The NPR Politics Podcast - Is the U.S. going to war with Iran?

Episode Date: February 27, 2026

The United States has not yet reached a deal with Iran over that country's nuclear program, despite continued talks this week. We discuss what the Trump administration hopes to achieve and what kind of military action could be on the horizon. We also discuss the United States’ role in the war in Ukraine as the conflict enters a fifth year.This episode: voting correspondent Miles Parks, national security correspondent Greg Myre, and White House correspondent Franco Ordoñez.This podcast was produced by Casey Morell and Bria Suggs, and edited by Rachel Baye.Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.To manage podcast ad preferences, review the links below:See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for NPR and the following message come from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, investing in creative thinkers and problem solvers who help people, communities, and the planet flourish. More information is available at Hewlett.org. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. I'm Frank Ordonez. I cover the White House. And I'm Greg Myrie. I cover national security. And today on the pod, trying to decipher if the United States is about to go to war with Iran. The two countries have been meeting in Switzerland to hammer out some kind of deal related to Iran's nuclear program.

Franco, let's just start with the basics here. What does the United States want from a deal? Well, I mean, Trump says they want a lot of stuff. I mean, they've talked about no nuclear missiles. They've talked about stopping the ballistic program. They've talked about no proxy militant groups or support for those proxy militant groups. Some people think regime change, but what they haven't been clear about is what they would accept. in any kind of specific deal. And Trump really has not explained his objectives to the American

people. He has not asked for any kind of special authorization from Congress. You know, and he really had, you know, a big chance to do that at the state of the Union. But he kind of just kind of meshed up all these, these points together, you know, without laying out any kind of specifics about why this may be necessary at this moment in time. Okay. And then looking at Iran, Greg, what are they hoping to get out of these talks? So the Iranians are insisting, as they always have, that they can keep at least part of their nuclear program. They say they have the right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes. They also know they're probably going to have to offer some concessions. President Trump tore up the previous nuclear agreement in 2018. So for him to accept a new one,

it would have to presumably include some additional elements that weren't there in the last one. But Iran says it's not going to completely dismantle its nuclear program as the U.S. appears to be demanding. And also, Iran wants some of the sanctions lifted. It faces all of these sanctions that the U.S. and the international community is placed on Iran over the decades. In fact, more were just added by the U.S. this week. And that could also put Trump in a tricky position. In the state of the union address, he said Iran killed 32,000 protesters. last month. So now is Trump prepared to offer a reward, sanctions relief just a month after this widespread killing of protesters? I guess I'm trying to figure out where this is headed if the two sides are not able to come to an agreement. There has been a pretty massive buildup of U.S. military power in the

Middle East. Do you have any thoughts on that, Greg? Miles, I would say there's sort of three basic options. One is they keep on talking. They've had three rounds of talks. They've talked. They've talked about having additional talks next week, so no reason they can't keep talking. Previous negotiations went on for months and months years earlier. Second, the U.S. could strike, but in a limited kind of way. Strike for a couple of days. Last June, we saw Israel and the U.S. team up for 12 days of bombing of Iran, and Iran responded. But then Trump just declared a ceasefire, and that was the end of that round. So we could again see a limited round. Or Trump could go big in order a massive, open-ended, sustained military campaign, perhaps with the goal of trying to oust the Iranian regime. But that would be a huge operation, no guarantee of success. So those are three basic options. Obviously, there could be lots of other possibilities as well. Yeah, and I will note that Vice President J.D. Vance said in an interview with The Washington Post that the sort of option three there, the more full-scale military.

