
The on-again, off-again war is on again. But we still don't know the point of it all or how it will end.
Loading summary
Tom Nichols
Four Americans died last week in a war with Iran that our government has told us repeatedly was over or nearly finished. Private Isabella Gonzalez was 19. Her friends in Texas told CBS News she wanted people to think of her as brave, and they do.
Anonymous Pentagon Analyst
We're really proud of her and we just wish we could see her again.
Tom Nichols
First Lieutenant Tyler Feehan was 25. He planned to go to law school. His mom and dad say he liked to quote Elle Woods. What? Like it's hard. Sergeant Angel Rompersad was 28. She was from Ozone Park, Queens. They died in Jordan. Sergeant Michael Emanuel Swinton, who was 30, died in Iraq. His wife wrote on Facebook, I will never recover from this. What is going on in Iran. The Trump administration from the beginning has offered inconsistent messaging about the purpose of this war and about the plans to get out of it. On Today explained from Vox. The war is back on. What we know and what we don't and why we don't.
Podcast Host/Announcer
Support for this show today comes from Anthropic, the team behind Claude. Claude is the AI for minds that don't stop at good enough. It's the collaborator that actually understands your entire workflow and thinks with you. Whether you're debugging code at midnight or strategizing your next business move, Claude extends your thinking to tackle the problems that matter with deep research. Claude's research capabilities go way deeper than basic web search, comprehensive research, reliable analysis with proper citations, turning hours of research into minutes for problems worth solving. You can get started with Claude at Claude AI Todayexplained. That's Claude AI Todayexplained. Support for the show today comes from Apple News Plus. Apple News plus has everything you're into all in one place. Over 500 top publications covering local and national news. Food, sports, plus daily puzzles, audio and more. New subscribers. Try it free for one month at News Apple Learn terms apply. This is TODAY Explained.
Robbie Grammer
My name is Robbie Grammer. I'm a national security reporter at the Wall Street Journal.
Tom Nichols
All right, let's start on June 17th. President Trump presents the American people with this memorandum of understanding with Iran.
Donald Trump
On Sunday, we reached an agreement with Iran that achieves everything we set out to accomplish. Everything and much more.
Tom Nichols
And he and Vice President J.D. vance suggest that this marks the beginning of the end of the war.
Pete Hegseth
You see people, both the hardliners, the more political people saying our relationship with the United States over the past 47 years has been a mistake. Let's turn over a new leaf.
Tom Nichols
What was in the mou?
Robbie Grammer
Yeah, well, look, this MOU was never supposed to be a final peace deal. It was supposed to be the start of peace talks. But what was in the MoU was importantly a cessation of hostilities both in Iran and in Lebanon, where the US Ally Israel had been fighting against one of Iran's most powerful proxy forces, Hezboll. And Iran committing to never develop or procure a nuclear weapon. And talks about reopening the Strait of Hormuz, this really important strategic choke point through which a lot of the world's oil, gas, energy demands flow. And of course, flash forward over a month from now, and the two sides are, are striking each other again. And so it's brought up this really important question. Is the MOU worth the piece of paper that it was written on? And that's something that, you know, American officials, a lot of our allies, members of Congress are really, are really wrestling with at this point.
Tom Nichols
Do we know how things started to fall apart? Like, what was the moment when the MOU became possibly not worth the paper it's printed on?
Robbie Grammer
Well, there's two ways to look at this. One is its death by a thousand cuts that after this MoU was signed, Iran didn't actually quite reopen the Strait of Hormuz fully to let tanker traffic through that there was a small series of tit for tat strikes where Iran would target some ships that were going through the strait and the US Would in turn launch limited strikes against Iranian military targets. But there's also a very valid argument to be made that, that this MOU was sort of, was sort of dead from the beginning. And that is to say, you know, the entire point of this war was that the US Wanted Iran to abandon its goals to obtain a nuclear weapon.
Donald Trump
That's was all about. That was about 99% Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.
