MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
President Trump's prime-time address was billed as an important update on Iran. It was an update. It was also, in places, a boast.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Never in the history of warfare has an enemy suffered such clear and devastating large-scale losses in a matter of weeks.
KELLY: And a threat.
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TRUMP: If there is no deal, we are going to hit each and every one of their electric generating plants very hard and probably simultaneously.
KELLY: And an attempt to calm the nerves of a nation that polls show largely opposes the war.
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TRUMP: It's very important that we keep this conflict in perspective. American involvement in World War I lasted one year, seven months and five days.
KELLY: To walk through what this address revealed and didn't about the direction of the war in Iran, I caught up with NPR national security correspondent Greg Myre and Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman. This was for our weekly national security podcast Sources & Methods.
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KELLY: President Trump spoke for 19 minutes, which is kind of a long time to speak uninterrupted, and managed not to say that much, by which I mean, most of what we heard last night we had already heard. It was a rehash of a lot of his recent social media posts. Either of you gain any deep, new insight into this war from the comments last night? Greg, you want to kick us off?
GREG MYRE: Yeah. The one thing that really jumped out at me was this two to three weeks' timeline for wrapping it up. And, you know, it's always risky to set a timeline. Military commanders say you set objectives, not timelines. You don't want to get tied to a deadline that you've created artificially. But he didn't say how the two critical issues are going to be resolved - opening the Strait of Hormuz or dealing with Iran's nuclear program. He also didn't say, is there going to be some agreement that's going to end this war, or is the U.S. simply going to walk away? So I'm sure Trump will claim a success whenever this war ends, but he left these huge, huge, critical questions unresolved.
TOM BOWMAN: And also the two to three weeks that he mentioned.
KELLY: Yeah.
BOWMAN: He said, if they don't come to negotiate, we're going to bomb them back to the Stone Age. Well, what if the Iranians say, yeah, let's meet in June, in Geneva? Is he going to say no? Is he going to keep bombing?
KELLY: I mean, that...
BOWMAN: We don't have a sense of exactly what the plan is going forward.
KELLY: That is something I was listening for and did not hear last night. I did not hear an offer to Iran. No diplomatic opening. Do we know how this landed in Iran? Have we heard a response from Iran?
MYRE: A little bit. We've heard from a couple people in Iran, including a member of the Revolutionary Guards, and he said Trump has been poisoned with, quote, "Hollywood delusions," and he sort of mocked the U.S. You talk about the Stone Age when your 250-year history - well, this is a civilization with a 6,000-year history. So again, this - you know, it's rhetoric, but it is this tone of defiance. You're certainly not getting a sense that negotiations are going anywhere. We know Pakistan is trying to broker some talks and maybe passing on messages, but you really don't have the sense that there's real movement towards a peace negotiation that could resolve this and address the U.S. and Iranian issues.
KELLY: And we've been circling this, but just to land for a moment on that - the contradictions here. You referenced, Tom, the line in the address last night about, you know, we're going to bring them back - bomb them back to the Stone Ages, even while President Trump is saying we're very close to finishing the job. How do we square those?
BOWMAN: You know, we really don't. It...
KELLY: Like, are we escalating or not?
BOWMAN: Well, we're not sure yet. And again, it's contradictory. It's like, we'll bomb you. Negotiate. We don't trust you. Back and forth. And also, you have more U.S. troops heading into the region. We've talked repeatedly about Kharg Island. They could seize Kharg Island. They could seize some of the ports on the mainland. We don't have a sense of what exactly they'll do once everyone's in place. And if, again, it (ph)...
KELLY: We also don't know how that would be done in two to three weeks and then...
BOWMAN: No. That's precisely it.
KELLY: ...And then wrapped up.
BOWMAN: You're not going to put troops on the ground in Iran for two or three weeks. It just makes no sense. So again, you're kind of head-scratching when you listen to what he was saying. He's right about attacking the navy and their air force and their missile infrastructure. Yeah, there's no question they've been severely weakened, but they're still in power, and they have a stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz.
KELLY: I am thinking, if I were listening to this speech in Brussels, in London, in Paris, in Berlin, NATO allies, there was - there were questions about whether Trump would continue - he's been on a little bit of a harangue against NATO and threatening to pull out and saying they're not pulling their weight. That was something I was listening for. We didn't get it last night. Greg.
MYRE: Yeah. He didn't mention NATO by name or European countries by name. However, he did repeat this phrase of these unspecified countries need to develop some delayed courage, I believe was the phrase, and take the Strait of Hormuz. And we're seeing some of this today. Britain is hosting a virtual meeting with 35 countries to talk about ways to open the strait.
BOWMAN: You know, I talked to a European military official who said he believes Europe will eventually get involved in some sort of a naval effort to open the Strait of Hormuz. And he said one of the reasons is the price for liquefied natural gas in Europe has doubled in the past month. He said, our populations will demand our governments get involved and reopen the Strait of Hormuz. So I think you're going to see them get involved, but clearly, the U.S. will be taking the lead, just like they did during the tanker wars in the 1980s.
KELLY: That's NPR's Tom Bowman and Greg Myre on our national security podcast Sources & Methods. You can hear our full episode wherever you get your podcasts. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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