President Trump said Monday that the latest U.S. strikes against Iran over the weekend were "limited" while Iranian economy continues to face the wrath of U.S. sanctions. CBS News' Natalie Brand reports.
Page A3From§Eachthe sunrise edition — 1 September 2026
Trump touts 'limited' Iran strikes and a Venezuela oil deal; his own reports list the hurdles to each.
As it ran on the front
I gotta tell you, I wrote something down and now I can't find the page — hang on. Here it is. 'Limited.' That's the word. The President used it about the Iran strikes. I wrote it down because it's a specific word, it's not 'small,' it's not 'brief,' it's 'limited,' and I got to thinking about what that word's doing next to the other thing I had written down, from the same report, from the Treasury Secretary, which is that the Iranian economy is 'months from collapse.'
Now, my wife, she does this thing with the thermostat — she says 'I'm only turning it up a little' and then I come home and it's eighty-one degrees in the den. That's not a criticism, that's just — a little is a word that means different things depending on who's holding the dial. So I wrote down: how little is 'limited,' when the guy who dropped it is also, same week, in the same reporting, being told his own Venezuela oil deal has got 'political and logistical hurdles' standing between here and there?…
…(cont) See, that's the part I keep circling. Because if the strikes are limited, and they worked, why's the fella from Treasury still measuring the collapse in months instead of, I don't know, days? And if the oil deal is done — the President's out there touting it — why's the same reporting, same day, listing the hurdles like it's not done at all? I'm not saying these things don't fit together. I'm just an old guy with a notebook, and in my experience when the win gets announced before the paperwork's finished, that's usually because somebody needed the announcement more than they needed the paperwork.
Oh — one more thing, and then I'll let you go. The hurdles piece and the 'limited' piece, they ran in the same reports, same day, same sourcing. So here's what I keep coming back to, and maybe you can help me with this since I'm just going in circles: if a deal has hurdles still standing between here and there, on what page, exactly, does it become a deal you tout?
“They always announce the win before the receipts land — 'limited' strikes, an oil deal that isn't a deal yet — and by the time the hurdles show up as a footnote, the headline's already done its job. You're not being informed, you're being pre-sold.”
“The Venezuela deal represents a historic opening for American energy — sure, there are 'political and logistical hurdles,' every deal has hurdles, that's not hurdles, that's just paperwork. And 'limited' strikes means exactly what it says, limited, though I suppose Secretary Bessent's 'months from collapse' timeline does sort of imply — no, it's limited.”
The receipts
President Trump announced last week that the U.S. would team up with a Venezuelan company to pump oil from a large swath of the South American nation's reserves — but actually getting that petroleum out of the ground could come with…
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.