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- [00:01]
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- [00:35]
Tamara Keith
Hey there. It's the NPR Politics podcast. I'm Tamara Keith, and I have a new title, Senior Political Correspondent.
- [00:42]
Greg Myhre
Congratulations, Tamara.
- [00:43]
Mara Liasson
Thank you.
- [00:44]
Greg Myhre
I'm Greg Myhre. I cover national security.
- [00:46]
Mara Liasson
And I'm Mara Liasson, senior national political correspondent.
- [00:50]
Tamara Keith
And today on the show, President Trump held a press conference at the White House to discuss the war with Iran. During it, the president shared the harrowing rescue of the American weapons officer who was shot down over Iran.
- [01:04]
Greg Myhre
I ordered the U.S. armed forces to do whatever was necessary to bring our brave warriors back home. A risky decision because we could have ended up with 100 dead as opposed to one or two. It's a hard decision to make, but in the United States military, we leave no American behind. We don't do it.
- [01:25]
Tamara Keith
And he continued to level threats against Iran. If it doesn't open up the Strait
- [01:30]
Greg Myhre
of Hormuz, the entire country could be taken out in one night. And that night might be tomorrow night.
- [01:37]
Tamara Keith
Greg, I want to start with you. We just played a clip there where President Trump continues his threats against Iran. Did we learn anything new about the president's plans?
- [01:48]
Greg Myhre
No, not in specific terms. And he said, well, I can't tell you the plan. He said he has a plan, but he can't tell it. But the question of what sort of military action he might take after this extraordinary threat that he's been making. And very specifically yesterday, talking about going after bridges and power stations and a lot of question about, you know, aren't these civilian targets? And, you know, is that a legitimate way to prosecute this war? So he's put himself in a corner. Tomorrow night would be the fourth deadline he set for a massive operation that, at least in general terms, he's describing as a big escalation in the war. But he did not give any details, for example, on the Strait of Hormuz, how that might be dealt with. Is he thinking about a military operation for that? Is he talking about negotiations? And it was. And I'll just finish with saying it's a very different tone from his speech last Wednesday night when he talked about two or three more Weeks of war. He sounded like he wanted to wind this down. And today he's very much talking about a possible escalation of the war.
- [02:58]
Tamara Keith
Yeah. Mara, I want to turn to you. We came into this press conference wondering why the president was holding a press conference, what he was going to announce in the end. It seems that he really just wanted to talk about this daring rescue mission.
- [03:15]
Mara Liasson
Yes. I think the reason for the press conference is that he wanted to bask in the glory of a successful rescue mission. The one part of this war that has gone according to plan and successfully is the military part. The military objectives have for the most part been achieved. It's the political objectives that haven't been. He has talked about regime change. Yes. Some of the people have changed. They actually have. The, the leader has the same name and he's younger. And he's younger. No nuclear weapons, no nuclear enrichment, keeping the Strait of Hormuz open, unconditional surrender. All of those political objectives have. He's gone back and forth on that. So I think the purpose of today's press conference was to really retell the incredibly dramatic and, and with a happy ending operation that the US Military conducted to get back this airman. And what we don't know unless we should say, the press conference is continuing to go on as we're speaking. He hasn't told us what he's going to do if Iran does not open the Strait of Hormuz by 8pm tomorrow. He says we're going to take. The entire country can be taken out in one night and it might be tomorrow night. He's made threats like this before. He's walked them back. He might do that, you know, 24 hours from now. He was very. When somebody tells you I have a plan but I'm not gonna tell you what it is, that's a pretty classic bluff.
- [04:45]
Tamara Keith
Greg. I do want to go through this really harrowing tale of the rescue of two airmen who were shot down over Iran and both were ultimately rescued. The first part of this press conference was devoted to a recounting of this rescue in pretty minute detail. Down to the details about all of the different aircraft and timing. They left some details out, but tell us about it.
