What to watch as Trump addresses the nation about the Iran war

WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump is set to address the nation Wednesday evening about the war against Iran, a pivotal moment at home and abroad as he seeks to amass extraordinary power to prosecute the military operation and his second-term agenda.

Trump started the day as the first sitting president to 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, bulldozing past Congress.

On an early spring night when many Americans may be looking upward as Artemis II astronauts lift off for NASA’s historic return to the moon, Trump will refocus attention back to him — and to the conflict with Iran that has killed more than a dozen U.S. service members and appears to have no easy exit in sight.

A watchful world awaits Trump’s speech

Thousands of additional U.S. troops are heading to the Middle East. Gulf allies are urging Trump to finish the fight, arguing that Tehran hasn’t been weakened enough.

And yet Trump himself predicted the U.S. will be done “within maybe two weeks.”

The president’s address to a watchful nation — and world — will offer him an opportunity to outline his next steps: Will he declare victory and signal a readiness to move on from Iran?

Or is the president preparing for a ground invasion by American troops — to retrieve Iran’s enriched uranium or secure the Strait of Hormuz — that could launch the U.S. into another potentially lengthy war in the Middle East?

Trump is fast approaching the 60-day mark when he must seek approval from Congress under the War Powers Act to continue any military operations.

Mixed messages about an escalating war and hopes for diplomacy

The Trump administration’s stated goals for the war, and how it ends, have expanded and shifted.

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’s top leadership, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but regime change it is not. Khamenei’s son has been installed as the new leader.

What happened next appeared to throw the Trump administration’s plans off-kilter: Iran’s swift and relentless retaliation, bombing its Gulf state neighbors and jamming the global oil supply in the Strait of Hormuz, which sent energy prices soaring and left next steps uncertain.

Trump has berated U.S. allies for 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.

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.

But that could also change.

Uncertainty about what Trump will do about NATO

Virtually every country in the world has an interest in what Trump will say, even those geographically far removed from the conflict and facing higher energy prices as a result of the war and Iranian retaliation.

The Trump administration has criticized traditional U.S. allies for not stepping in to help in the fight, with some European countries preventing use of their airspace and bases, and being reluctant to help secure the Strait of Hormuz, where one-fifth of the world’s oil normally passes.

Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have suggested that NATO will need to be reconsidered once the Iran war is over.

Trump himself has gone so far as to say he is “seriously considering” withdrawing from the military alliance, which has been a bulwark of transatlantic unity and security since the end of World War II.

Trump told Reuters before the speech that he plans to use the address to express his frustrations with NATO members.

The president, however, cannot simply withdraw from NATO on his own, without a legal fight.

After Trump’s 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.

“We’re going to have to re-examine the value of NATO and that alliance for our country,” Rubio said Tuesday in an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity. “Ultimately, that’s a decision for the president to make, and he’ll have to make it.”

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.

Ukraine will be watching warily as Trump’s policies have significantly reduced U.S. support for its defense against Russia’s invasion.

Political ramifications at home

Trump, who ran as the “America First” president vowing not to drag the country into endless wars, has yet to fully address the political pushback he faces from his own base of supporters over the Iran conflict.

The U.S. economy is roiling, the financial markets are swinging with Trump’s various pronouncements about the war effort, and Americans are facing pain at the pump as the cost of living rises.

While the president often describes the inflationary high prices as a momentary setback, it’s all feeding into a rocky November midterm election.

Some of the sharpest criticism he’s faced in the early days of the Iran war has come from once-loyal media figures in the MAGA-universe, including Tucker Carlson.