The NPR Politics Podcast - Trump says the Iran ceasefire is over. What happens now?

Episode Date: July 8, 2026

While attending a NATO summit in Turkey, President Trump said the ceasefire in Iran is over. We discuss what comes next for the conflict and why the United States hasn’t won a war in at least 25 years.This episode: senior political correspondent Tamara Keith, national security correspondent Greg Myre, and senior national political correspondent Mara Liasson.This podcast was produced by 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.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Remember the ceasefire in the war with Iran? I think it's over. I don't want to deal with them, but they're scum. You know what scum is? They're scum. They're sick people. That was President Trump speaking earlier today at the NATO summit in Turkey. With the war back now in this very uncertain place, a familiar pattern is developing. For at least a generation, the U.S. has struggled to successfully end the wars it starts. So let's talk about it. It's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover politics. I'm Greg Myrie. I cover national security. And I'm Mara Liason, senior national political correspondent. And we are recording this at 138 p.m. Eastern Time on Wednesday, July 8th, 2026. Greg, let's start with this war. Is it back on again? I wouldn't quite say that, but we just had one of the most active nights of shooting since the ceasefire was declared back in. in April. Iran hit three commercial boats going through the Strait of Hormuz. It wants those ships to go near its coastline, not near the coastline of Oman, where the U.S. is open to separate channel. So when Iran fired

at those three ships, the U.S. hit back pretty hard last night. They hit 80 or more targets, according to Central Command. President Trump said they took out 28 of these small Iranian speedboats, the only kind of boats they have left. They had a lot of sites on the coastline right near the Strait of Hormuz. So this was a major attack. And we've seen versions of this several times over the past couple weeks, even months, where traffic starts to flow in the Strait of Hormuz. But then there's an incident and the two sides trade fire. And President Trump said a couple different ways today that maybe they'll hit again tonight. So, yes, they're still shooting going on. I wouldn't call it at this point resumption of full-scale hostilities. It's kind of like a hot ceasefire, not unlike the Israeli-Lebanese hot ceasefire. Yeah, but he's not threatening to destroy their civilization forever. He is responding. But it does raise the question of oil prices because one of the reasons he wanted the ceasefire was to get oil prices down. and they did come down. Now that he's hitting Iran again, they certainly spiked up immediately,

whether they'll stay there remains to be seen. But that would be completely in opposition to one of the goals that he had, which is to keep them down. Yeah, when is a ceasefire still a ceasefire? When does a, when does shooting cease to be a ceasefire? You know, Iran also struck back in the region aiming at U.S. military bases in Bahrain and Kuwait. Kuwait. Yep, yep. No, that's what they've been doing in a regular basis. And again, aiming mostly at U.S. military targets, but they've also hit civilian targets in these countries as well. So, yeah, not a ceasefire by any standard definition, but it seems where we are. It doesn't seem that Trump or the Iranians want to go back to the fighting we saw in March and April. But they're also not committed to just quietly sitting at a table and hashing. out the many, many issues that have still not been resolved. So this is sort of a way of I don't like the way the negotiations are going or I don't like what you're saying. So I'm going to shoot a little bit at you. And just as a reminder, this memorandum of understanding that led to this ceasefire

that's supposed to last 60 days were about halfway through that. And in theory, that was supposed to create space for talks. So what has happened with the talks? They haven't gone particularly well. There were the first, when they began, they had them for a week, and these various technical groups were meeting on the different issues, you know, opening the Strait of Hormuz, or looking at Iran's various military programs. Since then, they've become more sporadic. They've been on pause right now, while Ayatollah Ali Hamané, the Iranian leader was killed on the first day of the war back in February, is having essentially a week-long funeral. And so it seems, like it would be pretty quiet this week. In fact, Trump noted that Iran asked that no shooting

take place while the funeral ceremonies are playing out over two countries, both in Iran and Iraq. And it seemed that was happening until Iran did go after these three commercial ships, and so the U.S. responded. And it just, you don't have any sense that there's any real momentum in these talks. Trump said that Steve Whitkoff and Jared Kushner could keep on talking, but he was really dismissive. I'd hate to be taking that 12, 13-hour flight when Trump seems completely unconvinced that these talks are going anywhere. He was pretty definitive. We just heard him say, I don't want to deal with them anymore. They're scum. And he also had some other pretty negative things to say about these talks. I'm not sure I want to make a deal with them. We can play games, but I'm not sure I want to make a deal.

I just finished the job. Sounds like he's going back to military confrontation. Yeah, but not full. I mean, again, it's Trump. He contradicts himself literally in the same press conference. He also said to the effect, I don't think it's going to flare up again in a big way. So, you know, you could literally cherry pick whichever quote you want. Yeah, he also said that he's won the war and they'll never make a nuclear weapon.

