Trump’s surreal speech on Iran shed no light on his goals

 

Trump’s surreal speech on Iran shed no light on his goals

Kenneth Roth

The US president couldn’t give a single coherent reason for why this aggressive war of choice must still be prosecuted

 

Thu 2 Apr 2026 19.29 BST

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/apr/02/trump-iran-speech-reaction

 

Donald Trump’s self-congratulatory speech on Iran on Wednesday night was as puzzling as it was divorced from reality. I had hoped he would declare victory and end the war. Some feared he might provide cover for a ground invasion. Instead, he told us in essence to be patient, that he is almost done, but he was utterly unclear about what more there is to accomplish.

 

If there was ever a purpose to the war, it was to curtail Iran’s capacity to develop a nuclear weapon. Trump harped on that goal repeatedly in his speech, noting that he had long vowed that he “would never allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon”. But he didn’t mention that Iran has long agreed to eschew a nuclear weapon. If that is the only goal, this entire war has been pointless.

 

Trump disparaged as “a disaster” the deal that Barack Obama made with Iran, proudly noting that he had “terminated” it. But Obama’s deal was designed to prevent Iran from securing a nuclear weapon by imposing strict limits on the enrichment of uranium and requiring intrusive international inspections. With the deal shredded, Iran proceeded to enrich uranium to just short of what is needed to produce roughly a dozen bombs. It would have taken only weeks for the final enrichment steps, although turning enriched uranium into bombs is more complex.

 

Yet Trump said nothing about enrichment, which was a principal focus of the negotiations that he aborted by going to war. He has noted that the canisters of highly enriched uranium (about 970lb) are buried, and said on Wednesday that if Iran were to try to approach its “obliterated nuclear sites”, US satellites would notice and US missiles would follow. But that was true before Trump launched this war of choice. So what was the point of the war? Iran had said in the recent negotiations it would be willing to dilute the enriched uranium and keep only a small amount, but it now possesses all of it in unadulterated form.

 

 

Trump mocked Obama for having given Iran $1.7bn in cash as part of the nuclear deal. Those were funds (plus interest) that Iran had paid to the United States before its 1979 revolution for military equipment that was never delivered. Trump of course said nothing about the far larger $14bn that he has in effect handed Iran by lifting sanctions so it can sell its oil at sea – because Trump prioritizes lowering the price of a tank of gas over depriving Iran’s military machine.

 

Trump stressed repeatedly how Iran’s military capacity had been “decimated” – its navy “gone”, its air force “in ruins”, its factories and rocket launchers “blown to pieces”, its ability to launch drones and missiles “dramatically curtailed”. He said he was “on the cusp of ending Iran’s sinister threat”. Of course there is always more damage to be done, but what more is necessary?

 

Trump boasted that in the coming weeks he would return Iran “back to the stone ages, where they belong”. But why, after all the obliteration, to use Trump’s favorite word, is more needed? Is it worth the damage being done to the global economy, let alone to the Iranian people? Trump didn’t tell us.

 

As for the strait of Hormuz, Iran is attacking tankers as an asymmetrical response to US-Israeli bombardment. Why not stop the bombing in return for allowing the flow of oil to resume, a proposal that reportedly is on the table? Trump didn’t go there. Instead, he said that the strait would reopen “naturally” once the war ended because Iran will want to sell its oil. But Iran isn’t attacking the tankers with its own oil.

 

Trump reiterated his new line that the countries whose oil flows through the strait should take the lead in protecting it. Never mind that the global nature of the oil and gas markets means that when the strait is blocked, prices go up for everyone, including Americans, whether or not their petroleum flows through the strait.

 

Never mind that European governments, who were never consulted before Trump launched his war of aggression, want nothing to do with it. At least Trump didn’t repeat his irresponsible threat to abandon Nato because the members of this defensive alliance don’t want to join his offensive war.

 

The biggest problem in securing a deal may be Trump himself and his need to portray this senseless war as a triumph

Trump disowned regime change as an aim of the war – “Regime change was not our goal. We never said regime change” – even though regime change was a central theme of his video address announcing the war, when he told the Iranian people to “take over your government”. Yet he reiterated his claim made in recent days that regime change has occurred anyway because the government’s original leadership has been killed. Trump claimed that the new leadership was “less radical and much more reasonable”, but most objective analysts say that the new leaders have largely sidelined more moderate elements, that the hardline Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is now in charge.

 

And if the new leaders are more reasonable, why can’t Trump strike a deal with them? If there is no deal, he again threatened to attack Iran’s power plants – the war crime that the international criminal court has charged four Russian commanders for allegedly committing in Ukraine. But what deal does Trump want? He didn’t say.

 

The biggest problem in securing a deal may be Trump himself and his need to portray this senseless war as a triumph. Trading a ceasefire for reopening the strait can be done readily, but negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program are more complicated. To what degree can Iran continue to enrich uranium? What should happen to the highly enriched uranium that it already has?

 

As noted, these were the subjects of the US-Iranian negotiations that Trump abandoned in his rush to bomb. Trump could agree to a temporary ceasefire while these tougher issues are sorted out, but he made no mention of such a strategy, or what Iranian commitments he would want beyond the agreement not to build a nuclear weapon that Tehran agreed to with Obama and has offered repeatedly since.

 

As with so many of Trump’s recent pronouncements, his speech may have been another unsuccessful attempt to calm the markets – especially the surging oil prices, which pose a threat to Republicans’ already dire prospects for the November midterm elections. Not to worry, we were told. “Keep this conflict in perspective,” Trump pleaded, noting that its length was much shorter than the two world wars and other conflicts, although those wars at least had an articulable purpose. Trump assured us that he is on track to achieve his objectives “shortly, very shortly”. US bombers will hit Iran “extremely hard” over the next two to three weeks and then he’ll be done.

 

 

But why? Israel undoubtedly would be happy with more bombing. Its aim all along has been to sow as much destruction and chaos as possible, the better to set back the date when it must “mow the grass” again, the callous term used to describe another devastating round of bombing. Even some of the Gulf Arab states seem to favor more bombing.

 

But bombing not for a legitimate military goal but to pulverize a society is an unjust war. Long gone is Trump’s talk of Iran posing an imminent threat, which it never did. Now it seems to be destruction for destruction’s sake.

 

Far more important than what Trump said in his speech is what he couldn’t say. He couldn’t give a single coherent reason for why this aggressive war of choice must still be prosecuted. It was the speech of a dangerous man, infatuated by the unparalleled military power at his disposal, but befuddled when it comes to explaining why he is using it. It is a shameful moment for America to be led by such a president.

 

Kenneth Roth is a Guardian US columnist, visiting professor at Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs, and former executive director of Human Rights Watch. He is the author of Righting Wrongs: Three Decades on the Front Lines Battling Abusive Governments