intervention, he doesn't seem like there's appetite for that from the administration at this point. Is that fair to say, Franco? Yeah, I mean, I think that is fair to say for sure. I mean, he is the vice president in the United States. I was a bit surprised that he would come out and say that publicly, considering Trump, his M.O. is to always say that all options are on the table. And the rhetoric that he uses talking to the public is often one of the biggest parts of the strategy for his team and trying to put pressure on the Iranian regime and that clearly he is trying to put as much pressure as possible on the Iranian regime. So I was surprised about that. But, you know, look, this is Trump. I mean, he campaigned this time and in 2016 on being a president of peace of not taking the United States

into a war, of not wanting to start another never-ending war in his term. So it seems very much in Trump's stead to want to find some type of option where he could go in and out. You know, as Greg is talking about, maybe it'd be a day, maybe it'd be a couple days. But I think President Trump wants something very clearly where he can go in, get out, and declare victory, and not have any type of situation remotely similar to Iraq or Afghanistan. But, you know, this is when you get into military conflicts, there's just so much uncertainty. Greg, I want to ask about Israel, which is not a country we've mentioned yet. They obviously have a lot of interests at play here. Can you explain, I guess, what they're hoping comes out of these talks and how much they're playing into Trump's thinking? I think it's fairly significant. The Israeli leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, has talked for years, decades even, about ending Iran's nuclear program and its missile program. So he's always been a hardliner on this. There's no doubt that he's pushing for, for tough, tough action. And also, they don't believe a nuclear agreement with Iran is worth the

paper that it's written on. We can certainly have a big discussion about that, but they certainly prefer the more aggressive option. Having had Trump already strike Iran last year and certainly having it on the table at the moment, Netanyahu sees this is a real opportunity to press for a big military strike against Iran. So I would expect Israel to be pushing. And again, not only going for the nuclear program, but for the missile program. Iran does have a lot of missiles with conventional warheads. They fired many of those at Israel last June when the 12 days of fighting were going on. So that's an immediate threat to Israel that they want to address as well. The Trump administration has raised the missile issue, but it seems the talks have so far been limited to the nuclear program. Going after the missile program would be a bigger operation. There are multiple nuclear sites, but the missiles can be in many different places. The Iranians move them around. They make missiles in one place.

They prepare them for launch in another. They have mobile launchers. So that would greatly expand the operation if you make an effort to deal a major, significant, long-term blow to Iran's missile program. I did find it interesting, though, that Trump has been, and the administration has been talking more about the missile program from Trump's remarks in the the State of the Union, talking about how Iran is closer than ever to, you know, getting missiles that potentially reached the United States, which seems a little bit of an exaggeration. You would know more than I would, Greg.

But also Marco Rubio this week talking about how the talks and kind of expressing some frustration with the lack of progress in the talks, but expressing a lot of frustration about that they're not even talking about the missile program. and saying publicly that the fact that Iran refuses to talk about ballistic missiles being a big, big problem. Yeah, and from Iran's perspective, it's the one defensive measure they really have. This is probably not going to be a ground war. We wouldn't expect to see ground troops at the U.S. or anybody else would send in ground troops. Iran's Navy is not much to speak of. The one way Iran can defend itself and strike out against Israel or U.S. ships in the region is, is with ballistic missiles. So Iran says there's no way we're going to even talk about this, and we're certainly not going to give up our missiles. We would, in fact, be surrendering at the negotiating table. So Iran just says that's not going to be discussed. As far as we know,

it hasn't been. The talks have been about the nuclear issues. The U.S. wants to expand into missile discussions, as would Israel, but so far, that doesn't seem to be on the table. Okay, well, we're having this conversation about the possibility, the very real possibility of military intervention in Iran. I guess I'm just curious how much of a threat Iran actually poses to the United States as we sit here today. Yeah, so if we're talking today, the Iranians do not have a nuclear weapon, even if they did, they don't have a missile or a delivery system that could launch it and strike the United States. So at the moment, there's a, there's not a direct threat to the continental states. But if Iran were to develop a nuclear weapon with the missile systems that it does have, that would threaten not only Israel but other countries in the region, perhaps the edges of Europe, and it would create all sorts of terrible dynamics for the region. Suddenly, Iran's other big rival in the region, Saudi Arabia, would probably want a

nuclear weapon. Turkey, which borders Iran? It's a member. of NATO, but it might want nuclear weapons. You could easily see a nuclear arms race in the Middle East if Iran were to get a weapon like that. And Iran has been involved in so many of the other conflicts in the regions through its proxies. So it's just seen as something that would greatly escalate. So there is the question of, is it a direct threat to the U.S., but also how much would it destabilize a region where the U.S. has been fighting wars for the last 30-plus years? Yeah. I also, just to add, the political sense. I mean, this is a messaging challenge for this administration. I mean, President Trump in the summer said that they obliterated the nuclear program over the summer.