Then why bother talking to them? He called the war a tremendous success when that question was put to him. Yeah, I mean, one of the remarkable things about this current flare-up is that it is all about safe passage for vessels in the Strait of Hormuz, which wasn't even an issue until the war started. No, but that safe passage equals or should lead to lower oil prices. And another important point here, as you say, Tam, it wasn't an issue before the war, but it's also an issue that everybody wants to resolve right now. this should be the easy part. The U.S. obviously wants the Strait of Hormuz open. All the Arab Gulf countries that depend on oil exports, the rest of the world that receives those exports. And perhaps most of all, Iran, their whole economy is dependent on the export of oil. So nobody opposes, in theory, it's in nobody's economic interest to keep the Strait of Hormuz closed. So if you can't resolve this one issue, which is in everybody's interest in should be relatively easy, it really speaks to how difficult some of these other issues that are zero sum are going to be.

And the other thing that struck me was how Trump answered a question at a press conference he had, the kind of closing press conference of the NATO meeting today. He was asked a very pointed question about why the war in Iran seems to be a strategic dead end for the United States and why he is apparently unable to end it. And what was so interesting about that question is that really reflects the consensus in the world about where the U.S. ended up in this conflict with almost none of Trump's objectives met. They still have ballistic missiles. There was no regime change. And Trump has really had a hard time spinning this as a great success. The world just doesn't believe him. Well, and the contradiction he introduces every time he talks about this, he keeps talking about the 159 ships, Navy ships of Iran that are now at the bottom of the Gulf. And that may well be true. But that doesn't mean ships, oil tankers can freely go in and out of the Strait of Hormuz. So it speaks to Iran's ability, even without a traditional Navy, to sort of hold the international oil exports hostage through the Strait of Hormuz.

Yeah, I mean, at the moment, it really does seem like a boxed canyon strategically. And we are going to take a quick break. And when we get back, we're going to talk about this challenge U.S. presidents have faced ending wars. But first, we have to take a quick break. And we're back. And Greg, you've been doing some reporting about why the U.S. has struggled over really the past generation to win wars. Can you just sort of explain the premise there? Right. I mean, you look at the conflicts the U.S. has been involved in, Iran, a neighboring

countries of Afghanistan and Iraq all over the past quarter century. And here we are approaching the 25th anniversary of 9-11. None of these wars has gone nearly as well as advertise and planned and is presented to the American public when they were launched. Now, they all had their own dynamics. They're not exactly the same. But we do see some very clear trends here where the U.S. military has overwhelming power and force. It's not a fair fight. I mean, there's no question about U.S. military might and technology. Absolutely. And it goes very well in the early days. The Taliban are ousted from power. Saddam Hussein is ousted from power. The U.S. bombs Iran at will. the U.S. carried out 13,000 air strikes in the course of the first five or so weeks of the war, hitting wherever it wanted to hit in Iran. But none of these led in any short term or even in the long term, really, to the kinds of political outcomes, the kind of strategic outcomes that the U.S. was seeking. And that's why you would fight a war in the first place. Hopefully you don't have to fight one. But if you do, it should be towards a very clear and specific goal. And the U.S. hasn't been reaching those goals.

is paying enormous price for relatively limited gains. And it's been a lot about this huge emphasis on military power, which is quite extraordinary and quite impressive in terms of what it can do, but this failure to sort of work through or get to the political place the U.S. wants to be. And we've now seen it three times in 25 years. It's almost like the U.S. just doesn't learn the lessons from the last failed military. effort. That's really true, Mara. And sometimes even when they learn a lesson, it's maybe not the right lesson or the key lesson. I mean, Trump has made a very clear decision not to send ground troops into Iran, as the U.S. did in Iraq and Afghanistan. So there was no support for that.

Trump didn't want to do it. The American public didn't want to do it. But it's also limited what you can achieve if you're only bombing from the air. You're not going to easily clean out a very entrant French regime and get a whole different kind of political scenario in Iran if you're only bombing from the air. So it's a complete mismatch between the kinds of things he talked about achieving and the resources he devoted to achieving it. Well, and the president has said it campaigned on this repeatedly. He doesn't support forever wars. He doesn't want a forever war. And now he keeps talking about, oh, this will be over really soon. We're not going to be here for long. This is going to be really quick. But what's the endgame? Yeah, he didn't define that well at all during the war. He threw out multiple things. Now, he seems to have more or less settled. And we heard this again today. Iran will never get a nuclear weapon. So that's the reason he's the rationale he's giving for doing this. But it's not clear that this war has gone after Iran's nuclear program in any significant way. Now, you could argue that last June a year ago, when the U.S. and Israel bombed for 12 days are

really Israel bomb for 12 days, a U.S. bomb for a day. It did cause significant physical damage to Iran's nuclear program. A lot of its highly enriched uranium appears to be buried in a mountain. Other facilities were damaged. Iran could presumably rebuild over time. But in 12 days, the U.S. inflicted a lot of damage there. Not clear what additional damage or constraints the U.S. was able to impose on Iran's nuclear program in this campaign this year. And, you know, Trump says they'll never get a bomb, but there's negotiations ongoing. We don't know what the deal is going to be. He talks about how bad the Obama deal was or how much better his deal is, but there is no deal right now. Yeah, and, you know, we talk about the fact that the U.S. hasn't been very good at ending wars.