- [05:15]
Greg Myhre
Yeah. Extraordinary tale, Tam. So this F15 gets shot down before dawn Friday in Iran. First US aircraft to get shot down. The US is is able to locate one of the true crew members, the pilot. And then they conduct an operation with more than 20 planes according. Or 20 aircraft according to President Trump flying seven hours into Iran in daylight to rescue this Pilot bring him out safely. He's injured and is in Germany at a hospital now, but the other one is still missing. And it wasn't until Saturday morning that he was able to use his beacon and make contact with Americans. And it was the CIA who was able to locate him. He had an injury. He climbed a mountain of some sort and hid in a crevice in order to try to evade Iranians who were coming after him. The president said 155 aircraft were sent into Iran to find him. There were all sorts of deception efforts. The CIA was spreading information that he'd been picked up on the ground and was being sent out of the country and ground. They had these planes in different areas to confuse the Iranians about where he might be. President Trump said seven different areas. They landed two planes that were going to take people in and out, involving hundreds of forces. They found him. They got him to the planes. The planes were stuck in wet sand as President Trump described it.
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Tamara Keith
Repeatedly.
- [06:51]
Greg Myhre
Described it repeatedly. They had to fly in additional planes to take everybody out on a seven hour flight and then blow up the planes that they couldn't get out of the wet sand. The pilot is safe. He's also in Germany. As President Trump kept making movie references. You know, this could soon be a major motion picture starring Tom Cruise.
- [07:15]
Tamara Keith
So one question I have for you is that the President and other members of his administration, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, referred to this as a difficult decision, or, you know, only the only the President could make this decision. Is it, was this a difficult decision? Certainly it was. It was a daring rescue. But it strikes me that this is a principle of the American military that you don't leave a man behind.
- [07:43]
Greg Myhre
Oh, absolutely. President Trump said that we'll never leave an American warrior or serviceman behind. The military mindset is very much in that frame. So. And then the US Is prepared. It has all sorts of resources. And I think one extraordinary thing. The US Tried to rescue American diplomats who were held hostage in Iran in 1980 that failed miserably. Helicopters crashed and burned in the desert. At that point, they created all of these, completely revamped the system to carry out these rescues. That's when, for example, Seal Team 6 was created to do exactly this kind of thing. And here we are 46 years later, and one of these rescues is carried out in Iran and went more or less flawlessly.
- [08:31]
Tamara Keith
Yeah, Mara. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and CIA Director John Radcliffe, President Trump also all kept bringing up the fact that this rescue happened over Easter. Hegseth went as far as comparing the pilot's rescue to the resurrection of Jesus.
- [08:48]
Greg Myhre
Shot down on a Friday, Good Friday, hidden in a cave, a crevice all of Saturday, and rescued on Sunday, flown out of Iran as the sun was rising on Easter Sunday, a pilot reborn all home and accounted for a nation rejoicing God is good.
- [09:15]
Mara Liasson
This isn't the first time that Secretary Hegseth has used religious imagery to send the message that God is taking care of the United States. And Donald Trump said earlier in the press conference, God was watching us, and we were in Easter territory. That's a feature, I think, of the Trump administration. The President did get a question about the Strait of Hormuz. He said, I can't talk about a ceasefire, but we have willing participants on the other side. He's done this before, saying. Saying that he now has a whole new crop of Iranians who are more moderate and less radicalized that he can negotiate with. But he didn't give any clues as to whether he thinks that he'll have to use ground troops. He sent a lot of troops to the region. Up until now, he has acted as if he thinks air power alone, just bombing them back to the Stone Age, will get Iran to comply. There's no evidence that that's ever happened in the past. And I think for a lot of his supporters, that could be a red line. I mean, sending ground troops makes this a whole different kind of concept.
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Tamara Keith
Yeah, I mean, I want to talk about another sort of political red line that has been crossed, which is that gasoline is now $4 a gallon. I think we got a little bit less of it today than in his address to the nation last week. But how is President Trump talking about the sacrifice that Americans are making?
