Has the U.S. lost the war in Iran?
Consider This from NPR
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4.2 • 6.2K Ratings
🗓️ 24 May 2026
⏱️ 10 minutes
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It's consider this, where every day we go deep on one big news story. |
| 0:04.9 | When the U.S. Israel War against Iran began, President Trump addressed the nation from Mar-a-Lago. |
| 0:10.5 | A short time ago, the United States military began major combat operations in Iran. |
| 0:20.3 | Our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from |
| 0:26.2 | the Iranian regime, a vicious group of very hard, terrible people. The U.S. and Israel conducted a wide-scale |
| 0:36.9 | military operation, killing most of Iran's |
| 0:39.6 | most senior military and political leaders. In the three months since, the war has killed thousands |
| 0:45.9 | of people, disrupted global energy markets, and sent the entire region into a wider conflict. |
| 0:52.2 | Now, the U.S. and Iran are signaling that they are close to reaching |
| 0:56.2 | an agreement that would potentially end the conflict. During a visit to India Sunday, Secretary |
| 1:01.6 | of State Marco Rubio said the U.S. has been uncompromising on at least one goal. |
| 1:06.3 | The ultimate goal is that Iran can never have a nuclear weapon. Iran can never possess a nuclear weapon. |
| 1:11.2 | The president has been clear about that. They will never possess a nuclear weapon, certainly |
| 1:14.4 | not as long as Donald Trump is president of the United States. But progress on that key issue as part |
| 1:20.4 | of the deal remains very unclear, and Iran seems equally uncompromising, as NPR's Jane O'Raff |
| 1:26.2 | explains. Iran has repeatedly said it's not building a nuclear weapon. And recently it's been |
| 1:32.6 | hardening its position on demands to send out highly enriched uranium. It says its program is |
| 1:40.6 | for peaceful purposes and Iranian leaders see the enriched uranium issue as a sovereignty |
| 1:47.0 | issue, and they have said repeatedly they won't back down on that. Throughout the war, the U.S.'s |
| 1:53.3 | main objectives have fluctuated, from regime change to stopping Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, |
| 2:00.0 | to reopening the strategic |
| 2:01.5 | straight of Hormuz. |
... |
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