The Daily - What We’ve Learned From 10 Days of War

Episode Date: March 10, 2026

What began as a relentless U.S.-Israeli military assault on Iran has turned into a wider crisis as the disruption of the world’s oil markets spreads beyond the Middle East. Eric Schmitt, a national security correspondent for The New York Times, discusses what we know about the players involved in the fighting. Guest: Eric Schmitt, a national security correspondent for The New York Times based in Washington. Background reading:  War with Iran has become the world’s latest economic hazard. Follow updates on the fighting in the Middle East. Photo: Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.  Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

From the New York Times, I'm Michael Bobarro. This is the Daily. Over the past few days, what began as a relentless U.S. Israeli military assault on Iran has drawn in at least 14 countries from Lebanon. I, with my family, lives in a neighborhood just outside of Beirut. We are having to wake up in the middle of the night at 4 a.m. or 5 a.m., 6 a.m., hearing these missiles and bombs, constantly hitting our neighborhoods and our people. To the United Arab Emirates.

We heard some explosions from the interceptors, and that's when we went with my family to the basement to get some shelter. To Saudi Arabia. We were all on the plane. I came from Saudi Arabia. Everything was fine to go. They told us to get off. They said it wasn't safe to fly because of the missiles.

So we all thought we were going to be stranded. As the conflict has transformed, into a region-wide crisis. And now, the impacts of that war are going global. A major shipping route for oil has effectively been shut down amid this war, sending shockwaves through the markets. As the disruption of the world's oil market spreads from the Middle East to Europe, Asia, and North America.

The price of crude oil has risen above $100 a barrel, as the Strait of Hormuz is effectively closed, and Iranian fuel depots are battered. Today, Eric Schmidt on what we're learning about all the players involved in this conflict from a week of war. It's Tuesday, March 10th. Eric, thank you for making time for us. We appreciate it. Sure, of course. So we wanted to speak with you one week or so into this war about what has been accomplished or has failed to be accomplished by all the major government.

involved in this conflict. And the way I wanted to loosely organize our conversation was by starting off with what has been done to Iran by the U.S. and Israel in the first half of this episode. And then in a second half, walk through what Iran in retaliation has done to the region and the world, if that makes sense to you. That makes a lot of sense. Okay. So with that blessing, we will proceed. We know quite well at this point that the United States' objectives in this conflict have whipsawed, starting with the mission of getting rid of Iran's nuclear program, then it became outright regime change, then it was the U.S. being willing to work with regime insiders to this latest demand for President Trump for total regime surrender.

So overall, a pretty incoherent set of messages. Given that, let's focus on what we know. know has actually happened on the ground. The targets that the U.S. and Israel have struck and what shape that has left the regime in. And I think we can get pretty detailed and specific here. So where do you want to start? Okay. So about 10 days into this military campaign, the Israeli and American militaries have struck more than 4,000 targets over this time period. Yeah. So this includes, obviously, the first day strike that killed the Supreme Leader, the main political goal, I think of Israel and to some extent the United States.

But from a military standpoint, of these 4,000 targets, they've really focused heavily on eliminating Iran's air defenses. These are the surface-to-air missiles. They could attack American bombers and Israeli jets, those kind of things. So they've gone after that to give the Israeli-American Air Force's freedom of movement in the skies. The other big targets include the ballistic missiles, which actually go up into space and come back down again. back down against their long range, very fast-moving targets that cause a lot of damage.

The other main focus has been to strike the Iranian Navy. These are the ships and boats that can basically interfere with commerce in the Persian Gulf and elsewhere. Right. So the United States believes that they've sunk much of the Iranian Navy and thus eliminated much of the threat, at least from their major Navy vessels, of commerce in the region. Right. I've read something like 42 Iranian ships have been sunk. Yeah, the number keeps increasing because they've been focusing on that. The threat still remains from Iran's small boats, but the main Navy strikes has been very important. And then lastly, the United States has tried to go after Iran's formidable drone program. These are the same drones that Iran is manufactured and have been used by the Russians in Ukraine. These are formidable because as much as the United States has air defenses against these and a right array of things from jamming to small weapons. to actually counter drone drones, if you will,