Robbie Grammer
The Iranian regime. Has it done that? Has it shifted its goals? The answer, everyone agrees, is no. Even after all of the pummeling, even after the US And Israel took out Iran's top leadership and some of its top generals, the Iranian regime, which has proved incredibly resilient in the face of this war, hasn't backed down.
Tom Nichols
So we are, of course, being reminded that the US Is at war in some really unfortunate ways. We had three American service members killed in Jordan last Friday. Video circulating online appears to show Iranian missiles hitting a military base in Jordan. What happened there?
Robbie Grammer
Iran has continued to try to hit US Military bases, some of its Gulf allies, with drones and missiles. And up to this point, the United States has been devastatingly effective at blocking these, at shooting these down with missile interceptors with counter drone equipment with targeting some Iranian drone and missile sites before they're launched. The problem here is sort of like a very tragic law of averages. You know, at a certain point, Iran is going to get lucky as this drags on. And also the US Is starting to run low on interceptors, according to officials we've spoken to. So there was this very tragic incident where an Iranian missile struck a US Base in Jordan near some containerized housing units where military personnel sleep. And tragically, you know, there was a significant number of soldiers or service members who were injured and three as well were killed.
Tom Nichols
The specifics of what Iran is able to do at this moment militarily are now being, as you know, pretty hotly contested. President Trump has said a few times that Iran's ballistic missile capacity was nearly destroyed in the war. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth took some very tough questions in a hearing on Capitol Hill yesterday.
Anonymous Pentagon Analyst
On day 14 of this conflict, in the second week of the conflict, you stated that Iran's military had been, quote, destroyed and, quote, made combat ineffective.
Robbie Grammer
Was that an accurate statement? Yes or no?
Pete Hegseth
Iran's ability to challenge the United States of America at the level at which we're capable of.
Anonymous Pentagon Analyst
That's not what I asked you, Mr. Secretary.
Tom Nichols
You said we have gotten the message from the administration that Iran's military capabilities are destroyed or close to it. I read in your newspaper that Iran's military technology is actually improving. What is going on here?
Robbie Grammer
Well, you know, you said the word nearly there. And I think that's so important because about two weeks into the war, you heard top administration officials like Hegseth Trump say that Iran's military was destroyed or completely destroyed.
Pete Hegseth
Never before has a modern, capable military, which Iran used to have been so quickly destroyed and made combat ineffective, devastated.
Robbie Grammer
And now they're starting to hedge. You're starting to hear nearly destroyed or significantly degraded.
Pete Hegseth
No one ever stated that every single missile was gone.
Robbie Grammer
And I think that points to this, this very worrying trend of the administration being incredibly overconfident in the first days of the war. I think there's two points here. One, the Iranian military has proven pretty resilient, has been able to sort of even under thumb of American military power, rebuild some of its missile and drone capabilities. And two, it's starting to adapt, that they're starting to try and use new tactics to try to get around, duck and weave through American air defenses here. And I think there's a real fear that, you know, if, if Iran tries new tactics with, with different missiles and drones here finds things that start working as American service members start, start worrying about dwindling supplies of, of more military interceptors, that Iran can start to get lucky with more frequency here.
Tom Nichols
All right, so Iran is adapting in real time. The US Is responding in real time. That hearing on Capitol Hill yesterday was essentially about the question, is the United States going to have to spend a lot more money on this war? What do you think?
Robbie Grammer
I mean, the answer is yes. The Pentagon keeps revising up the cost of the war. At first, about a week ago, it was estimated 29 billion according to official figures. Yesterday, Hegseth put it at about 37.5 billion. And they're asked, asking for Congress for an additional supplemental of $67 billion to help backfill, replenish some of the stocks and munitions to help pay for some of the training and logistics and supply that's going into this campaign. And the bottom line, I mean, taking a step back, is there an end in sight to this? The answer is no, because Iran is still trying to control the Strait of Hormuz. Iran still hasn't given up its strategic ambition of trying to obtain a nuclear weapon or at least maintain a nuclear program. So it one turn of the screw eventually away from getting a nuclear weapon. And so we're at this massive impasse as the cost piles up, as the casualties start increasing on the American side. And that's put a lot of pressure on the administration right now.