If it's obliterated, then it's pretty far off from threatening the United States in any time in the near future. And even if it's partially there, it was only partially obliterated, et cetera, for Trump to now or to if he goes forward and strikes another nuclear site, I think there's going to be a question about credibility. If he, you know, goes after the nuclear program again and says kind of similar language, I think he is under pressure to kind of, you know, expand this, to give other reasoning, whether going after a strike on leadership or, you know, some type of ballistic site or at least be able to message that. Because I do think some of the American people are going to be questioning, hey, wait a minute, you said this was obliterated. Now you're bombing another nuclear

site. So I do think he faces some, you know, some messaging challenges there. I do feel like, generally speaking, when the United States is on the precipice of military action, like the country seems to be right now, presidents do communicate about that, either with the American people or with Congress or both. How has President Trump been doing that, I guess, as this whole Iran situation has developed over the last couple weeks? I mean, he has given, like, you know, the state of the Union, he kind of meshed in these different ideas and kind of mesh together the ballistics, mesh together the nuclear, mesh together the proxies. He didn't talk about regime change, but that's always kind of a, you know, kind of a desire that Republican presidents and leaders

have wanted for a long time. But he has not made a clear case on why the United States should do this right now. What is the threat that he is facing? You know, that is a big concern for a lot of people, including from his own party. Again, politically, I mean, midterms are coming up. This is a very sensitive time for Republicans. They're down in the polls. Trump is very much down in the polls. And a lot of the criticism is that the president of the United States is focusing too much attention

on foreign policy issues and not domestic issues. These are, he's focusing too much on the issues. He promised his supporters that he would be getting the United States out of. So this, this, this, this lack of messaging to the American people could really come back to bite him. Because when I talk to Republican strategists, they tell me if he would just do that, at least people would kind of have an understanding of why he is doing this. And perhaps that would maybe insulate Republican candidates in the midterms from, you know, taking all of the blame if it goes wrong. Because then they could say, well, at least we understood why he

did that. I disagreed, but but we understand this way, not explaining, I think it just opens it up for even more anger and more people to be disappointed and just just confused about, about the U.S. priorities in this, in this area. And beyond the domestic front, there's the international front. President Trump hasn't gone to the United Nations to make the case there, to seek some sort of UN approval. He has not built a coalition beyond working closely with Israel. But we've seen several U.S. allies, Britain, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, say we don't really want to be a part of this in terms of using our bases or flying over our airspace. And that can be significant in some of the recent clashes between Israel and Iran. Jordan, for example, shot down drones or missiles that

we're flying over its airspace. Now, it wouldn't come out and say, we're doing this to protect Israel. They were saying, we don't want those objects flying over our airspace. So they were shooting them down as sort of their own self-defense. That's the kind of assistance you can get or may need from allies in the region. And the Trump administration just hasn't reached out and is getting a real hands-off approach from U.S. allies in the region and beyond. All right, we can take a quick break and more on all of us in just a moment. Support for NPR and the following message come from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, investing in creative thinkers and problem solvers who help people, communities, and the planet flourish.