In this case, not being able to end it, carries a pretty high price because, you know, The U.S. is a superpower, and they were just, some people would argue, they were bested or at least fought to a draw by a much smaller power, Iran. And that's a very bad thing for the world, to have the world's biggest, strongest superpower fail against a much smaller adversary. That's not good for the future. Yeah, I mean, when you talk about the U.S. and Iran, there is an announcement. thing playing out with Russia, another country that certainly sees itself as a major global superpower, starting a war with Ukraine and then getting stuck, not really being able to finish it. You know, whatever Russian military might there was wasn't enough to overpower Ukraine.

And today, before that press conference, President Trump actually met with Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelensky there at NATO. Very similar. And what was so interesting about the NATO meeting is that Donald Trump, even though he did repeat the familiar attacks on NATO members, they were disloyal, they didn't come to help us. He said again that he wanted to take Greenland. But to me, the big takeaway from that meeting was that he was not pressuring Ukraine to agree to a deal that was good for Putin. Instead, he said that he was going to give Ukraine the right to make patriot defense systems. And that, I think, is probably the best.

outcome that the U.S. NATO allies could have hoped for, that he is willing to give armaments or at least help them make their own, something that the Ukrainians have been asking for for some time. Yeah, Mara, and I agree with you. I think this is a very important development. The only cautionary note I'd put here is it's hard to build a Patriot missile or else lots of people would be doing it making patriots or something very much like them. it's still considered the best defensive system against ballistic missiles, especially the kind Russia is firing. It was introduced in the first Gulf War back in 1991.

So it's been around for a long time, and there's still not enough. It has to be very careful about not to run its own supply down too low, and that's why they've given relatively few to Ukraine. So just having the license to make them is quite different. between getting all the components and all of the subcontractors all around the U.S. who contribute to building those kinds of weapons. So Ukraine just can't set up a factory and immediately start cranking them out, even if they have permission to do that. That said, they've been remarkable in being nimble and adaptable to build their own drones,

both offensive and defensive drones, to build their own cruise missiles, which are now striking deep inside Russia. So Ukraine has built this weapons industry that just didn't exist four years ago, but a patriot is really stretching it. European countries have air defense systems, but not something of this quality. So it would be something Ukraine would very much like to have in a development, but they need it today not two or five years from now. Right. But that doesn't change the general vibe shift that all of a sudden he's no longer denigrating Zelensky. You're absolutely right. He's respecting them as a country that at least has fought to a draw currently with a much, much bigger, stronger power.

Yeah, I mean, I think that this is a good opportunity for us to take a broader look just briefly, at least. The president was at this NATO summit. There are very big questions about whether the United States continues to be a good partner to its European allies. There are very big questions about the United States, about the place in the world of the United States and whether it is the exceptional superpower that it has been. So I guess, can you guys answer those questions? Yeah, I think that nothing that happened at this meeting changed the European belief that the U.S. can no longer be relied on as a NATO member and that they should continue what they've already started to do, which is decoupling from the United States, planning for a NATO without the U.S., even though that. That's not what they want. I don't think anything in this meeting changed that, but at least it wasn't a complete total conflagration. You know, he didn't say, I'm not going to honor Article 5.

I think this was probably the best that the European NATO members could have hoped for. Yeah, Marr, I certainly agree with that. And I also think, though, that the really unique superpower that the U.S. has is this alliance not only with NATO, but around the world in Asia and parts of the Middle East and other countries. And if NATO breaks down, it's its biggest, strongest, most important alliance, and it frays elsewhere, that really diminishes U.S. power. You talk to anybody in the military or the national security establishment. And they say it's not just U.S. power. It's the ability to work with partners. And Trump has come up against this again in the war with Iran, just needing NATO bases to get U.S. planes into the Middle

East to carry out attacks in Iran. So it's these partnerships that are so, so critical to the U.S. And if those fall apart, then you have to do a lot more of the heavy lifting yourself. Yeah. So what you're saying is that friends are important. Yes, absolutely. All right, we're going to leave it there for today. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover politics. I'm Greg Myrie. I cover national security. And I'm Mara Liason, senior national political correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.