Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Janine Hurst.

As the U.S. Israel War in Iran widens, the death toll for U.S. forces has risen.

The Pentagon says six service members have been killed, warning that that number is expected to rise.

And President Trump's reasons for attacking Iran continue to change.

Over the weekend, Trump said it was regime change.

Today, he says it was preemptive.

No, I might have forced their hands.

You see, we were having negotiations with these lunatics,

and it was my opinion that they were going to attack first.

They were going to attack.

If we didn't do it, they were going to attack first. They were going to attack. If we didn't do it,

they were going to attack first. I felt strongly about that. The Secretary of State, Marco Rubio,

offered another reason, nuclear weapons. The president acted on the timing that gave us the highest

chance of success. And that's what you're seeing play out right now. You're seeing it play out

and you'll see it in the days to come. We will systematically take apart their missile program. We will destroy their ability to sponsor terrorism, by the way. We will destroy their factories. We will destroy their Navy. Speaking there to reporters on Capitol Hill today, the attacks followed weeks of a U.S. military buildup in the region, as negotiations between the U.S. and Iran over its nuclear programs continued.

President Trump says on social media that the U.S. Navy will soon escort oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz

and that the U.S. government will offer insurance to ships. As NPR's Kamila Dominovsky reports,

insurers have refused to cover

ships passing through the strait, and that's led to a complete halt of oil flowing through that

pivotal bottleneck. Iran has declared the Strait of Hormuz closed. And even if ships would be willing

to risk the passage, insurers won't cover them, leaving about a fifth of the world's

oil and gas effectively stuck. Now, Trump says the U.S. Development Finance Corporation will provide

...