More information is available at Hewlett.org. And we're back. And this month also marks four years since Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Greg. Can you get us up to speed on that conflict there and what is the current state of the war? Yeah, Miles. So as we sit here and look at it long distance, not very much is changing. In fact, it's a stalemate in many ways. The front line is not moving, hasn't been moving, really, for the past couple years, small Russian advances. But there's another way to look at. And again, the four-year mark gives us an opportunity to do that. Both sides are waging this very

intense war. And it seems that neither will be able to keep this up indefinitely. Ukraine certainly faces Is this great strain in terms of manpower? Does it have enough people to keep on the front line to keep fighting at this level? The civilians in Ukraine are suffering the roughest winter yet because Russia is hitting with missiles and drones, knocking out electrical power that's getting harder and harder to restore. Imagine yourself living on the 10th or 15th floor of an apartment building in Kiev or another city and not having an elevator, not having heat in these sub-freezing temperatures. Russia, on the other hand, it continues to lose enormous numbers of soldiers with the way they fight on the ground. The estimates are all around 1,000 a day, dead or wounded, 30,000 a month that they're having to replace. And they're just not getting well-trained, well-skilled, well-supplied troops. So it's still a very, very heavy, intense war, but very little movement with neither side gaining much territory.

Well, President Trump said earlier this year that he wanted an end of this conflict by this summer, Franco. Where is the U.S. involvement stand right now in this war and moving towards that aim? Yeah. I mean, I think there's growing pessimism inside the White House and across the administration about, you know, reaching a resolution anytime soon. That said, you know, the U.S. is very much involved. I mean, clearly Trump's invested. He has his two. two most trusted people working on this issue, his envoy, Steve Whitkoff and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who were obviously, you know, at front and center for negotiations in Gaza, and we were just talking about Iran. You know, he hasn't farmed it off to someone in a lesser role. So I think this is definitely something he still wants to resolve. He still wants to like fulfill, you know, his campaign

promised, though very, very late. That said, the details are very, very light. You just got to wonder how long this administration is willing to kind of dedicate to this issue. Clearly, Russia is not doing what Trump wants to do, and Trump has been trying to put some pressure on Russia, put more pressure on Ukraine and kind of going back and forth and kind of this wish-washy way. But as Greg was kind of pointing out, it's just kind of things don't seem to be moving forward, not only on the ground, the war, but also in kind of like the diplomatic point, or at least it doesn't seem like you're not seeing much progress. So I've been trying to think about this for a long time of how do you boil this down to the basic contradictions. And the best I can do is this. President Trump wants a deal

to end the war stop the fighting. He's expressed very little interest in the details of what it might look like or who would have to give up what. He wants a deal, wants the fighting to stop. That's his priority. Vladimir Putin, the Russian leader, seems to want to do. drag this war out. Russia is gaining a little territory, not much, and it's a very high cost, but he seems to want to stretch this out, believing he will outlast Ukraine, the U.S., Europe, and that time is his ally and on his side. So there's one of the main contradictions, Trump wanting to end it, Putin wanting to drag it out. For Ukraine, the question is, how does this war end? Do we have to give up the 20 percent of our territory that the Russians now

hold? Can we maybe freeze that front line and negotiate over time? Can we withstand this ongoing Russian onslaught? Will our country be viable? Will we still be getting support from Europe, which has replaced the U.S. as the main donor of both military and financial assistance? So it's the how this war ends for Ukraine. So the very different interests here, and to me, that's why we're not seeing any progress on these peace talks. Well, you mentioned Europe kind of replacing the United States as the sort of main driver behind Ukraine's military efforts. Is that specifically because President Trump has sort of taken a more hands-off approach than President Biden did in terms of supporting Ukraine?

Yes, absolutely. The U.S. was the biggest donor during the Biden administration. President Trump announced during his campaign, and when he came into office, we're going to cut off new military assistance to Ukraine. That has happened. There's maybe a little bit still trickling through the pipeline based on legislation passed during the Biden administration. But the policy now is the U.S. will sell weapons to European members of NATO who can then give it to Ukraine. That's happening, hard to tell the exact scale of that. The Europeans have stepped up. They've replaced a lot of the assistance that the U.S. was providing in strictly dollar terms. And that can be both, I'm talking, financial assistance or military assistance. But the Europeans can't replace everything simply because some