they have so many of these drones. The defenses just can't be everywhere at once. So how does this all add up after about 10 days of war from both the Israeli and the American Air Forces? The Pentagon basically believes that they've reduced the number of missiles being fired by Iran by about 90% on the first day. And the number of drones being fired

by about 83% from the first night of the war. Very meaningful. Pretty significant. But in confidential briefings to Congress late last week, Pentagon officials told lawmakers that the Iranians still have as much as 50% of their overall missile fleet still intact. Now, that's getting hammered away every day. So by now it's probably chipped down a little bit more low, that. But more important is the drones are probably even more than that. They can still manufacture these drones at this point. They still have huge stockpiles of these. So even though the United States in Israel posed significant damage on these stockpiles, the Iranians still have a fair amount left. And that's the race that we're in here. And, Eric, when you say race, just help me understand what you mean there. Race between what? So the race here, Michael, is between Iran's ability to fire off as many of these missiles

and drones as possible to inflict as much pain as possible, physical pain, economic pain, political pain, versus the United States and Israel's ability to knock out that ability to fight back. That's the race that's underway. How quickly can the Iranians fire enough of this stuff off to really increase the pain to its maximum point? And how quickly can the U.S. and Israel suppress that Iranian ability? Got it. And presumably the U.S. has enough munitions to go longer than Iran. Well, the munitions has been a key question because,

Some kinds of munitions are in shorter supply than others. This was very important at the beginning of the war because the United States was having to use very expensive what they call standoff weapons. That is, expensive missiles that they can fire from outside of the range of Iranian air defenses. We've now shifted into a different phase of the air campaign. With most of these air defenses destroyed or degraded, the U.S. now can come in and drop other kinds of bombs, satellite and laser-guided bombs that are much more plentiful and cheaper and that are much greater stores. What's in short supply is what's on the ground, however, the interceptors. These are specially made missiles that are meant to protect against those ballistic missiles and other cruise missiles that we talked about earlier that Iran is firing.

That's what's in short supply. The U.S. military says it has enough to protect its bases, but many of the Gulf countries are finding they don't have enough to protect their own populations. And they're pressing the United States and other countries to see if they can provide more on an emergency basis. A lot of what we've been talking about so far, Eric, are the military targets of Iran and the United States. But there are additional targets that are a little more ambiguous. And I'm thinking about over the past couple of days, strikes on something like 30 Iranian oil depots. And I want to understand whether that should be seen as a military target

or is it more civilian infrastructure targeted in what the rationale is. Yeah, no, you put your finger on a very important point, Michael, because this has highlighted one of the rare early divisions in the war between Israel and the United States. Israel struck these oil depots because these are important to fueling the Iranians. war machine. This oil is being used for that purpose. And so they want to take out that ability to do so. And they warned the Americans that they were going to do this. And the Americans were okay with that. What they didn't know was Israel was going to blow up 30 of these things and create this horrific image of black billowing smoke and oil depots blowing up at a time when oil prices are spiking.

Right. And underscoring one of the big concerns that President Trump has. And so the Americans made their objections known yesterday very clearly. And apparently President Trump was quite. upset and made his objections known. So the Americans were okay to a point with the Israelis taking out what they consider military targets, but they felt Israel over did it and basically created a problem, not just an optics problem for the United States, but a real economic problem. It just kind of helps drive up these oil price concerns. So when the targets have been military in nature, the U.S. Israeli strategy so far seems like it has been pretty effective where the targets have veered into more civilian infrastructure.

There has been conflict and controversy around it. I'm curious how we should think overall 10 days in about whether these U.S. Israel attacks have been precise, and if this is the right word to use here, moral. Well, clearly you've got more than 1,000 people killed on the ground in Iran, So some of these strikes, maybe they've achieved both. Maybe they've struck a military target, but they've also killed civilians in the process. The biggest example of this was a strike against an Iranian naval base.