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Mara Liasson
Well, he has said that the sacrifice was worth it. It's just a very small blip. He says that oil prices will come down. The Strait of Hormuz will open naturally. He has said that this is a sacrifice that Americans can make and it's worth it to get rid of the regime in Iran. But on the other hand, he has political pain points that get reached when the markets tank or when gas gets over $4 a gallon. And we've seen him change course when the political pain is too much. And so the question is, he has said this would only take six weeks. We're now in week. How much longer can the President do this with the Strait of Hormuz being closed by Iran? And I don't think he can declare victory credibly unless the Strait of Hormuz is open.
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Tamara Keith
And a reminder, the Strait of Hormuz was open before this war started. It is now a piece of leverage that Iran has that they weren't using before the war.
- [11:42]
Greg Myhre
A tremendous piece of leverage. In fact, I think if you ignored everything else about the war and just focused on the Strait of Hormuz, you could tell where this is going. And quite miraculously, actually, the strait has been open despite all the Mideast turmoil in recent decades. It really wasn't back. And you have to go back to the 1980s or the first Gulf War with the US in the early 1991, when there was disruption, any significant disruption of oil coming out of the Gulf. So this has been a point that the US Fifth Fleet is based in Bahrain. They are there to help make sure the Strait is safe and secure. The US Military has planned this, thought about this literally for decades. So this is by no means a surprise, but it's a huge problem right now. And a military operation not only to reopen it, but then to keep it open would take a lot of time, especially when Iran could disrupt traffic by just occasionally hitting one of those tankers that go through every day.
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Mara Liasson
Greg, is that possible without ground troops?
- [12:44]
Greg Myhre
Well, I'm not in charge of the Pentagon, so I don't have to make that decision. I think there's two ways to do it. One is to negotiate a solution. Another is the US Navy has resources in the region, but not perhaps enough to do it. But you're talking about there's like 2,000 ships, many of them oil tankers, stuck on either side of the strait. And the US has maybe 20 warships in the region doing other tasks. They're not there to escort ships. You know, do the math. That's 100 tankers or 100 ships for every U.S. navy ship. And Iran can hit those ships from distance with a missile, with a drone on land. You know, in the past, you had to worry about sea mines or something immediate. Now Iran has much more significant capabilities to strike from distance. And it doesn't have to hit everyone just once every so often to scare the other ships from trying to go through the strait.
- [13:38]
Tamara Keith
Okay, let's take a quick break. More in a moment.
- [13:42]
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- [14:01]
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- [14:11]
Greg Myhre
I have kids under 18, so like, time is very limited. That's why at BetterHelp, our therapists try to have sessions, sometimes at night, depending on the therapist, or during the weekend. So I think that's what we need to tell the parents. You're not alone. We can help you out.
- [14:27]
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- [15:08]
Tamara Keith
and we're back. Mara On Sunday, on Easter Sunday, President Trump put out a post on social media that contained expletives. It ended with Praise be to Allah, but it started with Tuesday will be power plant day and bridge day all wrapped up in one Iran. There will be nothing like it. Open the straight, expletive, expletive, expletive.
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Mara Liasson
Well, there was one expletive. Open the expletive straight, you crazy bastards. I mean, it sounded like a TV show.
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Tamara Keith
Yes, okay. Yes, that was the other word I was dancing around. So what do you make of that? And did we learn anything more today about what he meant?
- [15:53]
Mara Liasson
No, except for the only thing he said today to add to the threat was how the whole country can be taken out in one night and the night might be tomorrow night. So he's kept to this threat. It's hard to see how these threats get him to where he wants to go. The Iranians have become pretty good at trolling. The president and the speaker of the parliament, who happens to be one of the people that the US Is negotiating with, said if the US Gets three more victories like this, meaning three more planes downed, they'll be utterly ruined. So I don't see where he thinks these threats are going to go unless he truly wants to carry this out and make Iran look like Gaza or Chechnya.