Tom Nichols
So it's worth knowing what Iran wants. It's also worth, it seems to me, knowing whether Iran thinks it can win this war. What does your reporting show us about whether Iran thinks it can win, whether Iran thinks it can burn daylight until this war becomes so unpopular in the US that the US Is forced to change strategy. Like, how confident is Iran right now?
Robbie Grammer
Yeah, well, look, when, when we talk to American officials and other experts, when my colleagues talk to Iranian officials, I think there's two, there's two factors that, that play in here. The first is that there is an overriding sense in Iran that they have the upper hand here. Now, obviously the United States has, has succeeded on, in a really overwhelming scale. On the tactical side, its planes, largely unharassed, can over and bomb Iran. But Iran's military has always historically relied on this unconventional military side, on using proxy militias, on using unconventional capabilities. And so here Iran thinks that it has the upper hand for exactly the reason you said, and that is that they think they can outweigh the United States, that they can sit there, they can take more punishment, they can sort of cling on to the Strait of Hormuz, keep dragging out negotiations in a way where political pressure could build the war, could, could get more and more costly, especially ahead of these midterms for Trump where a significant portion of his electorate voted for him on the belief that there would be no new wars in the Middle east, no new costly foreign entanglements. And that's a pressure that Trump has to face. And the Iranian regime, of course, you know, not answering to the will of the Iranian people, to say the least, does not have to deal with that. The other factor here that I think is important is there are growing rifts within the remnants of the Iranian regime. It's, it's grading on a cur because everyone left is a hardliner. But there are the so called hardest hardliners who want to double down, keep this war going, keep dragging the United States in to turn this into yet another Middle east military quagmire for them. And there are those who do want to deal, who do say, look, maybe there's a path forward. Maybe we can find, negotiate an end to this war, get the war over with and start trying to get back on our feet economically.
Tom Nichols
That was the Wall Street Journal's Robbie Grammer. When we come back, silence and half truths from the Pentagon.
Podcast Host/Announcer
Support for today's show comes from Vanguard. For the financial advisors listening. Vanguard has a message for you. So do I. Hello, financial advisors. Their message, Finding real value in fixed income isn't always easy. The bond market is enormous, complex, and often far from transparent. Some firms may steer you toward a few headline grabbing funds and leave it at that. Vanguard takes a different approach. Vanguard's bond offerings are built around institutional quality standards and for them, that's more than a marketing phrase. Advisors can access a broad line of of fixed income solutions that includes more than 80 bond funds managed by a global team of over 200 sector specialists. So if you're looking to give your clients consistent results year in and year out, you can go see the record for yourself@vanguard.com audio. That's vanguard.com audio. All investing is subject to risk. You guys. Vanguard Marketing Corporation Distribution distributor. Support for the show today comes from Anthropic. In case you were wondering who's behind Claude, that's Anthropic. Claude is the AI for minds that don't stop it. Good enough. Is that you? It's the collaborator that actually understands your entire workflow and thinks with you. Have you been looking for that? Whether you're debugging code at midnight or strategizing your next business move. Claude extends your thinking to tackle the the problems that matter with deep research. Claude's research capabilities go way deeper than basic web search comprehensive, reliable analysis with proper citations turning hours of research into minutes. We love a proper citation, don't we? Plus, you can connect Claude to your professional tools like GitHub, Jira, HubSpot, Notion, Google Workspace and watch it become your command center with context from all your work. That means Claude has context from your calendar, emails, and all of your Go to tools for problems worth solving. Get started with Claude AI todayexplained that's Claude AI todayexplained. Support for the show comes from Pocket Hose. It's a little hose you put in your pocket that probably isn't what it is. Let's find out together. Pocket Hose is the number one expandable hose in the world. It's super lightweight, easy to manage, easy to store. You just turn the water on and it grows. And then you turn the water off and it shrinks back to pocket size. Maybe it does fit in your pocket. This is exciting. The Pocket Hose Ballistic is reinforced with a liquid crystal polymer used in bulletproof vests of all things, making the anti burst sleeve practically bulletproof. So if anyone's shooting at you while you're watering your lawn, don't worry about it. Now for a limited time, you purchase a new Pocket Hose Ballistic. You'll get a free 360 degree rotating pocket pivot and a free thumb drive nozzle. What is going on? This is too good to be true. Just text explained to 64,000 that's explained to 64,000 for your two free gifts with purchase. Text explained to 64,000 message and data rates may apply.