And next to the base is an elementary school where 175 people were killed. Now, this investigation, which the United States military says it's conducting and ongoing, is focused on how did this happen? Was this a bomb that went astray? Was this just bad targeting information that they had? Because this school, actually several years ago, was part of this naval base. And then some time ago, it was split off and it just became an elementary school. Which the U.S. may not have known. Exactly. And this sadly has happened before. But should have. They should have known this as they check these things because it's very clear as they look at the satellite imagery. They look at other things. There are school kids out, you know, running around in fields and things like that. And there's a fence that now separates the base, which was attacked, and this school, which is just, you know, a couple hundred yards away from it. So, you know, you could see, sadly, how this thing might have happened. All told, Eric, how many Iranian civilians have been killed as far as we know.

I believe Iran's envoy to the UN has said 1,300 Iranian civilians have been killed. I'm sure all these numbers will be disputed throughout the conflict. but do we have a sense of the number of Iranian civilians killed? Yeah, those are the kind of estimates that certainly we at the New York Times are using. The United States has not come up with a formal estimate yet as to civilian casualties on the ground. The military makes a point to say because of the precision weapons they're using, they do all they can to avoid putting civilians at risk and to minimize the danger of civilian casualties. But in any kind of war, any kind of conflict, this is going to happen.

If this was a mistake, is it a war crime, or if it's a mistake, it's just a mistake? Sadly, it's more probably in the category of it's a mistake. War crime would be something that obviously deliberate, some kind of target that you knew had, in this case, women, children, and that would be something much more serious. I think in this case, at least if it's similar to the cases of civilian casualties and incidents that I've reported on the past and other conflicts, it's somebody screwed up. So despite all of the damage that the U.S. and Israel have inflicted, primarily on Iran's military and the government, what seems very clear at this moment is that the onslaught has failed to topple the regime.

One of the stated goals of this mission, even though it has changed many times, was to topple the regime. And yet a new Supreme Leader has been appointed, the son of the previous Ayatollah, and it does not appear that the regime is in any great jeopardy of collapsing, correct? That's right. And in fact, not only that,

but it looks like the United States knew this, or at least the intelligence services of the United States knew this even going into this fight, because they basically assessed going into this war that any kind of military operation, short of some kind of land invasion, which has never been envisioned here, but any kind of major air campaign like we're seeing now

would fail to dislodge the theocracy that runs Iran today. It's just too entrenched. They've thought about this for years and years of how to survive, and they expected this kind of attack, and that day has come now, and now we're kind of seeing this strategy that they have been thinking about for decades. Just to be clear, you're saying that,

the United States assessed that the campaign that it's now waging against Iran was unlikely to do the thing that we have articulated as our goal for this conflict. That's right. In a confidential assessment by the National Intelligence Council, which is a combination of the various intelligence agencies, that was their assessment going into this war. And there are basically no examples going through certainly recent military history of an air campaign alone toppling up. a government. You almost have to have, you know, some type of force that goes in on the ground, or you have to stir the population itself to take up arms and throw off whatever's left of the former government, such as it is. But by itself, this assessment concluded, it's not

going to get rid of this government that the president said he wanted to do. Fascinating. Eric, to the point of that assessment and its determination that the regime would be very hard to topple. What should we make of the choice of a new Supreme leader, the son of the previous Ayatollah? Is there any reason to think that he's going to change the direction of the regime? What do we know? In one word, no. Mustaba Kamenei is a hardliner, perhaps even more so than his father. He's very close to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is the parallel security structure that operates in Iran, and it shows the influence that the IRGC, this Revolutionary Guard Court, still has, not only on the military level as they continue to fire the missiles and drones

we talked about, but also at the political level and choosing the next ruler here. And if anything, this is the most defiant choice that the Iranians could have come up with. This is a ruler that the president and other American officials have said they don't think they don't have a lot of confidence they can work with. They had other people in mind who obviously wouldn't necessarily be compliant with everything, but they thought they might be more pragmatic that could work with the United States and work with the West. Right, but others who turned out died.