- [16:43]
Greg Myhre
There seem to be some new peace efforts going. The ones that we've heard about in the last week or two seem to have stalled. There's apparently a new proposal that's floating around out there. It seems to be Coming from Pakistan and some other countries that are acting as intermediaries, not directly from the US Or Iran. One of the components seems to be a 45 day ceasefire, although the Iranian media has already taken that down and said we're not interested that Iran is not interested in that. President Trump has sort of said very vaguely that there are talks that are going well. Steve Witkoff was there in the room with him. But I can't imagine that that would work for the United States either. Iran doesn't want a temporary ceasefire. They don't want to keep getting hit again and again like they are now and last summer and before that by Israel. The US doesn't want a ceasefire either. You're forced to keep those troops in place and still a lot of the difficulty of maintaining a war operation even if you're not fighting. So I think both sides are looking for a olution, not a 45 day ceasefire that doesn't end the war.
- [17:53]
Mara Liasson
Well, at this point, we have to think, what would that off ramp look like for Trump? That's what a lot of people thought the Wednesday night speech was going to be about. Declare victory and leave. Although, as I've said before, I think it's hard for him to declare victory if the Strait of Hormuz is controlled by Iran. But he has dangled some of the criteria for an off ramp that people were dealing with are so reasonable, they want to make a deal. Does he just announce that the deal is in the works?
- [18:21]
Tamara Keith
But then he also says if they can make a deal and it's not clear who they're talking to and whether they have authority. Greg, I do want to ask because President Trump has talked about hitting civilian targets in Iran, he's talked about hitting power plants, desalination plants. Aren't civilian targets supposed to be off limits under the Geneva Convention?
- [18:46]
Greg Myhre
Absolutely. It says if you intentionally target civilian infrastructure, that is a war crime. Now, there's a gray area. If a military is using fuel from a fuel depot, is that a military target or a civilian target? If they're both using it. But some of the things he seems to be talking about certainly seem to fall more heavily on the civilian side. A desalination plant of drinking water, which, while in use in Iran, is hugely critical to the Gulf Arab countries where they get 80, 90% of their drinking water from desalination plants which could be hit. And at least one or two cases have been hit by Iran. So not only is there the legal question, even if those war crime cases are not prosecuted with any regularity, but just if it goes both ways. And Iran has certainly been firing at many civilian targets. But if Iran hit a desalination plant, you would need a mass exodus, perhaps in one of these Gulf countries. So you have to consider, do you want to go down that road if the military advantage would be relatively minimal since Iran doesn't heavily depend on desalination.
- [19:57]
Tamara Keith
Another question I have is the president had previously said that Iran's air defenses were completely wiped out, that Iran is basically has no military, and yet a US Aircraft was shot out of the sky and it took an incredible mission to rescue the airmen. Is there a mismatch between the way the president has described Iran's military and the reality?
- [20:23]
Greg Myhre
I think, yes, somewhat. I guess I would point to what we've heard from the military, and they've been more precise, saying that, yes, Iran still has missiles and drones that they can fire, and the US and its allies have shot those down in overwhelming numbers. But the US has flown thousands of missions, as has Israel. And this was the first plane to get shot down on Friday. And then a second one got shot down as part of the rescue and some helicopters got hit. So it can spiral very quickly. The US And Israel can still bomb at will. The risk is low, but it's not zero.
- [21:02]
Tamara Keith
Right. And I guess that's what we saw. Since we're here in the studio and not there in the room, I'm wondering if there are any questions that you would like to ask the president right now.
- [21:14]
Greg Myhre
What is an acceptable outcome in the Strait of Hormuz? You know, does it need to be fully reopened? Does it need to be partially reopened? Can it be negotiated, open, or would you have to carry out a military operation? And I don't think you'd get a straight answer, but that would be my question.
- [21:31]
Mara Liasson
And mine would simply be, do you think you can do this with air power alone, or will you have to put US Troops on the ground?
- [21:37]
Tamara Keith
Okay, let's leave it there for today. You can always find more coverage of the day's news@npr.org and on your local member station. And don't forget to hit the follow button wherever you get your podcasts, so you always get our latest episodes in your feed. I'm Tamara Keith, senior political correspondent.
- [21:55]
Greg Myhre
I'm Greg Myy, and I cover national security. Security.
- [21:57]
Mara Liasson
And I'm Mara Liasson, senior national political correspondent.
- [22:01]
Tamara Keith
And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics podcast.
- [22:11]
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- [22:39]
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