Tom Nichols
This is today, explained Tom Nichols, Staff Writer at the Atlantic, professor emeritus at the U.S. naval War College. Eighteen American service members have died in this war in Iran. What has been the norm during wartime? About what the American public can expect to know about the deaths of service members.
Anonymous Pentagon Analyst
In normal times, with a normal administration and a real Secretary of Defense running a competent Pentagon, you would have daily briefings. You would have people including Secretary of Defense, but also the chairman, lower level officers and civilian leaders going out there every day, answering real questions from real journalists and giving real answers. We don't have that now. Now the Pentagon treats the media as an enemy operation. So the American people are having to literally pry this information out of the Pentagon at this point. I worked in the Senate during the first Gulf War and I remember them vividly. We had almost Daily briefings, including briefings from the. That's how people like Norman Schwarzkopf became household names in America. I promised some of you all a
Donald Trump
few days ago that as soon as
Anonymous Pentagon Analyst
the opportunity presented itself, I would give you a complete rundown on what we were doing and more importantly, why we were doing it.
Tom Nichols
Actually, I am old enough to remember that just a little bit. Yeah, that was the 90s. And then how did things proceed from there?
Anonymous Pentagon Analyst
Well, the problem, after the initial phases of combat operations in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, we had regular briefings. And then when those operations were over, we still had troops in the field, but we weren't doing briefings every day. The men and women in uniform, US
Robbie Grammer
and coalition alike, are performing superbly. The resistance that's being encountered was expected. It has not affected coalition progress.
Anonymous Pentagon Analyst
Nonetheless, there was plenty of reporting if people wanted to read it. And I think part of what happened, especially with Afghanistan, is that Americans simply tuned it out.
Robbie Grammer
Earlier this week, I recommended and the President approved the one time deployment of approximately 3,200 Marines to Afghanistan for seven months. The deployment underscores once more America's enduring commitment to the mission in Afghanistan.
Anonymous Pentagon Analyst
They just stopped listening. They just sort of accepted that or assumed that American forces were going to be in places like Afghanistan for, as it turns out, 20 years. But in this, this kind of situation where there are ongoing major combat operations, where Americans are being killed by sustained hostile action in an active war zone. Yeah, we had pretty regular briefings back in, I guess, what we all think of as the before times.
Tom Nichols
When was the last time we had a Pentagon briefing about this war in Iran?
Anonymous Pentagon Analyst
May 5th.
Pete Hegseth
Well, as you know, President Trump has directed U.S. central Command to restart the free flow of commerce through the Strait of Hormuz under the umbrella of Project Freedom.
Tom Nichols
May 5th. Okay, so it has been months. Yes, and that is, you would argue, outside of the norm. So when we miss those briefings, when we don't get those briefings, what don't we know?
Anonymous Pentagon Analyst
Well, the problem with this Pentagon is that the briefings themselves weren't worth very much. They were, Pete Hegseth coming out and, you know, jumping around and stabbing the air. And someone once said that he always sounds like he's auditioning for the lead role in the high school play.
Pete Hegseth
Did you not hear my remarks? I mean, we're ensuring the mission gets accomplished, but we are very clear eyed, as the President has been, unlike other presidents, about the foolish policies of the past that recklessly pulled us in to things that were not tethered to Actual clear objectives.
