WASHINGTON, DC – When the White House announced that President Donald Trump would address the nation on the war against Iran, it was expected that the US president would make a major announcement.
But in less than 20 minutes of remarks late Wednesday, Trump simply repeated the same statements that have been circulating for weeks.
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Some analysts had expected Trump to announce either an end to the war or an escalation of the conflict, including ground operations inside Iran, but the US president only made similar statements to the public and media.
Key points from this address are:
more of the same thing
In his brief remarks, the U.S. president made four familiar points: War is necessary. It has already been won. It must continue. And it will soon be over – all the arguments he has had every day.
The US president gave no details about how the war would actually end or what kind of deal he was seeking with Iran.
“We’re going to finish the job. We’re getting very close,” Trump said.
President Trump said on March 11 that the war would end “soon.”
Sheena Azodi, assistant professor of Middle East politics at George Washington University, told Al Jazeera: “There was no meaning to the speech and I couldn’t understand what he was trying to do or get across. In fact, it was a repeat of everything he had said in the past.”
Other analysts echoed that assessment.
Trita Palsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute, told Al Jazeera: “We didn’t detect anything new. Basically, it was a roughly chronological compilation of all the tweets he sent out over the past 30 days.”
“But it becomes clear that he doesn’t really have a plan because there doesn’t seem to be anything new in it.”
appeal to the American people
The speech contained no major announcements, but it was an opportunity for Trump to make his case to Americans tired of foreign conflicts after long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
President Trump’s main argument was that the United States and Israel must act because Iran intends to acquire and use nuclear weapons.
However, President Trump himself has repeatedly said that the U.S. attack on Iranian facilities in June 2025 wiped out the country’s nuclear program.
Even before last year’s war, Trump’s own intelligence director, Tulsi Gabbard, told lawmakers that “Iran is not building nuclear weapons.”
Iran has repeatedly denied seeking nuclear weapons, but Israel is widely believed to have an undeclared nuclear arsenal.
President Trump also suggested Wednesday that the conflict was meant to settle the issue with Iran after decades of conflict between Washington and Tehran.
“This fanatical regime has been chanting ‘Death to America, Death to Israel’ for 47 years. Their proxies were behind the killing of 241 Americans in the Beirut Marine barracks bombing and the massacre of hundreds of military personnel by roadside bombs,” Trump said.
“They were involved in the attack on the USS Cole and carried out countless other heinous acts, including the very horrific and bloody atrocities that occurred on October 7 in Israel.”
The USS Cole bombing in 2000 was carried out by al-Qaeda operatives, with no known ties to Iran.
There is also no evidence directly linking Iran to the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack in southern Israel, which subsequently began the U.S.-backed Gaza war, which leading human rights experts say amounted to genocide.
Polls show that a majority of Americans oppose the conflict. On Wednesday, President Trump sought to amplify the same talking points that have failed to rally the nation around the war over the past month.
Parsi noted that the war is losing popularity among President Trump’s own Republican base.
A recent YouGov poll suggested that just 28% of respondents supported the war, including 61% of Republicans.
In the last YouGov poll, released on March 2, 76% of Republicans said they supported the war.
“They are losing patience,” Parsi said of Trump supporters. “They’re paying the price at gas stations and grocery stores, and it’s only going to get worse.”
Still, some of Mr. Trump’s supporters were satisfied with Wednesday’s speech.
“A perfect speech,” pro-Israel critic Mark Levin wrote about X.
No mention of talks
Since early last week, President Trump has said the United States is negotiating with Iran, suggesting a deal may be imminent.
Less than 24 hours after Wednesday’s speech, President Trump wrote in a social media post that the “new regime president of Iran” had asked the United States for a ceasefire, indicating that negotiations may continue.
Iranians quickly denied this claim. They have previously dismissed Trump’s claims about negotiations, although they have acknowledged that some messages were exchanged through intermediaries. Iran also does not have a new president, with Masoud Pezeshkian serving as president since 2024.
