On Saturday, President Donald Trump claimed it was Tehran that struck an Iranian elementary school early in the war, killing scores of children.

On Monday, he admitted he basically had no idea what he was talking about when he said that, then went on to suggest other countries, including Iran, use Tomahawk missiles, the type of munition that appears to have hit the school. Iran does not have Tomahawks.

When pressed at a news conference why nobody else in his administration was making the same claim about Iran being responsible (and instead pointing to an investigation), Trump said,“Because I just don’t know enough about it.”

He added that he would respect the findings of the investigation.

Just to put a fine point on that: Trump not only says he shared this claim despite appearing to know little about the situation; he’s also saying he didn’t know much about perhaps the single most controversial strike of the war.

It’s a strike that had become a huge international story by the time he weighed in — and one that even some Republicans fear could do real damage to the war effort, if the US was indeed culpable. (The US military was likely responsible, according to a CNN and expert analysis of evidence, and new video has emerged that appears to show a US missile targeting the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps naval base adjacent to the school.)

But apparently, Trump was out of the loop.

This is hardly the only example of the president seeming to have a loose grasp of what’s happening on the ground in Iran.

Trump has often had a complicated relationship with the truth, but it’s striking to see that play out in the context of a war.

The school strike wasn’t even the only example from Monday’s press conference.

At another point in his introduction, Trump seemed to claim that Iran’s Gulf neighbors had joined the war effort against Tehran alongside the United States and Israel.

“Their neighbors were largely neutral — or at least weren’t going to be involved — and they got attacked,” he said. “And it had the reverse effect. The neighbors came onto our side and started attacking them, and actually quite successfully. If you look at Saudi Arabia, you look at UAE, Qatar and others.”

But this does not reflect reality.

It’s true that Iran retaliated against US and Israeli attacks by striking US assets in its Gulf neighbors. But it’s not true that this led those neighbors to join the war:

• The UAE has come under the most fire from Iran, as CNN’s Paula Hancocks reported Tuesday. But it has not struck Iran, with which it has a long history of business ties, and appears to be trying to exert pressure in other ways.
• Saudi Arabia has threatened retaliation against Iran if Tehran keeps attacking it, Reuters reported, but it has not joined the war.
• A spokesman for Qatar’s foreign ministry, Majed al-Ansari, has said, “Qatar has not been part of the campaign targeting Iran.” And Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al-Thani told Sky News on Monday, “We continue to seek de-escalation.”

The fact that these Gulf countries haven’t joined the fight was the subject of Sen. Lindsey Graham’s ire Monday night on Fox News, just hours after Trump spoke.

“To Saudi Arabia, our embassy was hit in Riyadh,” the South Carolina Republican said. “Do you not have an obligation to join the fight with us?”

Graham also called the UAE’s decision “so disappointing.”

Trump in the same news conference also wagered that the slowdown in the Strait of Hormuz off Iran’s southern coast “doesn’t really affect us,” because the US now produces so much oil of its own.

Other countries do rely more on Gulf oil — especially those in Asia — but the global economy is interconnected enough that the US has obviously felt the ill effects, especially when it comes to oil prices.

And of course, there are Trump’s claims about Iran’s capabilities and his justifications for launching the war in the first place.

He has repeatedly claimed that Iran would have “soon” been able to hit the United States with an intercontinental ballistic missile, that it was planning to preemptively strike the United States, and increasingly of late that it was also planning to take over the whole Middle East.

But none of these have been backed up by known intelligence. And much like Trump’s now softened suggestion that Iran struck its own school, he’s one of the few people even talking in some of these terms.

Trump often seems to be residing in an elaborately crafted alternate reality.

But it’s one thing to do that with domestic policy; it’s another to appear so disconnected from reality when you are waging war in a highly combustible region.

Yet that seems to be the state of play, with no signs that Trump’s decisions will be grounded in reality any time soon.