{"id":15311,"date":"2026-04-09T04:45:20","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T04:45:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/15311\/"},"modified":"2026-04-09T04:45:20","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T04:45:20","slug":"has-trump-met-his-war-goals-in-iran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/15311\/","title":{"rendered":"Has Trump Met His War Goals in Iran?"},"content":{"rendered":"

On the first day of the U.S.-Israeli strikes<\/a> against Iran, President Trump laid out his war goals in an eight-minute video<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur objective is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime,\u201d he said as an overview on Feb. 28, even though there is no evidence that Iran posed an urgent danger to the United States.<\/p>\n

Now with a tenuous cease-fire in place, the president and his aides are expected to try to force Iran to make concessions during negotiations, with the aim of meeting some of the goals he initially stated.<\/p>\n

Here is an assessment of where the war stands based on five aims he described in that video.<\/p>\n

OBJECTIVE No. 1<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to destroy their missiles and raze their missile industry to the ground. It will be totally again obliterated.\u201d<\/p>\n

The U.S. and Israeli militaries have destroyed many of Iran\u2019s ballistic missiles and launchers in airstrikes. But a large number are undamaged, and Iran continued to fire missiles<\/a> in the region on the first day of the cease-fire. In addition, it is using attack drones.<\/p>\n

At least five Gulf Arab nations said Wednesday that they had been attacked<\/a> by missiles and drones fired by Iran after the agreement to pause combat. Those strikes, along with other developments, including continuing assaults by Israel in Lebanon, could jeopardize the cease-fire. (Iran said its oil refinery on Lavan Island had been attacked.)<\/p>\n

Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a news conference on Wednesday that U.S. bombs had hit \u201cmore than 450 ballistic missile storage facilities\u201d and 80 percent of Iran\u2019s missile production facilities during the war. But those numbers provide only a limited snapshot.<\/p>\n

Recent U.S. intelligence reports say that the Iranian military has been digging out underground missile bunkers and silos struck by American and Israeli bombs and returning them to operation hours after an attack.<\/p>\n

Some officials in the region say it is impossible to determine how many of Iran\u2019s missiles remain, and they note too that the Iranian military has been hiding mobile launchers.<\/p>\n

The United States and Israel have destroyed much of Iran\u2019s navy. A notable attack<\/a> took place near Sri Lanka in early March, when a U.S. submarine fired torpedoes to sink an Iranian destroyer, the IRIS Dena, which had a crew of 180 people. Most of them were killed.<\/p>\n

The ship had taken part in naval exercises in India and was on its way home. The United States had participated in the same exercises. Sri Lanka rescued some survivors. There is no indication the American military made an effort to do so, and that could be a violation of international law<\/a> under the Geneva Conventions, legal experts say.<\/p>\n

The Iranian military continues to maintain control over the Strait of Hormuz with projectiles that can be fired from land.<\/p>\n

OBJECTIVE No. 3<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to ensure that the region\u2019s terrorist proxies can no longer destabilize the region or the world and attack our forces, and no longer use their I.E.D.s, or roadside bombs as they are sometimes called, to so gravely wound and kill thousands and thousands of people, including many Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Trump was referring here to militias in the region that receive financial support and other types of backing from Iran. The militias are still active. Some in Iraq have fired rockets at U.S. diplomatic buildings there during the war, for instance. The most powerful militia, Hezbollah, based in Lebanon, has been attacked by Israel in recent years but has not been destroyed. It has fired rockets into Israel in recent weeks.<\/p>\n

Israel has invaded Lebanon and has signaled that it could occupy<\/a> part of the south. On Wednesday, Israel continued carrying out attacks in Lebanon even though Pakistan and Iran said the two-week cease-fire was supposed to encompass the fighting in that country. Iran threatened to withdraw from the cease-fire because of the ongoing Israeli strikes.<\/p>\n

Mr. Trump\u2019s reference to I.E.D.s \u2014 improvised explosive devices \u2014 and roadside bombs is an anachronism: Two decades ago<\/a>, Iran supported some Iraqi Shiite groups that were fighting American soldiers during the Iraq War. But militias have not been laying roadside bombs to attack Americans in many years.<\/p>\n

OBJECTIVE No. 4<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd we will ensure that Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon. It\u2019s a very simple message. They will never have a nuclear weapon.\u201d<\/p>\n

U.S. intelligence agencies did not assess before the war that Iran had made the decision to develop a nuclear weapon. But the Trump administration has pointed to Iran\u2019s highly enriched uranium<\/a>, which the government created and stockpiled after Mr. Trump withdrew from an Obama-era nuclear deal<\/a> in 2018, as evidence that Iran wants the option to make a weapon.<\/p>\n

Mr. Trump ordered airstrikes last June that severely damaged three nuclear sites in Iran. However, U.S. officials say they think some highly enriched uranium remains in tunnels buried under rubble.<\/p>\n

The American president wrote online on Wednesday that the United States would work with Iran<\/a> to dig up the \u201cNuclear \u2018Dust.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Later on Wednesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that Iran would give up the uranium but also suggested that the United States could send Special Operations troops to seize the material. Sending troops into Iran to seize the material would be risky.<\/p>\n

OBJECTIVE No. 5<\/p>\n

\u201cFinally, to the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand. Stay sheltered. Don\u2019t leave your home. It\u2019s very dangerous outside. Bombs will be dropping everywhere. When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.\u201d<\/p>\n

This came near the end of Mr. Trump\u2019s video address. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel had promised Mr. Trump<\/a> in the run-up to the war that his country could help galvanize a popular uprising that would lead to the overthrow of the Iranian government. That revolt has not materialized.<\/p>\n

Mr. Trump and Mr. Hegseth say the United States has carried out \u201cregime change<\/a>,\u201d and point to airstrikes that have killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran\u2019s supreme leader, and other senior officials.<\/p>\n

However, the newly appointed supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, son of the slain cleric, is a hard-liner aligned with a powerful arm of the Iranian military, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The current government remains theocratic, authoritarian and anti-American, and continues to wage a war of resistance.<\/p>\n

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is also the president\u2019s national security adviser, expressed some doubt in a recent interview<\/a> with ABC News about whether anything had really changed in Iran.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe people who lead them, this clerical regime, that is the problem,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd if there are new people now in charge who have a more reasonable vision of the future, that would be good news for us, for them, for the entire world. But we also have to be prepared for the possibility, maybe even the probability, that that is not the case.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On the first day of the U.S.-Israeli strikes against Iran, President Trump laid out his war goals in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15312,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[9945,9948,6238,8,19,9944,9943,9946,9947,9,7,1071,6237],"class_list":{"0":"post-15311","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-top-stories","8":"tag-ali","9":"tag-benjamin","10":"tag-donald-j","11":"tag-headlines","12":"tag-iran","13":"tag-khamenei","14":"tag-missiles-and-missile-defense-systems","15":"tag-mojtaba-1969","16":"tag-netanyahu","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-top-stories","19":"tag-trump","20":"tag-united-states-international-relations"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@news\/116372932100218558","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15311\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}