Anonymous Pentagon Analyst
And then, of course, they would cut over to General Kaine, who would have to be much more restrained and just give numbers and facts and try not to get sideways either with Hegseth or Trump. As a result of Iran's indiscriminate attacks across the region, there are currently 22,500 mariners embarked on more than 1,550 commercial vessels trapped in the Arabian Gulf. Gulf unable to transit. So I don't know that we're missing that much from not having those briefings, but they should have them anyway, so that at least the American public can see guys like Hegseth being evasive and yelling at the media and, you know, accusing the media of bad faith when the media is simply asking questions like, how many people have been wounded? What are our operations achieving? What are the goals of this operation? None of that's happening now. And I think they've just decided that when this war went poorly for them as it has, I mean, I. I believe we've lost this war. They just decided to stop talking to the American public.
Tom Nichols
It is worth noting that President Trump speaks, including extemporaneously, off the cuff, about the war in Iran, not infrequently. What do you make of what the president is telling us about the war in Iran?
Anonymous Pentagon Analyst
I think he's lying. Oh, misleading people, exaggerating, making misstatements, but in some cases, just flat out telling lies.
Donald Trump
We've already won militarily. They have very little left. And they want to make a deal so badly. They called a little while ago. They want to make a deal so badly. We've won. Let me say we've won. You know, you never like to say too early, you won, we won. We won. The bet in the first hour. It was over.
Anonymous Pentagon Analyst
When he says, for example, Iran called
Donald Trump
a little while ago. They want to make a deal so badly.
Anonymous Pentagon Analyst
He's back to that one. We.
Donald Trump
We.
Anonymous Pentagon Analyst
I was trying to count up how many times he said things like the war is over. And months into the war, he had said that something like 30 times already.
Donald Trump
We've won.
Anonymous Pentagon Analyst
This.
Donald Trump
This war has been won. We just made a great settlement of the war with Iran. I think it's close to over here. I mean, I view it as very close to over. So I think we won.
Anonymous Pentagon Analyst
Now, you can't. You know, you can say that presidents spin, they exaggerate, they try to persuade. But when you've said the war is over 30 times while you're launching weapons and missiles are falling on your troops, that's. That's just a lie. The Iranians almost seem to launch an attack every time Trump says they're desperate for a deal, just to underscore the point that, no, they're not desperate for a deal. So I just don't think the President's being honest, because he can't be. He can't accept that he's failed. And one thing we know about Donald Trump is that he never admits a mistake or owns a failure.
Tom Nichols
If there was one piece of information you wish the American public had, be it from the Pentagon or from President Trump, what is it? What is the thing that you are dying to know?
Anonymous Pentagon Analyst
What would the administration settle for that it would consider a reasonable out at this point?
Tom Nichols
Huh?
Anonymous Pentagon Analyst
I think the answer is something like the Strait of Hormuz being open. We're just gonna have to suck it up that the Iranians have a lot more control over the strait than they did before the war. How much of that are we willing accept in order to just get this thing over with? For now? What the American people need to hear is, this is what we want. This is the price we're willing to pay to get it. This is what we want from the Iranians, and that's what would bring this to a close. And I think the President just isn't. I'm not sure he knows. But to accept anything less than what he started with, which was unconditional surrender, is already enough of a humiliation for him. So I don't. I don't think we're going to get anything that coherent out of this White House.
Tom Nichols
Hmm. That would be the answer to a very big question. I want to ask you about some reporting from the New York Times. This week, the Times found that the Pentagon hasn't publicly disclosed some of the injuries that troops in the region have sustained. Now, you might say that's a. That's a sort of minor piece of information, right? Why do we need to know who's been injured and how? Why does that matter?