weapons like missiles in the Patriot air defense system simply come from the U.S. and nowhere else. So they can't in terms of the exact item replace it. Can they do this for the long term or just the short term? We don't know yet. I mean, I would say there is kind of like a both and in this case. I mean, absolutely Trump is trying to push some of the, you know, leadership, the money, the resources over to Europe. We hear it all the time, Trump's saying that Europe is closer. The U.S. has an ocean between this conflict. Europe needs to do more. At the same time, you know, when I talk to international observers, it's hard to see any type of negotiation making any type of progress without Trump. I mean, there was no discussions with Putin during the Biden years. Those opened up during the Trump years.

Now, obviously, you can debate about how effective they have been, if at all. But the conversations are going. There are conversations happening. And they're not with the European leaders. They're with Trump and Trump's people. So I do think Europe still needs Trump and still needs the U.S. for this aspect. And it is a hard balance that, you know, that not only Trump is trying to have, but also Europe. I mean, the Trump administration, when I talk to White House officials,

they want to pull back, but they also realize that this is not going to end unless the United States stays involved, or at least, you know, not a negotiated end in any type of way in the near future. And we could add this to our list of contradictions. Europe is now the main supporter of Ukraine in the war, but it's the U.S. that's still negotiating with Russia. And the Europeans don't want to be left out. They're not really happy about being left out, even as they're stepping up in terms of providing assistance to Ukraine. I mean, where do things go from here in terms of timeline? Are we any closer? Is a resolution in sight at all? Or is there even the glimmer of down the road of a resolution here?

Or does it feel like this is just indefinite stalemate moving forward? They're talking at the same table, the Russians, the Ukrainians, and the Americans. So, you know, that's progress of a sort. The Ukrainians have certainly hinted that they'll or flat out said, they'll do certain things. Like, they're certainly willing to consider freezing the front line of the conflict. And boy, that certainly seems to make some sense in a conflict where that front line isn't moving. A lot of people are getting killed, but there's not really much movement. Why not freeze it in place and then hold the negotiations? Russia has really resisted that. You could see some outlines developing. But in terms of

concrete progress, no, you're not really seeing that. And again, the Russians, just seem to feel time is our ally, time is on our side. We don't want to make any deals right now. Yeah, I would take Greg's assessment right there as very optimistic. We've heard the President of United States say so many times, like, great progress. We're about, you know, turning the corner so many times where things just fall apart or don't go anywhere. And like even the President is saying, hey, we've reached a deal or we've reached an agreement with Ukraine. We reached an agreement with Russia. It is always, though, U.S. reaching an agreement with Ukraine, U.S. reaching an agreement with Russia or, you know, some type of outlines. What hasn't happened is no type of like, hey, Ukraine and Russia have come to some type of meeting of the minds.

I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, Greg, but that's, they've never gotten to that state. And until, you know, there's some more kind of hard, you know, either in black and white or something, it just seems to be getting more and more pessimistic that there is going to be some kind of progress. Yes, they're at the same table. And yes, that is something? But when you ask, is this real progress, you know, it's hard not to roll your eyes. No, you're absolutely right. One more break, and then it's time for Can't Let It Go.

And we're back. And it is time now for Can't Let It Go, the part of the show where we talk about the things that we just cannot stop thinking about politics or otherwise. Greg, why don't you start us off? Yeah, mine is the U.S. military and other government agencies using lasers against drones or other objects. We've seen this twice in the last two weeks. The latest one, the U.S. military used a laser to shoot down what it thought was a threatening drone near the border in Texas between the U.S. and Mexico. It turned out this drone belonged to customs and border protection. forced shutting down of a little airspace southeast of El Paso. The other event took place about two weeks ago right near El Paso.

