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Trump has already spoken with Kurdish resistance leaders, The Wall Street Journal reports. Iran, meanwhile, is already attacking Kurdish bases in Iraq. Trump has yet to make a final decision about whether to “provide arms, training or intelligence support to antiregime groups.”

Again, these are things that probably should have been considered prior to starting a war.

Yes, it’s a war. President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have both used the word war to describe America’s multiday strikes against Iran. And there are signs that it’s a war that is escalating. Turkey said this morning that it downed an Iranian missile heading toward Turkish airspace. Turkey is a NATO ally. This conflict could expand, quickly.

But the official White House position is that it’s not actually a war. It’s just “major combat operations.”

Well, that changes everything.

These annoying semantic games just make Republican officials who support the strikes look even more confused.

But. If these are major combat operations, then a reasonable follow-up question is: How major?

Trump has suggested that operations could last four to five weeks. But it’s early, and wars rarely go according to plan. And as I noted yesterday, Trump also said in a social media post that the war could, in theory, be fought “forever.” Forever is not an exit plan.

And both Republicans and Democrats in Congress see signs of a prolonged conflict. After a briefing yesterday, Sen. Josh Hawley (R–Mo.) said the conflict appeared “quite large” and “sounded very open ended to me.” This was no small thing. “What I took away is, it’s rapidly evolving…the aims are very ambitious,” Hawley said.

We are less than a week into this conflict. But when Trump is using the word forever and a Republican senator is saying that things sound “very open ended,” you have to wonder: Is this the “endless war” Trump warned us about?

On the Democratic side, Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut said: “I’m more convinced now that this is going to be open ended and forever.” And he acknowledged the war’s obvious endgame problems: “They clearly seem fine with hard line elements being in control of the country because they plan to permanently run air operations…over the country in order to chase their missile making capability, drone making capability and nuclear capabilities.” Endgames shouldn’t just be for Marvel movies.

Speaking of nukes: The current odds that a nuclear weapon detonates before June 30 are running at 17 percent on Polymarket.

Scenes from Washington, D.C.: If you want to understand what Washington, D.C., is like, consider that one of the city’s bar trivia programs just got purchased by a national organization—and local trivia geeks are apparently quite mad.