In Iran, Trump is both escalating and deescalating
The NPR Politics Podcast
NPR
4.4 • 25.7K Ratings
🗓️ 25 March 2026
⏱️ 16 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This episode: voting correspondent Miles Parks, White House correspondent Franco Ordoñez, and national security correspondent Greg Myre.
This podcast was produced by Casey Morell and Bria Suggs, and edited by Rachel Baye.
Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. |
| 0:08.2 | I'm Frank Ordonez. I cover the White House. And I'm Greg Myrie. I cover national security. |
| 0:12.5 | And we are recording this at 1.13 p.m. Eastern time on Wednesday, March 25th. |
| 0:17.7 | And today on the show, we're nearing the one-month mark of the war in Iran. Franco, President Trump |
| 0:22.4 | started the week with a post on social media that said, quote, very good and productive |
| 0:26.0 | conversations were going on with Iran, alluding to the fact that negotiations seemed to be ongoing |
| 0:31.4 | to move towards an end of the conflict. What more can you tell us about that? Yeah, it came as |
| 0:36.1 | Trump announced that he was postponing attacks on Iran power plants for five days. And he said at the time that his team, you know, the envoy, Steve Whitkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner were in touch with a, quote, top person in the regime, though he would not say who it was. And, Miles, it really felt like kind of like a turning point in all this. |
| 0:55.7 | You know, they were potentially moving into this new chapter of the war that's certainly |
| 0:59.4 | seeing what Trump was signaling and moving toward this kind of negotiating ending. |
| 1:05.3 | You know, Trump before said that he was not ready to agree to anything, but here he was |
| 1:09.4 | saying that they were very willing to make a deal, |
| 1:12.9 | that the U.S. was willing to make a deal, and that he said actually that if he was a betting man, |
| 1:18.4 | that he would bet on the deal happening. Yesterday, of course, he spoke again about this top |
| 1:24.7 | person, actually delivering on a promise. He called it a big present. |
| 1:29.4 | He didn't say exactly what that was, but he said it involved oil and gas. And he also said that |
| 1:35.6 | was a sign, at least, that they were dealing with the right person. I do want to note one more |
| 1:41.0 | thing, though, that Iran officially is dismissing the idea that they are |
| 1:45.8 | negotiating anything directly with the U.S. and actually would not negotiate with Whitkoff |
| 1:51.3 | in Kushner because they felt like those two misled them in the lead up to the war. |
| 1:57.0 | It does feel like it takes two to tango, Greg. And I don't know, doesn't that seem like a, if you have one side saying we're negotiating, things are going really well, but then Iran is denying that this is happening at all. What are we supposed to read from that? |
| 2:09.2 | Yeah, that they're far apart. And I think that's the only realistic thing you can say right now. I think Trump has hit a point where he feels he's going to have to |
... |
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