Yeah, they either died or they got sidelined, but these are people who were so entrenched in the system that so long as they kept some influence, they could work with the United States. And this was a kind of a model that the United States and the Trump administration thought they could adapt from Venezuela, where they obviously went in and seized the dictator, Nicolas Maduro, and installed his vice president, Delci Rodriguez, who's been so far working very closely with the Trump administration there. Now, Iran is a very different place than Venezuela, and the regime, you know, much more entrenched in both the political, military, and economic interests of the country. So it may have been misguided to think along the,

these lines, but that seems to be what it influenced the administration as it thought about these things. Now, the Iranians have come back, are, again, the most hard line, kind of defiant choice that you could have picked. So this appointment, along with what you described as the regime's remaining munitions, which are meaningful, should deepen our sense of the regime's permanence or its unlikeliness to fall. That just does not seem very plausible at the moment. Yeah, I would use the word resilience rather than permanence because you never know, but this shows the resilience of this regime, even at its battered state, that so long as it can hold on, it wins. That's basically what it amounts to for them. They know they can't overwhelm the United States military or the combination of a U.S.

Israeli attack, but if they can hold on and inflict enough pain for Israel, in the United States, basically to say, okay, enough, we've achieved our goals, we've killed enough of your leaders, Iran, we can now settle. That's kind of where I think, you know, the Iranians hope this all ends up with. And as oil prices skyrocket, they are looking, you know, in a better and better position to kind of dictate those terms. And at this stage, it seems less and less likely that the Iranian people are going to be rising up. And no doubt things like the strike on the elementary school, and they strike on these oil depots, those may not inspire the Iranian civilian population to see the U.S. or Israel, especially, as their allies or their liberators.

I think that's right. And you certainly haven't seen, as President Trump urged, you haven't seen protesters rise up against this government. You haven't seen military officials defect, as he called on them to do. You haven't seen. You haven't seen military officials' defect as he called on them to do. You haven't seen any signs of rebellion or insurgencies in any part of the country that would divert Iranian attention. I think what you've seen, as you said, on the contrary, other incidents that might actually galvanize the regime supporters, and now they'll rally behind this new younger leader for the fight as long as it takes against the United States and Israel. Okay, well, Eric, when we come back, we're going to talk about the pain that Iran has inflicted across the region and in a nation. in a very real sense across the world in its response.

We'll be right back. So, Eric, help us understand Iran's military response so far, which has wreaked all kind of havoc, as we've hinted at across the region and the world because of spiking oil prices. And I'd say to the untrained eye, some elements of Iran's retaliation seemed carefully planned. Others seemed like wild firing in every possible direction.

That's right. I think this is all part of their strategy to focus, first of all, on unleashing its arsenal of missiles and drones and any other weaponry, first and foremost at the United States bases around the region, all within missile range of Iran, as is Israel. You're also seeing Iran wanting to widen this conflict, to internationalize this conflict, to inflict as much pain on as many actors as possible. That's why you're seeing not only strikes against American military bases in these countries, but against civilian infrastructure across the Gulf region, for instance, in the United Arab Emirates, in Kuwait, in Qatar, in Bahrain. You're seeing attacks on oil infrastructure. You're seeing attacks on airports. You're seeing attacks on hotels.

You're seeing a wide range of strikes to as far away as striking the island of Cyprus. and missile strike launched toward Turkey, a NATO ally that was knocked down. The idea here that the Iranians have is to inflict as much pain, to bring as much pressure on the United States and Israel to wrap up this campaign as quickly as possible. Well, just explain the idea that these seemingly at times indiscriminate, but obviously sometimes not at all, in the description of embassies, consulates, office buildings, high-rises across the whole region, how that brings pressure to bear on the United States to end the war? Well, in a very concrete way, you look at the example of the drone strike on the port in Kuwait on March 1st that killed six U.S. service members and wounded several others.

