The president made some interesting comments on social media today saying that other countries

need to worry about opening the Strait of Hormuz, not America's problem.

It really looks like it's gotten more difficult to find a way out of this.

The war in Iran now in its second month, with some 50,000 U.S. troops in the region and oil prices continuing to climb.

We're dedicating the bulk of this episode to answering your questions about Iran and about our work covering national security.

This is sources and methods from NPR.

I'm Mary Louise Kelly. This is a special episode of the show because we are recording it on a

Zoom call with several hundred listeners who we have invited to take a peek behind the curtain

as a thank you for their

support of NPR. So friends, thank you. To explain the setup, I am looking at a screen where I can

see questions coming in in real time from that group. These are questions we hope about the latest

events in Iran and beyond and about how we do the work that we do on the national security beat.

We also have a pile of questions from our mailbox submitted over the last weeks and months,

and we will try to get to as many of those as we can in a bit.

First, though, we're going to do a little bit of sources and methods, spend some time on the news,

and to do that, I am joined by

NPR National Security correspondent Greg. Meary, Greg, how are you? I'm doing great, Mary Louise.

Great to be here. All right. We are recording this at noon, eastern. It is Tuesday. It is March 31st.

We're diving in. Greg, the latest on U.S. troops in the Middle East.

I just said we've got some 50,000 troops now in the region more arriving. What are they doing? Where are they going?

Yeah. So the big news, the development in the past few days, has been a marine expeditionary unit arriving in the region.

We don't know exactly where.

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