US President Donald Trump has made numerous erroneous statements in recent days on sometimes very simple issues, such as the location of Vice-President J.D. Vance. Liberties with the truth and reality that Donald Trump is accustomed to taking, but which have particular significance in the context of the war in the Middle East and the discussions with Iran.

Published on: 04/21/2026 - 6:11 p.m.

Serial errors and contradictions. American President Donald Trump has been making falsehoods in recent days about the situation in the Middle East and the course of direct negotiations with Iran, which are supposed to resume on Wednesday April 22.

J. D. Vance has paid the price on several occasions. The vice-president was already on his way to Pakistan to meet the Iranian delegation on Monday April 20, according to Donald Trump's statements the same morning. Barely an hour later, the vice president's car, with J. D. Vance inside, arrived at the White House.

Where is J.D. Vance?

The day before, the American president had nevertheless told the continuous news channel MS Now that J.D. Vance would not make the trip to Islamabad for security reasons. A little later the same day, two American officials argued the opposite on the same channel. In the end, everything indicates that it was Donald Trump who was wrong. The vice president will lead the team of negotiators supposed to find a solution to the war in the Middle East with Iran, according to indications from White House officials cited by the Washington Post.

The negotiations still need to take place. Here again, the Trumpian mood seems very changeable. At the end of last week, the American president seemed very optimistic, assuring on Truth Social, his social network, that “negotiations would be quick because an agreement had already been reached on most of the points”.

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On Saturday, the president was already a little less optimistic, calling on Iran to accept "the fair and reasonable agreement proposed as quickly as possible, otherwise the United States would destroy all the bridges and power plants in Iran. No more Mr. Gentil!"

Sunday, the return of the optimistic Donald Trump, who assured on Fox News that an agreement would be signed "Sunday evening". Phew? Not so fast. New turnaround on Monday: from now on, Donald Trump is no longer in any hurry to see an agreement signed, reports the Wall Street Journal.

Difficult to find your way around? This is also the case for the Iranians. "The American president made seven assertions in one hour. They were all false," Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of the Iranian Parliament and Tehran's chief negotiator in the talks with the United States, said on Saturday on X.

Still more untruths?

He did not detail what these seven lies were. But just last Thursday and Friday, Donald Trump affirmed in turn that Tehran had agreed to reopen the Strait of Hormuz "forever", to stop supporting pro-Iranian armed movements in the Middle East and to hand over its stock of enriched uranium to the Americans.

Iran was quick to point out that enriched uranium was “sacred”. The regime in place in Tehran did so on Saturday, also emphasizing that the Strait of Hormuz was still closed to all ships that had not received the green light to use it.

“It’s crazy to say today that you would rather believe the Ayatollah than the President of the United States,” quips Jimmy Kimmel, famous host of the comedy show Jimmy Kimmel Live and fierce detractor of Donald Trump.

Also read: Kerosene, CO2, fertilizer, food... The chain effects of blocking the Strait of Hormuz

He is not the only one to highlight the number of contradictions and untruths uttered in such a short time by the tenant of the White House. “There has been an acceleration in the number of erroneous remarks from the president over the past week,” notes CNN. “Trump is increasingly contradicting himself,” adds the Washington Post.

Is Donald Trump more “wrong” than ever? Not necessarily, but "as the stakes are higher than usual, observers expect the American president to take the subject more seriously and are therefore more attentive to everything he may say", assures René Lindstaedt, specialist in American politics at the University of Birmingham.

“It is indeed the same refrain since 2017 and Donald Trump’s exaggerations about the crowds coming to his inauguration which gave birth to this idea of ​​‘alternative reality’”, confirms Scott Lucas, specialist in international politics and American diplomacy at University College Dublin.

Faced with Trump's mistakes, Iran presents itself as a serious negotiator

According to this expert, however, there is a significant difference with the usual routine of Donald Trump's statements of questionable veracity: "This time, it's not like with domestic American politics, people are interested in the facts and their reality."

The president's mistake about whether J.D. Vance was in Pakistan can hardly go unnoticed or swept under the rug by pro-Trump media outlets like Fox News, "because everyone is watching closely what is happening and there are immediate and concrete consequences for every statement," says Andrew Gawthorpe, a specialist in American foreign policy at Leiden University. Negotiations in Pakistan will be taken more or less seriously depending on the presence or absence of J.D. Vance, underlines CNN.

So why insist on saying everything and its opposite? It is difficult to know what is going through Donald Trump's mind and it is possible that the president thinks that "this unpredictability gives him an advantage in negotiations with Iran", believes René Lindstaedt.

This is the famous "madman's" strategy dear to former American President Richard Nixon, who used it in the 1970s to make his adversaries believe that he was capable of anything to get them to negotiate on his terms.

Also read: From the threat of annihilation to the ceasefire: how Donald Trump is sowing chaos against Iran

But the experts interviewed by France 24 believe that Donald Trump's mistakes probably have a simpler explanation. The war in the Middle East is not going as planned, and the priority for Donald Trump "is to be able to boast of success in one way or another in front of the cameras", estimates Jack Clayton, specialist in American foreign policy associated with the University of Cambridge.

It is also a sign of “Donald Trump’s frustration with a situation that is beyond his control,” says Andrew Gawthorpe. Nothing like inventing your own reality to have control over it.

“The American administration was wrong about its ability to quickly bring Iran to its knees and finds itself in a situation, with the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, from which Washington does not know how to escape. So Donald Trump says everything and its opposite because in the end, there is no good option for him,” believes Scott Lucas.

Above all, why not persist in making mistakes or lying? “These errors and lies have no consequences for him for the moment. It’s not as if the Republicans blame him for them,” says René Lindstaedt. Politically, these liberties with the truth are less serious for him than allowing the impression to take hold that the United States is mired in one of those endless wars that Donald Trump denounced throughout his campaign.

This escalation of approximations and errors, however, has real consequences on the conflict. First of all, it allows Iran to present itself as the serious negotiator. Tehran “can tell the international community that we cannot count on the Americans who do not tell the truth. This is an advantage for them,” says Scott Lucas.

This unpredictability “also makes the task of American negotiators to have clear objectives incredibly complex,” notes Jack Clayton. It is indeed difficult to develop a strategy if, overnight, Donald Trump can change completely.

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