Now you've got Americans coming back in caskets where the president over the weekend had greeted the remains at Dover Air Force Base. Right. So a very somber scene there of American casualties once again coming out of the Middle East. But you also see, as you said, in this kind of scattershot approach, wanting to create as much economic and political uncertainty as possible. You have countries in the region shutting down their airports because you basically can't guarantee the safety of commercial air traffic.

You have oil tankers and other commercial. tankers holding up inside and outside the Strait of Hormuz, this narrow stretch of water that's a key gateway in and out of the Persian Gulf for all this commerce. So you have the actual physical pain of casualties, you have the economic pain, and you're now forcing the hand of these various governments in the Gulf to do something. They've wanted to stay on the sidelines for the most part, publicly saying they do not want a war in their region, they would much rather have a diplomatic solution, but now their countries and their populations are coming under attack. And it's not just the Gulf countries.

It's countries in Europe who have sizable populations in the region. France, England, these kind of countries, which had said they would not participate in any kind of offensive action against Iran, are now in the position of having to help protect their civilians that are living in these countries. So the strategy, quite clearly you're saying, is for Iran to, in a very real sense, drag as many countries as possible into the conflict, even drag Europe into the conflict, so that all these countries are placing phone calls or communiques to Washington and saying to President Trump, let's be honest, you're the one who can pull the plug here. And so given all the pain that we're experiencing here, we're asking you to do that. Wrap this. up? Is it working as a strategy? Well, the Iranians have a code name for this. They call it Operation Madman. Well, who's the madman in that? They try to present themselves as a madman and basically saying, you've got to do something here. Now, there are analysts who are saying this is actually

backfiring on the regime in Tehran because look what's happened. You have all these countries that were originally sitting on the sidelines and now very reluctantly, they're basically saying, okay, we're not only going to allow American planes to use our bases in a broader sense, in the case of Britain, which had very briefly denied U.S. access to planes. Right. But they're basically coming in and saying, okay, we're going to bring more forces in. And if need be, we may actually attack Iran. There's some reports that some of the Gulf nations are considering taking strikes of their own to basically show their domestic populations. We're going to stand up for you and protect you. Well, you're saying the flip side of regionalizing the war, the Iranian strategy, is that the region might bring the war.

right back to Iran. But I do want to fact-check you for a minute on this. To what extent are the Gulf countries, I'm thinking of the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, or Europe, for that matter, are defined allies in a military sense? Are they actually joining the offensive effort rather than just defending their interests? No, and it's a good point. But rather than sitting on the side and sitting on their hands and being neutral, they're now weighing in, at least in a defensive way, and bringing defensive assets, air defenses, other planes and ships that can help protect their forces, this takes some of the burden off the United States and Israel to do some of the same. If you have these kind of allies bringing their troops and assets into the region to do what was up until at least

a few days ago was left solely up to the United States and Israel to do for themselves. Eric, in the first half of our conversation, you brought up the metaphor of a race, the race between the munitions that Iran has left to fight back and that the U.S., Israel have to degrade. grade Iran's military. It seems like there's a second race happening here, which is the region's tolerance for pain and its intolerance for pain, and therefore its determination to collectively enter the war and perhaps make Iran's life really miserable. And it feels like a huge pain point in this second race is oil. It is. You have obviously the physical pain of your civilians being under attack. But as you point out, economically now, as oil prices are driven up

by this tremendous attack and all this uncertainty, now all these costs are suddenly being passed along to countries in the region and their populations. And suddenly prices are going to be skyrocketing globally. So here again, how much pain now can the United States and Israel, along with their nominal allies in this, how long can they take? How much will they accept? So if the point is to apply pressure to President Trump, we're seeing it right now this week.

And as we see oil prices skyrocketing above $100 a barrel and the Pentagon talking about this lasting for weeks before they achieve their military objectives, this suddenly is starting to feel very painful for American consumers who are already concerned about inflationary effects in this country.

