What Trump says to expect of war in Iran
The NPR Politics Podcast
NPR
4.4 • 25.7K Ratings
🗓️ 2 March 2026
⏱️ 22 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This episode: voting correspondent Miles Parks, national security correspondent Greg Myre, and senior national political correspondent Mara Liasson.
This podcast was produced by Casey Morell and Bria Suggs, and edited by Rachel Baye.
Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Support for NPR and the following message come from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, |
| 0:05.4 | investing in creative thinkers and problem solvers who help people, communities, and the planet flourish. |
| 0:11.1 | More information is available at Hewlett.org. |
| 0:18.0 | Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. |
| 0:22.7 | I'm Greg Myrie. I cover national security. And I'm Mara Liason, senior national political correspondent. |
| 0:28.6 | And we are taping this podcast at 134 p.m. Eastern Time on Monday, March 2nd. Today on the show, the United States is at war with Iran. |
| 0:39.1 | As the military action began early Saturday morning, President Trump released this video on his social media site, Truth |
| 0:43.6 | Social. The United States military is undertaking a massive and ongoing operation to prevent |
| 0:50.3 | this very wicked, radical dictatorship from threatening America and our core national security |
| 0:57.6 | interests. Greg, has the White House given any more information on the objectives of this military |
| 1:04.3 | action? Yeah, Miles, I would break that into two parts. One part would be the military objectives. |
| 1:13.5 | And President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth both gave a little more clarity to that today when they said that the U.S. |
| 1:19.0 | is seeking to destroy Iran's missile program, its Navy, and make sure it doesn't get nuclear |
| 1:26.5 | weapons any time now or in the future. |
| 1:29.1 | So from a military perspective, that's pretty clear and seems something that potentially can be |
| 1:34.6 | achieved. Now, the bigger question, though, is what do you want to see politically? How do you want to |
| 1:40.7 | see this end up in Iran? And that's always the tricky part. You know, |
| 1:44.8 | previous U.S. wars in the Middle East and Iraq and Afghanistan, tossing out the leaders, |
| 1:50.2 | the Taliban in Afghanistan, Saddam Hussein in Iraq, that went pretty quickly. Then came this |
| 1:55.5 | long, complicated effort to reach some sort of political settlement. So the political piece of it still remains to be |
| 2:02.5 | seen. They're a little fuzzy about exactly what that should look like. Greg, unless Trump wants to |
| 2:07.6 | leave most of the rulers in Iran the same, just like Venezuela, get rid of the lead singer, |
... |
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