Iranian officials have accused the United States of fabricating diplomatic reports to manipulate energy markets.
Despite Iran’s denials, President Trump and his aides have repeatedly stressed that Iran is lying and that talks are indeed taking place between the two countries.
But on Wednesday, Trump made no mention of diplomacy or negotiations.
“What caught my attention was the fact that he didn’t say anything about the meeting, if there was one,” Azodi said.
draw an image of victory
Throughout his remarks, President Trump continued to return to the central point of his speech. In other words, the United States has already won and needs more time to “finish the job.”
“We are systematically dismantling the regime’s ability to threaten the United States or project power beyond its borders,” the US president said.
“That would mean eliminating Iran’s now completely destroyed navy, damaging its air force and missile program at an unprecedented level, and obliterating its defense industrial base.”
President Trump also claimed that Iran’s ability to retaliate against the U.S. attack has been largely defeated.
“Our ability to launch missiles and drones has been greatly reduced, our weapons factories and rocket launchers have been blown to pieces, and there is very little left,” Trump said.
However, shortly after President Trump finished speaking, Iran launched a new missile attack against Israel.
At the same time, Bahrain warned its residents to “head to the nearest safe location” amid an impending Iranian attack. Qatar announced early Wednesday that a cruise missile fired by Iran had struck a Qatar Energy liquefied natural gas (LNG) carrier off its coast. Qatar also announced that its military intercepted two other Iranian cruise missiles.
Still, President Trump’s victory lap on Wednesday included claims that the United States had changed Iran’s ruling regime.
“Regime change was never our goal. We never said regime change, but regime change happened with the death of all the original leaders. They are all dead,” the president said.
Although the U.S. and Israeli attacks killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei and several senior political and military officials, there have been no major defections within Iran’s ruling regime.
Khamenei was replaced by his son Mojtaba, whose Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), which is spearheading the war effort, has vowed to continue fighting and “punish” the United States and Israel.
Jamal Abdi, president of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), ridiculed President Trump’s claims of regime change in Iran.
“Trump hasn’t changed the regime; on the contrary, he has honed it down to its most stubborn core. It’s interesting that he thinks it’s so important to twist this clearly false claim. This is Trump’s way of admitting failure,” Abdi told Al Jazeera.
No specific answer regarding Holmes
President Trump acknowledged that Americans are paying more for gas, but promised the economic pain would only be temporary.
“Many Americans are concerned about the recent rise in gasoline prices across the country,” he said.
“This short-term increase is solely the result of the Iranian regime launching outrageous terrorist attacks against commercial oil tankers in neighboring countries that have nothing to do with the conflict. This is further evidence that Iran can never be trusted with nuclear weapons.”
This week, the average price of gasoline exceeded $4 per gallon (3.8 liters), the highest price since 2022.
Iran responded to the US and Israeli attacks by blocking the Strait of Hormuz, a key waterway for international energy trade.
Although the United States, a major energy producer, is nearly self-sufficient when it comes to oil, supply issues are impacting prices around the world, causing prices to soar worldwide.
But President Trump on Wednesday insisted that Gulf oil-dependent countries should take the lead in resolving the Hormuz crisis, despite the United States unilaterally starting a war with Israel.
“Be belatedly courageous,” he said in a message to countries importing Gulf oil.
“(They) should have done it before, they should have done it with us like we asked. Go to the Straits and just take it and protect it.”
New threats to Iran’s civilian infrastructure
President Trump said the United States would continue to bomb Iran into the “stone age” and repeated his threat to target the country’s power grid.
“If there’s no deal, we’re going to attack every single one of their power plants very severely and probably simultaneously,” he said.
Bombing civilian facilities is prohibited by international law.
Iran has threatened to retaliate against energy and power infrastructure across the region if its power plants are attacked.
Azodi said Trump’s threat “means that the rules-based international system is dead and there is no longer any pretense.”
