What's the Trump administration's strategy in Iran?
The NPR Politics Podcast
NPR
4.4 • 25.7K Ratings
🗓️ 20 March 2026
⏱️ 25 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This episode: senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith, White House correspondent Franco Ordoñez, and senior political editor & correspondent Domenico Montanaro.
This podcast was produced and edited by Casey Morell & Bria Suggs.
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 Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. |
| 0:08.4 | I'm Frank O'Donias. I also cover the White House. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. |
| 0:14.3 | And we have made it to Friday. So let's take a look at some of the other political news this week. And I want to start with the war in Iran. |
| 0:23.8 | This is the third week. And the in-game is no clearer than it was on day one. So Franco, there has |
| 0:30.6 | been a lot of talk recently of sending troops to Iran. What do we know about that? |
| 0:36.4 | Yeah, yeah, yeah, a lot of commotion about that. What we know is that |
| 0:39.8 | 2,200 Marines have been dispatched to the region with all their equipment, including vehicles and |
| 0:46.4 | support ships and stuff like that. What we don't know exactly is what their objective is, but |
| 0:51.8 | clearly the administration is looking to put a lot more pressure |
| 0:55.7 | on Iran and possibly even looking to seize one or more of the islands off the coast of Iran |
| 1:02.7 | to help secure the Strait of Hormuz and, you know, counter the Iranian attacks on commercial |
| 1:08.1 | shipping, oil, and cargo ships. Now, the big island that Trump has |
| 1:13.1 | been looking at is Karg Island, which is the main location for Iran's oil infrastructure. And Trump's |
| 1:19.2 | really been talking about it a lot over the last few days, saying he could knock it out, |
| 1:24.3 | knock out their oil on the island at any moment, which, though, would be a very |
| 1:29.4 | risky move to try and seize that island because it would mean troops on the ground, and it's |
| 1:34.9 | very uncertain how the American public would respond to that, especially if it drags the U.S. |
| 1:41.6 | into a wider conflict. |
| 1:42.9 | Yeah, and I think we just have to say here that the idea of boots on the ground in any form would be a major escalation and something that President Trump very explicitly campaigned against. But at this moment, he is playing coy about what he might do or what might happen. |
| 2:05.4 | Domenico, this is just a long way from a one and done, a few strikes, and we're out of here at this point. |
| 2:11.1 | Yeah, and the president is trying to walk this line. |
| 2:12.9 | Like, he's not saying, oh, you know, we're going to put troops in the ground. |
... |
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