{"id":47519,"date":"2026-04-01T22:30:15","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T22:30:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/47519\/"},"modified":"2026-04-01T22:30:15","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T22:30:15","slug":"trump-will-update-the-nation-on-progress-in-iran-reiterating-his-timeline-for-a-conclusion-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/47519\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump will update the nation on progress in Iran, reiterating his timeline for a conclusion"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014\u00a0President Donald Trump<\/a>\u00a0is set to address the nation Wednesday evening about the\u00a0war against Iran<\/a>, a pivotal moment at home and abroad as he seeks to amass\u00a0extraordinary power<\/a>\u00a0to prosecute the military operation and his second-term agenda.<\/p>\n

Trump started the day as the\u00a0first sitting president<\/a>\u00a0to show up for a U.S. Supreme Court hearing, a stunning reach of the executive into the affairs of the judicial branch. He is preparing to end it with his first primetime address from the White House about a war he launched on his own,\u00a0bulldozing past Congress<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On an early spring night when many Americans may be looking upward as\u00a0Artemis II astronauts<\/a>\u00a0lift off for NASA\u2019s historic return to the moon, Trump will refocus attention back to him \u2014 and to the conflict with Iran that has killed more than a dozen U.S. service members and appears to have\u00a0no easy exit in sight<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A watchful world awaits Trump\u2019s speech<\/p>\n

Thousands of\u00a0additional U.S. troops<\/a>\u00a0are heading to the Middle East. Gulf allies are\u00a0urging Trump to finish the fight<\/a>, arguing that Tehran hasn\u2019t been weakened enough.<\/p>\n

And yet Trump himself predicted the U.S. will be done \u201cwithin maybe two weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n

The president\u2019s address to a watchful nation \u2014 and world \u2014 will offer him an opportunity to outline his next steps: Will he declare victory and signal a readiness to move on from Iran?<\/p>\n

Or is the president preparing for a ground invasion by American troops \u2014 to retrieve\u00a0Iran\u2019s enriched uranium<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0secure the Strait of Hormuz<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 that could launch the U.S. into another potentially lengthy war in the Middle East?<\/p>\n

Trump is fast approaching the 60-day mark when he must seek\u00a0approval from Congress<\/a>\u00a0under the War Powers Act to continue any military operations.<\/p>\n

Mixed messages about an escalating war and hopes for diplomacy<\/p>\n

The Trump administration\u2019s stated goals for the war, and how it ends, have\u00a0expanded and shifted<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The administration has said it launched the U.S.-Israel campaign on Feb. 28 to prevent Iran from having a nuclear weapon, erode its ballistic missile stock and crush its navy. The bombing campaign quickly killed Iran\u2019s top leadership, including\u00a0Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei<\/a>, but regime change it is not. Khamenei\u2019s son has been installed as the new leader.<\/p>\n

What happened next appeared to throw the Trump administration\u2019s plans off-kilter: Iran\u2019s swift and relentless retaliation,\u00a0bombing its Gulf state neighbors<\/a>\u00a0and jamming the global oil supply in\u00a0the Strait of Hormuz<\/a>, which sent energy prices soaring and left next steps uncertain.<\/p>\n

Trump has\u00a0berated U.S. allies<\/a>\u00a0for not doing their part in the conflict, even as British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he would convene a diplomatic summit to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz after the fighting ends.<\/p>\n

Trump is not expected to announce the imminent start of peace talks in any venue, according to a U.S. official briefed on elements of the speech, which remains a work in progress. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to preview the speech.<\/p>\n

But that could also change.<\/p>\n

Uncertainty about what Trump will do about NATO<\/p>\n

Virtually every country in the world has an interest in what Trump will say, even those geographically far removed from the conflict and facing\u00a0higher energy prices<\/a>\u00a0as a result of the war and Iranian retaliation.<\/p>\n

The Trump administration has\u00a0criticized traditional U.S. allies<\/a>\u00a0for not stepping in to help in the fight, with some European countries\u00a0preventing use of their airspace<\/a>\u00a0and bases, and being reluctant to help secure the Strait of Hormuz, where one-fifth of the world\u2019s oil normally passes.<\/p>\n

Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have suggested that NATO will need to be reconsidered once the Iran war is over.<\/p>\n

Trump himself has gone so far as to say he is \u201cseriously considering\u201d withdrawing from the military alliance, which has been a bulwark of transatlantic unity and security since the end of World War II.<\/p>\n

Trump told Reuters before the speech that he plans to use the address to express his frustrations with NATO members.<\/p>\n

The president, however, cannot simply withdraw from NATO on his own, without a legal fight.<\/p>\n

After Trump\u2019s first term, then-President Joe Biden signed into law legislation that would prevent any president from leaving NATO without congressional support. The provision, part of a sweeping defense measure, was led in part by Rubio, a Republican senator at the time.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to have to re-examine the value of NATO and that alliance for our country,\u201d Rubio said Tuesday in an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity. \u201dUltimately, that\u2019s a decision for the president to make, and he\u2019ll have to make it.\u201d<\/p>\n

A crisis within NATO, which appears to be building, and public taunts from Trump about U.S. partners will be welcomed by historic rivals Russia and China, which have long sought to break or at least stem the influence of the alliance that they regard as a threat to their own territorial and political agendas.<\/p>\n

Ukraine will be watching warily as Trump\u2019s policies have significantly reduced U.S. support for its defense against Russia\u2019s invasion.<\/p>\n

Political ramifications at home<\/p>\n

Trump, who ran as the \u201cAmerica First\u201d president vowing not to drag the country into endless wars, has yet to fully address the political pushback he faces from his own\u00a0base of supporters<\/a>\u00a0over the Iran conflict.<\/p>\n

The U.S. economy is roiling, the\u00a0financial markets are swinging<\/a>\u00a0with Trump\u2019s various pronouncements about the war effort, and Americans are facing pain at the pump as the cost of living rises.<\/p>\n

While the president often describes the inflationary high prices as a momentary setback, it\u2019s all feeding into a rocky November midterm election.<\/p>\n

Some of the\u00a0sharpest criticism<\/a>\u00a0he\u2019s faced in the early days of the Iran war has come from once-loyal media figures in the MAGA-universe, including Tucker Carlson.<\/p>\n

Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014\u00a0President Donald Trump\u00a0is set to address the nation Wednesday evening about the\u00a0war against Iran, a pivotal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":47478,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3],"tags":[34,342,196,864,19552,51,1537],"class_list":["post-47519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-iran","tag-iran","tag-iran-conflict","tag-iran-war","tag-president-donald-trump","tag-primetime-address","tag-united-states","tag-white-house"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116331821356513155","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47519"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47519\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}