Today, Explained - Apocalypse Not Now

Episode Date: April 8, 2026

President Donald Trump moved from an existential threat to a very tentative ceasefire. This episode was produced by Ariana Aspuru, edited by Amina Al-Sadi, fact-checked by Gabriel Dunatov, engineered by Patrick Boyd and David Tatasciore, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. President Donald Trump mimics a Iranian protester being shot during a news conference about the war in Iran. Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images. Listen to Today, Explained ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. New Vox members get $20 off their membership right now. Transcript at ⁠vox.com/today-explained-podcast.⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On Tuesday, the president more or less threatened Iran with a genocide. We got a full range of reactions. CNBC had questions. Deadline that President Trump has sat 8 p.m. Has threatened to destroy a civilization. How does an investor process that? Is it a bigger upside risk or downside risk? A lady in Georgia, interviewed by MS Now, had answers.

It's giving war crime. We don't just annihilate people because we can. And Tucker Carlson took a stand. If you work in the White House, we're in the U.S. military. Now it's time to say no, absolutely not. And Democrats, of course, said the president should be removed from office. Even the American Pope weighed in. A tax on civilian infrastructure is against international law,

but that it is also a sign of the hatred, the division, the destruction, the human being is capable of. But then it may be worked? Apocalypse, not now on Today Explained. Today, explain Sean Ramos from here with Alex Ward National Security Reporter at the Wall Street Journal. Alex, it's been roughly 12 hours since we got a ceasefire in the war with Iran. Is it real? Who knows, man.

It's the first day of a two-week ceasefire. Who knows where this is going to go? I mean, at this point, we could have the war end, or it could restart. The Strait of Hormuz could be open. It could be closed. The buried uranium could be taken out. It could be left in Iran. There's so many open questions at this point.

The only thing we know for sure is that as of this moment, the U.S. and Iran will not be attacking each other. But that could change. And so the U.S. and Iran have stopped bombing each other, but those aren't the only two players in this war. What about Israel? So Israel came out with a statement on Tuesday night in which they said, yeah, okay, well, like, we hear you. There's a ceasefire. But also, we're not going to stop attacking. webinar, which is a sort of the side but related war to all of this.

Well, the military has just launched an attack on Beirut's southern suburbs. The assault targeted, densely populated residential areas. This Wednesday morning, an Israeli strike destroyed a building in the southern city of Teir, following a warning from the IDF to evacuate. For many weeks, government officials have said that regardless of what happens with the war in Iran, their operations will continue in Lebanon. You also have Gulf countries we should know, right? A lot of those countries are American allies, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, etc.,

who don't necessarily want Iran to just kind of be there, you know, a wounded regime that could reconstitute. They kind of want, you know, Iran defeated, decimated, unable to threaten them anymore. You know, as much as Trump wants to sort of play this as it's the U.S. and Iran and the deal been made and everything's going to be hunky dory going forward, there are a lot of other countries that have a say in this. You know, there's usually that saying in conflict that the enemy gets a vote. That is still remains true in the case of Iran, but it also, I guess you can say allies also have a vote.

And if you're Israel, if you're some Gulf countries, you're going to be pushing Trump hard to maybe not end this right away, or at least not ended until a lot of other conditions are met. Let's talk about how we got here, because the president addressed the nation in what I would say It was like a rather low-energy broadcast a week ago today. Operation, epic fury, targeting the world's number one state sponsor of terror, Iran. And there was no mention of a ceasefire, and yet here we are a week later, and we have one. How did that happen?

Here's what the Trump administration would say. They would say Trump is a master negotiator. He threatened to bomb very important things in Iran. Had Iran refused our terms, the next targets would have been their power. power plants, their bridges, and oil and energy infrastructure. Targets they could not defend and could not realistically rebuild. It would have taken them decades. And we were locked and loaded.

And that that led to Ron to cower and to basically beg to come under the table and end this war. That'd be their argument. He spared those targets because Iran accepted the ceasefire under overwhelming pressure. The other argument, which I've heard, you know, we've reported in others is basically Trump wanted out of this war a while ago. He's tired of the war. He's pretty much done. He wants to go do other things. You'll notice how often he brings out like mockups of his new ballroom and he talks about Cuba and then in other things. Like he's he's focused on other stuff.

