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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Myles Parks. I cover voting.
I'm Frank Ordonez. I cover the White House. And I'm Greg Myrie.
I cover national security. And we are recording this at 1.13 p.m. Eastern Time on Wednesday, March 25th. And today on the show, we're nearing the one-month mark of the war in Iran.
Franco, President Trump started the week with a post on social media that said, quote, very good and productive conversations were going on with Iran, alluding to the fact that negotiations seem to be ongoing to move towards an end to the conflict. What more can you tell us about that?
Yeah, it came as Trump announced that he was postponing attacks on Iran power plants for five days. And he said at the time that his team, you know, the envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner were in touch with a, quote, top person in the regime, though he would not say who it was. And Miles, it really felt like kind of like a turning point in all this. You know, there were
potentially moving into this new chapter of the war. That's certainly seeing what Trump was signaling and moving toward this kind of negotiating ending. You know, Trump before said that he was not ready to agree to anything. But here he was saying that they were very willing to make a deal, that the U.S. was willing to make a deal.
And that he said actually that if he was a betting man, that he would bet on the deal happening. Yesterday, of course, he spoke again about this top person actually delivering on a promise. He called it a big present. He didn't say exactly what that was, but he said it involved oil and gas. And he also said that was a sign, at least, that they were dealing with the right person.
I do want to note one more thing, though, that Iran officially is dismissing the idea that they are negotiating anything directly with the U.S. and actually would not negotiate with Witkoff and Kushner because they felt like those two misled them in the lead up to the war.
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Chapter 2: What are the latest developments in the Iran conflict?
And one of those is a guarantee that the United States will not wage war again against it and try to topple the regime.
So, Franco, political pressure is clearly building on President Trump and kind of all the different dominoes that are falling from this war going on weeks and weeks. I just drove past a gas station in D.C. this week where gas was priced over $5.
Chapter 3: How is Trump signaling a shift in negotiations with Iran?
It was the most expensive station I've driven by in D.C. It's consistently overpriced. I think I know which one you're talking about. Exactly. I'm not going to name names. But is it fair to say that there is starting to become, I guess, global financial pressure for President Trump to kind of change his tune on this?
Yeah, I think there's no doubt about that. And I think Trump clearly knows that as well. And I think you see that in the rhetoric from him over the past couple of weeks, particularly when it has to deal with the Strait of Hormuz, whether it's
threatening Iran to, you know, stop what it's doing, stop strikes on cargo ships to, you know, threatening essentially allies and other Western nations to kind of join this coalition and saying, if you don't join and help secure the Strait, we will remember those things.
But just back to, you know, that social post and kind of like this turning point, that social post actually came around seven o'clock in the morning or just after. And And that had such an impact on the markets. I mean, oil futures instantly rallied. The S&P 500 went soaring before the morning bell. So this is clearly something that is having an impact on markets.
And Trump has always paid attention to markets, always.
So you've got Trump talking about de-escalation, Greg, but at the same time, isn't the U.S. still building up its military presence in the region?
Yeah, Trump always likes to keep his options open. And as I said, without any great movement on the battlefield under the current circumstances, he's basically got two options, escalate or de-escalate. Well, he's sort of chosen A and B, talking about a possible peace deal and a de-escalation, but also we're hearing more troops are headed to the region.
Two Marine units, both have 2,000 troops or a little more each, one coming from Japan, the other from California. One should arrive any day now. The other is probably still a couple weeks away. And we've also heard that the 82nd Airborne is going to send about 2,000 troops to the region. So about another 6,000 troops.
And these are highly trained troops that could certainly carry out a specific mission, but But again, we're 6,000, 7,000 troops. That's not a huge number. There are about 50,000 U.S. troops in the region on ships, airmen, ground troops. So that adds to that total, which sounds pretty considerable until you think about the fact that Iran has more than 600,000 troops in its active duty army.
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Chapter 4: What challenges does the U.S. face in negotiating with Iran?
So we're talking about a solution to a major conflict, not just an off ramp. Now, in terms of options... Most wars end with negotiations, and you don't see a clear battlefield solution right now.
But you see two sides that are very, very far apart, not only in the goals that were stated initially, but now President Trump would really need to open the Strait of Hormuz, a problem that did not exist, in fact, for decades before this war. That had always been something looming out there that could gum up the oil markets and the global economy.
Now the president has to make it a focus of his solution when he was talking about other things like regime change or getting rid of Iran's nuclear program. All of these may still be among the many things he wants to do, but he has to deal with some of the cards that Iran clearly has to play right now.
I'll just add that, you know, I mean, we are talking about President Trump here. And for President Trump, declaring victory is pretty as simple as declaring victory. Everything Greg is saying is absolutely correct. And that's the reality on the ground. But oftentimes, as we've seen in the past. The reality on the ground is not necessarily what Trump is looking at.
He just wants a reason to be able to call something a win, whether it's a peace deal around the country or in this scenario. And he's basically done that for the most part, including just yesterday. saying that they have basically won the war. Clearly, that's not the case.
But for Trump, I think the victory that he's looking for is if he can basically get the Strait of Hormuz open, then he can at least say by his own definition that they have won the war because, you know, while the regime may still be there, they're clearly degraded. And he's kind of backed off and on about whether he really wants regime change or whether at least that's necessary to end this.
So is regime change just completely off the table at this point in terms of that was something that was mentioned a lot earlier this year in terms of President Trump talking about the protesters in Iran, how they were treated by the regime. And then early in this conflict, President Trump begging the people of Iran to basically stand up for themselves.
Are we hearing any of that sort of language now?
We're really not. He stopped talking about protesters are rising up. And certainly the analysis from analysts is that's just not likely. It's just not realistic to be talking about at this point. The Iranian government and military have shown that they can absorb these heavy blows. The U.S. and Israeli bombing campaign, huge damage has been done to be sure. to their military capabilities.
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