And it's worth noting that Iranian leaders are talking about this openly. They are saying, if you think oil prices are high now because of this war, you just wait and see they're going to go higher and higher. And they're almost goading President Trump at this point on the subject of oil. That's right. They're almost daring him to continue these attacks. And if it means $4 and $5 a gallon price at the pump for American citizens, all the better for the Iranian government. One thing we haven't yet touched on, Eric, is, is whether Iran has any allies in this conflict. Iran is one of the loneliest countries, frankly, in the world. But it has long maintained a strong relationship with Russia.

And Russia has been kind of happy to advertise the fact that it's working with Iran in this conflict. But how meaningful is that help and how meaningful a threat is it to the U.S., to Israel and their allies in the region? Well, we saw some reporting last week, for instance, that the Russians are providing intelligence to the Iranians, targeting intelligence to let them know the location of American vessels and troops in the region. Now, Russia has provided information like this and intelligence like this for the Iranians for many years. Obviously, being in a war makes it a little bit different. But the military and intelligence officials I talk to, well, generally concerned overall about this, their hair wasn't on fire about this. This isn't going to change the nature of the war. And the fact, that the Iranians are under such pressure also made it unlikely they'd be able to utilize this Russian intelligence in any way. But Russia is turning out to be

one of the great beneficiaries of this war. Vladimir Putin is sitting fat and happy in Moscow watching that global price of oil go up and for Russian oil, that means more money in his coffers as he spreads it around. Well, and perhaps more money for the Russian war in Ukraine. So quite perversely, if you're the United States,

this war may subsidize Russia's war in Ukraine. That's right. And as you mentioned Ukraine, this is also going to put more pressure on not only the United States, but European governments who are supplying weapons to Ukraine. Some of the very weapons that they're now going to want to hold on to to be able to use in the Gulf, some of these interceptors, for instance, against missiles, which Russia is used so lethally against Ukrainian cities in the last several weeks and months. So Russia is coming out looking like a winner in this war so far. Right. Wars have many unintended consequences. So here's where we are a week or so into this war. The regime isn't going anywhere.

Trump wants a total surrender, and that seems to be a conflict that's not going to be resolved anytime soon, those two polls. And so unless the madman strategy that Iran has laid out inflicts so much pain that the president pulls the plug on this operation, we are looking at a conflict that is probably,

going to be lasting many, many more weeks. Well, it could. You're dealing with a very mercurial president, Mr. Trump. He could decide and declare tomorrow, although it doesn't look very likely, that he has achieved his war goals. This is what Israel is actually very concerned about. That Trump, because of these domestic pressures,

because of the pressures coming from regional allies, will cut the war short of where the Israeli military wants to be in terms of degrading and destroying Iran's capability. and its missile capability and also the remnants of its nuclear program. So again, we're back to this concept of a race here. How much pressure can the Iranian stand? How much pressure can the Americans,

and specifically the Trump administration, stand at this point? But the costs on both sides are going to be going up. I just want to end, Eric, by summoning your experience covering so many wars over the past 30 or something years, including the first war in Iraq, the second war, interact, in Afghanistan, to name a few. And these conflicts range from very limited wars, wars that take a week or two, have very clear

goals to the forever wars with much muddier objectives and stunningly long time horizons. So far, if this doesn't seem like an unfair question, where does this seven, eight day long war so far stand alongside those conflicts you've covered? I think I go back to the first war I covered, the first Gulf War in 1991, where the air campaign lasted about 44 days. That's roughly six weeks or so. And that was the precursor to a land invasion. What we are not seen here, however, is any sign of a major ground force that would go in. Yes, the president has talked about possibly sending in some special operations, commandos to deal with certain targets, including the remnants of a nuclear program. But we're not seeing the marshalling of vast. armies ready to go on and take over this country, 90 million people, a much more challenging task, almost impossible to think of from the commanders I talk to. So I think it's probably airing more on the side right now of a limited air war, limited in the sense of maybe weeks rather than months, but it's very hard to tell. With most of these wars, the United States has gotten

into them, not always with the clearest objectives, or not understanding the dynamics on the ground and how they can shift underneath you and change the dynamics. That's certainly what happened with George W. Bush in Iraq. And if you remember, he declared a mission accomplished very quickly. Right. And before you know, it were a decade into a campaign. It cost many lives and a nearly trillion dollars in American treasure. But I think what strikes me most having covering conflicts over the last nearly four decades is this president feels so emboldened to use the American military in a way to solve foreign policy conflicts. It's much different, I think, than any of his predecessors.