And we should also note that Republicans have been tallying Trump for a while. You know, the midterms are coming and this war is unpopular and this is sort of an anchor weighing the party down. I think the proof is in Trump's truth social message last night in which he said We received a 10-point proposal from Iran and believe it is a workable basis on which to negotiate. Almost all of the various points of past contention have been agreed to between the United States and Iran, but the two-week period will allow the agreement to be finalized and consummated. Well, what's in that plan has basically been Iran's maximum positions for a while. Now, again, I want to note this is, again, day one of a two-week ceasefire.

Both sides are very far apart on their issues. The American 15-point plan and the Iranian 10-point plan are as diametrically opposed as possible. So there's a lot of differences they have to bridge here in a two-week period, which seems short. Does that mean the bombs fly down the line? No, but they could, right? This is just a pause. This is not the end of the war as of this moment, even though the Trump administration is kind of talking about it in those terms. Operation Epic Fury. Less than six weeks, clear mission, decisive action, overwhelming firepower, America first, a historic battlefield victory.

If the Trump administration and the president himself are nodding to this 10-point peace plan that Iran proposed, does that mean that Iran kind of won here? There are no winners in this war, and not in the sense of, like, war produces no winners. Like, strategically speaking, everyone has lost this war. But we still don't know exactly who's, like, lost less until we know what the ends of these negotiations are. I mean, let's take a quick strategic step back here. If you're Iran, you've just had your military decimated, your regime decimated, you by virtue of shooting Gulf countries, have lost, you know, decades of work to try to ingratiate yourself back to the region. It is now a more isolated, weaker, pariah state. And you've got the U.S. and the global community trying to reopen the Strait of Hormuz,

and you've got more monitoring about which kinds of countries might be sending you weapons to rebuild your military. On the U.S. side of the ledger, yes, you have decimated Iran's military regime, blah, blah, blah, blah. But what did that cost? That cost Gulf allies being mad at you. And now their whole strategy of being seen as this oasis of investment and progress within the Middle East, That's gone because Iran gets still threatened them. You've got allies in Asia who are struggling with their energy needs because of the straight-Hurman-moos closure. You've got a weaker NATO, let's say, because Trump keeps bashing allies over this war.

You've got the U.S., which has expended tons of munitions to bomb Iranian targets, which, you know, I think most analysts would say harms future plans for a potential war with China over Taiwan, therefore lowering deterrence. and then you've isolated the U.S. more on the global stage because no one was really happy about this war. I think what ends up sort of tilting it in terms of in the way I would term it, who lost less is what happens with the Strait of Hormuz, right? Because that is the economic global choke point. It was open before this war started, and now Iran's grip on it is stronger than before. And they're the ones charging money for, you know, safe passage. So does Iran still get to do that?

As of this moment, they're still doing it. Does that continue to happen? Or does it open up again? Or as Trump suggested this morning, there'll be some sort of joint toll-sharing venture between the U.S. and Iran? Who knows? Okay. So this is all about the straight. Still, this has been about the straight for a while now.

What happens next? Well, it sounds like there's going to be talks in Islamabad starting Friday. And it's unclear if that's going to be direct or indirect talks. By direct talks, I mean the U.S. and Iran speaking like, directly across the table from each other, talking face to face. By indirect, I mean a mediator, basically, it's a weird game of diplomatic telephone where the Iranians would talk to the mediator, and that could be Pakistan, Egypt, Turkey. They give their points to that mediator. The mediator relays those points to the U.S., and then back and forth they go. So it's just a weird diplomatic

dance. The greater sticking point is going to be whether Iran has the right to enrich uranium down the line, because that's one thing that they say that they have, you know, a right to under national law, under certain treaties. They say they need it for medical research or other kinds of scientific progress. And so it is unfair of the U.S. or the national community to force Iran to give up its enrichment rights. The U.S. will basically demand that they don't do that.

Or at least that if they were to enrich, the U.S. would have immense oversight over that enrichment program. It's kind of shocking how we got here. The president did a post, as he so often does. But this time it was a post-threatening, genocide. And like, did that work? And if so, is that just how we're going to roll now? It is shocking to see an American president basically, like, threatened to wipe an entire civilization

off the map, but we should also know, or note, I should say, that in the first term, Trump basically threatened to do that to North Korea, right, during the whole firing fury and red button stuff. I think President Trump, when it comes to his diplomacy and his foreign policy, is effectively like Seth Rogan's character, and I believe the movie knocked up, in which he's dancing with Catherine Hegel and he's doing like a dice dance move and his team goes like, dude, I think he's doing the dice thing too much.