In that time, it was customs and border protection using a weapon. It had been given by the Pentagon. We should note a lot of drones are coming across the border in those areas. Mexican drug cartels, for example, will even use drones to send packages of drugs across the border. So welcome to the future. but this is very unnerving for commercial aviation. These lasers can cause real damage. I want to rewind for just a second because I actually, using lasers,

I thought that was like a thing that only happened in James Bond movies. This is an act, am I missing something here? Is that, when we talk about that, are we talking about like Moonraker and James Bond where they're like shooting? I just don't, what is using a laser to shoot down a drone mean? No, it's more like Star Trek. Okay. Yeah, no, these are weapons miles and they can be used certainly against small drones and they can take them out of the sky. With the proliferation of drones, it raises the problem.

How do you stop a drone swarm coming at you? And, you know, it's hard to shoot each one out of the sky or just, it's very problematic. So one of the countermeasures that's been developed is using lasers to strike them and shoot them down. Now, against a small drone, these seem to work pretty well. What kind of damage would this inflict on a big aircraft or a plane? hard to say, but it could certainly blind the pilot. It could cause some damage to a plane. So this is going to be an issue. And the fact that the U.S. government, the Pentagon Customs and Border Protection, the FAA can't seem to get on the same page in terms of who's using it. What are they shooting at?

What is the risk? Craig, I'm already worried enough about AI. Now you've got like mass drones coming at us. Yeah, you should worry, Franco. I worry. All right, I'll go next. The thing I cannot let go of, and I feel like everyone's been talking about it, but literally I feel like I was Washington Disters last night, and I was thinking about it. I love it. I love when it's I can't let it go that I truly can remember the three times this week I thought about it. It's Cash Patel at the men's Olympics game.

You know, I think many listeners will probably already know what I'm talking about, but basically after the men's hockey team won the gold, FBI director Cash Patel was seen in the locker. room. It looks very similar to me when I won the rec league basketball championship a few years ago. I mean, he's just like, let's off and go. And he's like throwing the beer around and he's drinking it. And I feel like the reason I, there's a lot of reasons about this that are bigger picture questions that are worth talking about that a lot of people are talking about in terms of like whether government money was used to fund this trip and things of that nature. We're not going to

go down that rabbit hole right now. What I was curious about is just specifically about how voters perceive this because I do think President Trump won the popular vote, and I think a big part of his message leading to the 2024 election was that people really want to feel like regular people are in these positions of power. I am not sure that FBI director is the job that you want just kind of like your best buddy from college in that job doing the stuff he did in college. Yeah, Chris Ray, Robert Mueller. Exactly. I don't see them in the locker room. I was imagining, that's what I was thinking about last night, imagining Christopher Ray bombing beers, and I just could not, I couldn't get there. Anyway, Franco, what can't you let go of?

Well, I am, you know, fascinated with some of the stuff that's going on in Latin America. Have you guys seen this group of teens in Argentina who are hanging out kind of wearing dog masks and other, you know, animal masks? There's this kind of viral video of them hanging out in parks, having. meetups, going to parks, climbing trees, jumping over each other. It is this real thing. Like it's kind of part identification of being an animal, part escapeism. I'm just fascinated by this. No, I haven't seen this.

So these are groups of teens wearing animal masks and they're like videotaping each other doing animal stuff. Am I understanding this correctly? Yeah, they're these young folks who are looking, you know, kind of a little bit of an escape going to the park, and they're having these meetups. And, you know, they take dog names. When asked about their age, they do it in dog years or animal years. And it's fascinating because they're really encompassing this area. But it's also kind of cute. AP actually interviewed one of the teens who goes by Aguara. And she said, I wake up like a normal person and I live my life

like a normal person. But sometimes I simply have moments when I like being a dog. Huh. Well, that is all for today. Our executive producer is Bethoni Matery. Our producers are Casey Morel and Brea Suggs. Our editor is Rachel Bay. Special thanks to Christianev Callamer. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. I'm Franco Ordonez. I cover the White House. I'm Greg Myrie. I cover national security. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast. Support for NPR and the following message come from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Investing in creative thinkers, and problem solvers who help people, communities, and the planet flourish. More information is available at Hewlett.org.