Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Ashley Lopez I cover politics. I'm Greg

Myrie. I cover national security. And I'm Deepa Shiverom. I cover the White House. And today on the show,

we'll try to make sense of another busy week, actually a particularly busy week and some of the

news you may have missed. Let's start with the war in Iran and with you,

Greg. I mean, some breaking news this morning. We learned that an American fighter jet has gone

down in Iran. I mean, what can you tell us about this right now? Yeah, still a lot we don't know.

But what we do know is that, according to a source who's spoken with NPR, an F-15E fighter jet has gone down. Now, this has a two-member

crew, a pilot and a weapons officer. We don't know their status. Now, they would have a

transponder on them so that rescuers could find them. But we don't know what condition

they're in if they're physically okay or not. There's obviously a desperate race to try to

find them. And open source material online has shown what appear to be U.S. rescue aircraft going after them. That's also a very

risky mission. If the Iranians were able to shoot down a fighter jet, then they certainly would

be able to shoot down a slower moving plane or helicopter that might be involved in the rescue

operation. It's been on Iranian media. Iran has

told civilians to look for these pilots out there. So it's a very fraught moment. Yeah. Well, we will

continue to keep an eye on that. So Trump gave a televised national address on Wednesday night related to the war.

Deepa, this was the first time the president has given a primetime speech about this war, which now has been going on for over a month.

What was he trying to accomplish with that speech? And, I mean, did he actually get there?

Yeah, I mean, to your point about it being the first time he did this primetime address from the White House, we're on week five of this war. And this was the first time that the president stood in front of the American people and gave a formal address to say, this is why U.S. troops are, you know, involved in Iran. This is what our goals are. This is what we're doing. He's been taking questions from the press. He's been talking about it, obviously, for the last

month. But this was a very important moment that came so late and much later than I think a lot of

people expected. And what Trump said was that the U.S. was going to pull out of Iran shortly,

that this operation would end soon, that so far the U.S.

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