That's really all he got. Like that's how Trump does this. He gets to a point, he threatens a major escalation and he either encourages like an escalation of the war or some sort of climb down in which it's unclear whether the U.S. actually gets more benefit than less.

So I think like this is his dice move. Escalate to de-escalate is Trump's knocked-up dice move. Now, where we go from here? Expect more of it, right? I mean, if the Iranians aren't playing ball diplomatically in the way Trump wants, Trump's probably going to threaten to restart this war.

I bet on that. There was no question America was going to wipe the floor with the Iranians. That was not even a debate. The question was, could you win, quote, unquote. And the win, as described by the United States, was basically stop Iran from ever getting a nuclear weapon and, you know, it impeded from threatening everyone ever again. Well, they've got a grip on the Strait of Hormuz.

They still have the nuclear material. That might go, but, like, can you guarantee Iran's ever going to get a nuclear weapon again? You can't. Their regime is still in place. You know, that could still survive. Trump is claiming it's a new regime, but it ain't. They're just a different group of the same regime figures. That's where we're at.

Does it end? It really just depends on, like, Trump's whims at this point. This ceasefire situation is sure to change, and Alex Ward will be on top of it for you at WSJ.com. Trump's threat to destroy an entire civilization got a lot of attention because it felt like a real departure from a wartime president, but it's very much in Pete Hegsett's wheelhouse when we're back on today explained. Support for the show comes from Shopify. Every thriving business starts with a series of what-if questions. and Shopify says there's what if I fail but you should also consider this one

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Yes, sir, quick question from Today Explained. Excuse me, why are you so rude? Just wait. Today Explain is back. before the war in Iran began, the president rebranded the Department of Defense to something more offensive, the Department of War. His secretary, Pete Hegeseth, was fully on board with the change because his whole philosophy is something called maximum lethality. We asked Benjamin Wallace Wells from the New Yorker to tell us how that philosophy was realized in Pete and Donald's first big war.

What Pete Higseth has wanted for many years, the kind of cause that animated him and that he brought to the Pentagon, the reason he took the job was to unleash, he would say, the ability of the American warrior, the American soldier, to fight wars with fewer restrictions. We're crushing the enemy in an overwhelming display of technical skill and military force. We will not relent until the enemy is totally and decisively defeated. He has made since he became Secretary of Defense Secretary of War in the administration's branding, the phrase maximum lethality, his watchword, he talks about that all the time, unleashing lethality, unleashing a warrior ethos, unleashing the American soldier, and pursued that at every opportunity. Maximum lethality, not tepid legality. violent effect, not politically correct.

We're going to raise up warriors, not just defenders. Pete Hegseth is really driven by this idea of maximum lethality, although up until a year and a half ago, a little less, he was sort of driven by this idea theoretically. Now he's in charge of the United States Armed Forces and in charge of a war. So how is he executing this concept of his? I'd say a couple of things. The first is, you know, it's interesting to note in all of the reporting that we've seen about the president inside the White House from many different outlets that Hegset is the only person who seems, who's in the president's circle, who seems as optimistic about, as Trump does, about the progress of the war and the possibilities of the war. So you see, you know, J.D. Vance, you know, distancing himself very actively from the war. You see, you see.

Marco Rubio taking an ambivalent position. General Keane is pretty clear to let it be known that he sees, you know, risks as well as possibilities. But Hegset has been gung-ho the whole way. We're winning decisively with brutal efficiency, total air dominance, and an unbreakable will to accomplish the president's objectives on our timeline. We stay locked on the target because here at the Department of War, that's our job. And so, you know, his approach to the war, I think, has been that American lethality will deliver whatever the president wants. You know, in the very first hours of the war, you have this massive bombing raid that kills Ayatollah Ali Kamenei. And then President Trump comes out a few days later and says, actually, in that raid,

not only was Kamani killed, but some of the other senior figures in the Iranian regime who we had hoped might succeed, Hamani. It's dead. And now we have another group. They may be dead also based on reports. So I guess you have a third wave coming in. Pretty sure we're not going to know anybody. Within about a day of the war beginning,

there are 175 people killed in a school in southern Iran. Presumably, through a targeting error, though we're still not totally sure exactly what happened there. But in both of these cases, you know, you see a kind of program of certain. of unleashed lethality, a lethality of phrase that President Trump is now using, you know, a kind of expansive, unconstrained form of bombing. And I think you can see in both those cases that it, you know, it kind of undermines the war aims of the United States and the state of war aims

of the president, you know, both in eliminating some of the potential replacements in the case of the initial bombing. And then also in making it just a little harder to imagine the, Iranian public getting behind and joining in with this with this bombing raid and engaging in the kind of uprising that President Trump has said he wants to wants to trigger. Well, how much of his approach do we think is coming from his own belief system and this concept of maximum lethality and how much of it is like so many in his cabinet just wanting to please the president? It's interesting to see, to think of Vance, Rubio, and Hegsseth as each representing one kind of idea of the president.

