reported counsel flies in the face of the triumphalism that the Fox audience — a group that often includes the president — has been hearing this week.

Fox’s evening “opinion” hosts have drastically scaled back their coverage of the Iran war over the past few months as it settled into a quagmire, as Media Matters documented. But in a rare mention of the war on Wednesday’s edition of the panel show The Five, where references to Iran fell 65% from June to August, Jesse Watters declared that the war is over and the U.S. won.

Watters took issue with Democratic panelist Jessica Tarlov, who said that Trump “promised to lower my prices and you chose a war that hiked them, that he claims we’ve been winning since it started and it's obvious that we are not.” 

“He was ambitious and he took a risk and he said I'm willing to do stuff that might not help me politically in the short term, might not help my party politically in the midterms, but in the long term it's going to help the health, and safety, and security of the United States,” Watters claimed. “So we did the trade war and the Iran war, and both of those wars have been won, Jessica, without much loss of life at all and with a record stock market.”

A few hours later, the Journal published its report that the war has not only not been won, but the president has been advised it could last into the next presidential term.

The co-hosts of Fox & Friends, the morning show the president watches avidly, likewise suggested on Tuesday that the U.S. blockade of Iran has the regime on the brink of collapse and that the war will be over by Election Day.

“I would think in those 58 days to the election, something big is going to happen with Iran,” Brian Kilmeade said. “They are getting desperate. On average, they have got about 255,000 barrels of oil. Really, since the blockade was in place, almost none of it has gotten out.”

Citing rising inflation, Lawrence Jones chimed in, “They thought they were going to be able to wait the president out, use the midterms as their philosophy — they realized their military was no match for our military. But it looks like their strategy is actually working against them.”

“Some are saying even the regime probably can't make it until our midterms because of this naval blockade, it's actually working,” Ainsley Earhardt added. “And there is a headline in the Wall Street Journal that gives us all hope, it says ‘Iran's oil dollars are drying up — and plunging it deeper into crisis.’”

The Fox & Friends co-hosts did not address the Journal’s report that Trump had been advised the war could extend into 2029 on their Thursday broadcast.

Fox News played an essential role in convincing Trump to launch the U.S. campaign against Iran in February. Since then, its hosts and other MAGA media figures have repeatedly claimed that the U.S. was on the verge of victory over Iran, or had already achieved its aims. Laura Ingraham declared that “Trump has already won in Iran” way back on March 5, while Sean Hannity said last month: “Iran will never have a nuclear weapon thanks to Donald Trump. Does anyone ever give him credit for that?”