He's coming off of a high of last June of striking and a limited strike against Iran's three major nuclear facilities, a very successful but very limited mission. The second key accomplishment he's made in a military sense is, again, the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. Now, the Venezuela story still has a lot to play out. But I think those conflicts, some other smaller ones that he's engaged in around the world has really emboldened the president.

I think he can take on pretty much any conflict in the military has come through for him in a successful way, made him look good, made the American military look good, and it's led him to talk about the military in these kind of World War II ways that he talks, this bravado that he and defense secretary Pete Hegseth like to talk about things. Maximum lethality, not tepid legality. violent effect, not politically correct. We're going to raise up warriors. He seems to revel in the violence of war to extent,

I've never heard a defense secretary talk about this. Only the United States of America could lead this, only us. But when you add the Israeli defense forces... He talked about the Iranians. The combination is sheer destruction for our radical Islamist Iranian adversaries. They are totally... and they know it.

Or at least soon enough, they will know it. This was never meant to be a fair fight, and it is not a fair fight. We are punching them while they're down. Which is exactly how it should be. America is winning. Decisively, devastatingly, and without mercy. I stand before you to- I mean, these are all kind of phrases, you know, that, you know, they're trying to deflect the ugliness of conflict.

conflict and underscore kind of the glorification of their victories so far without really addressing some of the harder subjects. Like, where does this all end? You know, that's the question we still haven't heard from Trump. We don't know what the ultimate endgame here is. And what does that tell you, or what should that tell us about the nature of his conflict and the people who are behind it? Well, certainly it talks about at the senior most levels, at least of the civilian ranks of the Pentagon. They're all in on this fight. That seems to be the atmosphere that's cresting at the Pentagon and to some extent at the White House. At least it was going into this conflict. Now, again, maybe 10 days after, you know, some of the reality is starting to sink in,

that this is not going to be as easy as they thought it might have been. And that in the end may leave a very different military legacy for the president than I think he first envisioned when he ordered this attack. Well, Eric, thank you very much. We appreciate it. Thank you. On Monday afternoon, President Trump sent his latest conflicting messages about the duration of the war. In an interview with CBS, he said that the conflict could be nearing an end. That remark sent the price of oil plunging.

But shortly after, Trump told lawmakers in Florida that his timetable for ending the conflict was open-ended. We've already won in many ways, but we haven't won enough. We go forward more determined than ever to achieve ultimate victory that will end this long-running danger once and for all 47. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to another day.

On Monday, the AI company Anthropic sued the Department of Defense saying that the government's punishment of the company exceeded its legal authority. The Defense Department labeled Anthropic a supply chain risk and cut off its access to the military after Anthropic disagreed with how the Defense Department should use AI. In its lawsuit, Anthropic accused the government

of trying to penalize the company for simply expressing its views. And... Both defendants have admitted that they acted on Saturday because of ISIS. Federal prosecutors have charged two men with attempting to support the Islamic State after they tried to detonate two explosive devices near the official residence of New York City's mayor, Zoran Mwandani. Police said that one of the men, Ibrahim Kiyumi, declared his allegiance to ISIS after his arrest.

As Kiyumi was being placed into an NYPD vehicle following his arrest, a person in the crowd asked why he had done this. Kayumi responded with ISIS. Neither of the explosive devices detonated and no one was injured, but one of the devices tested positive for a highly volatile material used in numerous terrorist attacks over the past decade. Today's episode was produced by Eric Kruppke, Rochelle Bonja, and Mary Wilson. It was edited by Paige Cowett and Liz O. Balin.

contains music by Dan Powell and Marion Lozano. Our theme music is by Wonderly. This episode was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. That's it for the daily. I'm Michael Bobaro. See you tomorrow.