Anonymous Pentagon Analyst
It's not minor if those are your loved ones. No, it's. That's pretty important stuff. You should know that information because it tells you what kind of effort is being made in your name putting the lives of your fellow citizens at risk. And it opens the door to asking, how many more lives are you willing to put at risk for this objective? Now, the Pentagon's answer to this, of course, has been, well, we're not lying about it, we're just updating an online database. Now, several reporters have called that out, and, of course, that has led to some pretty angry name calling. But I think they're being coy about this because the president has a narrative. It's going fine. We're inflicting casualties. There have been a few deaths, but our folks are mostly okay and we're winning this war. None of that is true. But if you have to admit that you've had an extra hundred casualties just in the past month, that really undercuts the narrative. And I think that the government is trying to share that information in the most difficult way possible by putting it on a cumbersome database that isn't updated fast enough. And, you know, so they're saying that way they can say, well, we're sharing the information, just not in any way that is easy to get to so that it can become a news story.
Tom Nichols
So at what point do you think, Tom, it becomes impossible for President Trump to keep Americans in the dark?
Anonymous Pentagon Analyst
I think that's already impossible. And it's really up to Americans at this point. The information is out there. Even though Hegseth has kicked journalists out of the Pentagon and replaced them with cronies and sort of wannabes, real journalists are still out there breaking real stories, and they're in all of the major newspapers and in some good magazines. I would. And so, you know, he can't keep people in the dark longer. The question is, how much patience do people have for a war that wasn't supposed to happen and casualties that weren't supposed to take place?
Tom Nichols
Tom Nichols, he's a staff writer at the Atlantic. Hadi Mwagdi produced today along with Miles Bryan. Amina Elsadi is our editor. Patrick Boyd is our engineer, and Gabriel Donatov. Checked the facts while we're here, guys. We are doing an episode about millennials and gen zers who wish their parents would give them their inheritance now instead of waiting. Okay, so you know the baby boomers are going to leave trillions of dollars to their kids upon death. And some of the kids are wondering if, given the cost of everything, maybe they could get that money sooner. So we are putting a call out to you. If you have been experiencing feelings about your boomer parents hanging on to their wealth while you're struggling, could you give me a call and tell me about it? Maybe do an interview about it? The Number here is 8444-534448-84445-34448. Thank you in advance. I'm Noel King.
Robbie Grammer
It's. How many third party vendors does your company use? 2200. Thanks to AI. Someone on your team probably added three more this week and your security lead has no idea. Traditional third party risk management can't keep keep up. Vanta gives you continuous coverage across every vendor automatically so you actually know what's in your stack and what to do about it. AI on risk off vanta.com TPRM
Donald Trump
hi,
Robbie Grammer
Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. Are you looking for a beach read this summer?
Podcast Host/Announcer
May I suggest your big wireless bill? It's got suspense, mystery, a slightly flat
Robbie Grammer
emotional arc and a shocking tone twist where you realize you've been overpaying the entire time. Fortunately though, Mint Story is better. Every plan $15 a month, even unlimited.
Tom Nichols
That's it.
Robbie Grammer
Happy ending, zero tears. Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment
Tom Nichols
of $45 for three months, $90 for six months or $180 for a 12 month plan required $15 per month equivalent taxes and fees Extra initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes. Me slow when network is busy. See terms.
This episode of Today, Explained, hosted by Tom Nichols, dives deep into the current state and complexities of the ongoing war involving the United States and Iran. It examines recent escalations despite announcements of de-escalation, the fragility of agreements, casualties among American service members, and the growing secrecy and misinformation surrounding the conflict. Notable guests include Robbie Grammer (Wall Street Journal national security reporter) and an anonymous Pentagon analyst, who unpack the military, political, and human dimensions of the conflict, as well as the opacity of the U.S. government’s communications with the public.
How the MOU Collapsed
Persistent Iranian Military Threats
Disparity between U.S. Claims and Reality
Rising Financial and Human Costs
Iranian Confidence and U.S. Political Calculus
What Does the U.S. Actually Want?
The Human Cost Concealed
This episode paints a sobering picture of the war with Iran—not as a decisive conflict about to close, but as a protracted struggle marked by government opacity, shifting objectives, and evolving dangers for U.S. service members. Through sharp analysis and testimony, the show exposes the gap between official narratives and the messier, more perilous reality—underscoring the importance of public scrutiny and journalistic persistence in times of war.