The USIsrael war against Iran is moving fast and America's footprint in the Middle East is expanding.

President Trump announced moments ago that the US launched new air strikes, this time at Iran's Khark Island.

The Pentagon earlier today said it's sending more warships and more military personnel to the region.

It's been a busy day, so let's get straight to the panel.

Joining us tonight, Steve Insep, the host of NPR's Morning Edition.

Mark Misetti is a Washington correspondent at the New York Times.

Felicia Schwarz is a diplomatic correspondent for Politico.

And Nancy Ysef is a staff writer and a Pentagon correspondent at the Atlantic.

Thank you all for joining us.

Busy busy day.

Okay, Nancy, I'm going to start with you because the president took to TR true social just before we came on air and he announced that the United States central command executed one of the most powerful bombing raids in the history of the Middle East and totally obliterated every military target in Iran's crown jewel, Khark Island.

He goes on to talk about how they spared the island's oil infrastructure, but that he had he reserved the right to do so.

Explain the significance of this strike.

So, Kh Island is only about the one-third of the size of Manhattan, but that don't let that small size um um mislead you.

It is the cornerstone of the Iranian economy.

90% of its oil exports come out of that island.

And so, the strikes on it have two big impacts, both military and economic.

Let's start with economic.

By striking the island, you potentially take oil off the market, raising already um rising Brent crude prices at a time when there's a lot of anxiety about um oil reaching $150 or even $200 a barrel.

And militarily, the Iranians have threatened that if this island was attacked, they would make it hard for oil to leave the region, threatening attack oil production and oil facilities in Gulf partner nations.

Something they've already done, but there's the threat that they would ramp up those strikes with this attack by the United States.

and also a location where there's significant um Islamic Revolutionary Guard facilities.

You have um I it's it's nicknamed Forbidden Island due to its strict security uh and restricted access there.

Um and so it seems they're going after military targets for now um based on the president's uh true social post, right?

I mean, as you point out, it has a military um value for the IRGC, but it's also a source of revenue for the IRGC as well.

And as you note, it's in the straight of Hermuz, which we've been talking about all week.

Its strategic importance to oil um exports uh going through there for the whole world economy.

So the fact that there's more instability and such a vital part um of the strait only adds to I think global anxiety about the pace of this war and the effects it could have on the um energy markets.

Absolutely.

And we're going to talk more about the straight of Hormuz.

But Felicia, um the president has been basically proclaiming victory even as we continue kind of into the third week of this conflict.

Why then would he go over after Kadk?

Now what's the significance of the timing of this particularly?

So what we've seen is that Iran has very very strategically uh taken all a lot of the leverage a lot of the power back in this conflict like Nancy said with uh by basically essentially shutting off the straight of Hormuz where about a fifth of the world's oil and and gas trade moves through.

And so he wants to take some of that leverage back.

He wants to say to the Iranians, we can, you know, they are still able to move a little bit of traffic through the straight of Hormuz.

They he wants to be able to say this is, you know, we if we bomb your energy infrastructure totally.

That will completely it will have huge economic impacts for the Iranian economy.

So he wants to see if he can kind of get the Iranians to allow more traffic through the straight.

I'm not really sure that's going to work, but he wants to kind of change the balance of power.

And all of this, of course, is coming as the president um announces that more troops and more warships are going to the region as well.

What do we know about that?

It strikes me that the administration is escalating again and again and again in a way that also threatens the United States.

As Nancy was talking, I was thinking about that if you're striking the Persian Gulf, if you're raising more uncertainty about oil supplies, Iranian oil tankers are among the few that are getting through the Persian Gulf right now, what you effectively do is raise the price of oil and put further burden on the US economy.

Now, you are correct that the military appears to be moving another Marine expeditionary unit uh to the Gulf.

I've traveled with them in the past.

It's a couple thousand or more US Marines along with helicopters and airplanes and ships and a lot of equipment.

They're extremely powerful, but a couple thousand Marines is not very many in the context of a country like Iran.

