The New Statesman.

As the war in Iran enters its second month, President Trump has delivered a prime time address

promising simultaneously that the conflict will be over, quote, very shortly and that the United

States is preparing to hit Iran, quote, extremely hard.

Thousands more U.S. troops have arrived in the region in recent days, including a marine

expeditionary unit, as the president is reportedly weighing options for a possible ground assault,

such as an attempt to seize the Iranian oil export hub on Karg Island, which Trump has said

the US could take, quote, very easily. But what options does the president actually have?

And what would be involved in an attempt to forcibly reopen the strait of Hormuz?

I'm Katie Stallard and you're listening to Daily Politics from the New Statesman.

Joining me today is Ruben Stewart, senior fellow for land warfare at the

I-I-Double S think tank and a former infantry officer and UN peacekeeper.

Rubin Stewart, thank you for joining us on the podcast.

Thank you, Kelly. It's my pleasure.

So we have had President Trump's

prime time address to the nation last night as we are speaking this morning. I think things have been

changing so fast. It's important to say where we are in time and space. Right now it is the morning of

Thursday, the 2nd of April.

What do you take from that address and from the president's various messages about where we are in this war

and whether it is, as he has frequently suggested, almost at an end, whether it's very nearly complete, I think, as he

has described it, or whether we are approaching some sort of escalation, because in the same

speech he also talked about hitting Iran extremely hard in the next two to three weeks.

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