Vance represents the sort of nationalism of the president. Rubio represents maybe a more traditional Republican transactional approach. And Hegsyth, I think, just represents the full, you know, military maximalism. And I think that Hegset has become more influential because he is more distinct in this moment, you know, because he has been the one who has, I think, successfully seen what the president wants to do on Iran and made himself sort of the spokesman an enabler of that. If you kill Americans, if you threaten Americans anywhere on earth, we will hunt you down without apology and without hesitation, and we will kill you. It was the American warrior unleashed. It was the kind of war-fighting American spirit that comes with a clear mission against a determined enemy.

I do, you know, think that there's a pretty good chance that this doesn't turn out so well, you know, in public opinion and the progress of the war. And I'm not sure that it's been like a very, a very, you know, savvy long-term play for Hegset. But I think we should remember that, you know, Hegset, there was, you know, Higgs Seth did not have a political base or position or role in the world before Trump tapped him. He had never been a senior military commander. He served in the military as a younger man. He was a weekend co-host of Fox and Friends.

But if I had a dollar for every parent who came up to me out on the road and said, my kid went to college as a God-fearing patriot. And they came back a Bernie socialist who questions America. I'd be a rich man. He owes his position in the world to President Trump. He's, you know, according to public opinion now, you know, deeply unpopular as the war is. And so, you know, it's not crazy for him to sort of take a shot. And if we're thinking just sort of, you know, in pure personal, you know, personal terms,

it's not crazy for him to take a shot and try to position himself as, you know, the face of, you know, the kind of maximalist face of this war. But I do think that there may be real costs for the rest of us of his advocacy. Another thing that feels significant to this conversation and feels like maybe a companion piece to this idea of maximum lethality is Pete Hegset, unlike, say, Marco Rubio, are the members of the Trump cabinet, is really tying this war and his approach to God. Yeah, and I would say to a Christian god, even more specifically. specifically. He's specifically asked during military press conferences for people to pray for them every day on bended knee with your family, in your schools, in your churches, in the name of Jesus Christ. Another element that matters here is he's referred to the Iranian regime as apocalyptic, you know,

and together with delivering prayers, you know, from the podium, whereas putatively, you know, giving technical updates on the progress of the war, it does give an atmosphere of holy war to the whole operation, which is, you know, I think really unfortunate. Crazy regimes like Iran hell-bent on prophetic Islamist delusions cannot have nuclear weapons. It's common sense. Let me pose a question to you that we asked Alex Ward early in the show.

I mean, Pete's whole thing is maximum lethality. The president seemed to want to go even further. with his post that got so much attention and reaction, the whole world was on edge. And then maybe it kind of worked. We get a ceasefire out of it that, you know, however tentative it might be. Does that prove something about the concept of maximum lethality as a foreign policy? Well, I mean, if you threaten nuclear war, you can spook some people. Like, I think that that's pretty intuitive.

But I don't know that that really proves anything in terms of foreign policy. Look, we're looking at a situation still where, Iran seems, again, all tentative, but seems like they're likely to have full control of the Strait of War moves, which was, you know, a major purported aim of the war, where the regime is still in control, where the United States has alienated a huge number of its own allies around the world with its willingness to play brinksmanship. So in the narrow sense of Trump had managed to get himself into a real trap. And then by threatening enormous, you know,

lethality, to use Hegss's word, he was able to maneuver out. I guess it worked, but it's really hard for me to say that in any bigger picture sense, this was effective. I have to look back at this whole month plus adventure in Iran and just say, what was this all for? It sort of feels to me like a whole lot of fury and bombs and, you know, death. And it's really hard for me to see a lot that's come from it.

Benjamin Wallace Wells is a staff writer at The New Yorker. Ariana Espuru produced for today, explained from Vox. Amina al-Sadi, edited Gabriel Donatov, fact-checked Patrick Boyd and David Tadishore mixed. Jack Dech from Politico, also help with today's show. Thank you, Jack.