This is something you could imagine sending them to take over an island in the street of Hormuz.

I don't know what the objective is or if one has even been ordered, but the president is clearly comfortable escalating in a way that entails greater risk for Iran, but also greater risk for the United States and the world.

Nancy, have we gotten specifics on the numbers of uh troops that are going specifically?

So, a MUW, as um the Marines refer to it, um has two components, Marines and sailors.

This MW has three ships, about 2400 Marines, and then another um 2,000 sailors or so.

So, 4,000 and all.

They're kind of seen as the 911 of uh force of the military in that they can go from ship to shore quickly.

They're trained for a multitude of of missions.

So, you could see we might we've seen them in the past do things like humanitarian missions, evacuations, but they could also move, as you note, onto an island.

They could also support um any sort of ground offensive in terms of that sort of initial steps, but we haven't been told what they'll do.

I should also note that they are coming from Asia on an which are very slowmoving ships.

So it will take somewhere between 10 days and and two weeks for them to be in the region.

So that tells us that perhaps they're being put in place to create options down the road in this conflict.

Okay.

So that's something definitely to watch.

So Mark, President Trump went on Brian Kilme's podcast this week and he said that he would feel it in his bones when this conflict is over.

Beyond that, what do we know or what clarity have we gotten from the administration on what an end to this conflict actually looks like?

What would constitute a victory?

It depends on the day or the hour or the minute or whatever interview that the president takes with a different reporter.

Right.

Right.

What we've seen over the last two weeks is the uh senior administration officials like Marco Rubio have gone out every day and said there are very clear objectives.

We have three or four depending on the day uh to destroy the missile capacity, the navy, uh Iran's ability to use proxies around the region and what constitutes victory is decimating these uh these these um these four objectives, right?

But then the president comes out and says things like unconditional surrender.

Uh uh we will have uh you know the Iranian regime will collapse.

We will have um you know the United States and President Trump will be picking the new leader.

Right.

So it it has depended on um you know the the whims of the president.

Uh the I can say that it the administration is still trying to limit the objectives and not make this look like an endless war.

Um but it's um it's been a mess uh in terms of the messaging of what this actually looks like, what an endgame actually looks like.

One of the things, Steve, um that the administration has insisted is that Iran is essentially cornered now.

And even as the new um supreme leader uh Maba Kai has come out um and vowed defiance, they say that they are very much cornered.

But at the same time, we're hearing of mines being placed in the straight of Hormuz that is severely disrupting uh the the shipping lane in ways we've never seen before.

Does Iran have a surprising amount of leverage in this conflict to disrupt econom the the global markets in a way that we never really anticipated?

Surprising?

I don't know.

I think analysts were aware that Iran could close the straight of hormones.

And in fact, Defense Secretary Pete Hexath, Secretary of War, if you like, Pete Hexath said in a news conference this week uh that of course they had plans for this.

Of course, they were aware that Iran could do this.

Uh nevertheless, Iran seems to have had considerable effect.

And you mentioned the mining.

I don't know if they're going to succeed in that.

I don't know if they have done it, but they haven't really had to do it because the shipping is largely stopped.

You can't ensure a ship that is going to go through the Persian Gulf and enough of them have been struck that they have a problem.

And this raises a question for me.

The president said, I believe to Axios that he could decide when the war ends.

I can quit whenever I want.

That's not a direct quote, but effectively that's what he said.

And uh it does raise a question as to whether Iran is willing to go along with that.

Uh in the 12-day war last year, the United States was able to say, "We're done.

We've achieved our objective.

if Iran will do a retaliatory strike and it's going to be over.

I don't know if that's going to be the case this time because Iran has played this card that has threatened to play for decades and now it's done it and countries around the world are suffering.

Can I just add Iran is behaving very differently than they did last June.

And that has surprised some people in the White House.

As you said, it sort of went according to a certain plan where there were attacks.

There was one night of strikes by the US.

Iran uh uh retaliated.

It was over.

Right.

Iran seems to think this is a far more existential conflict.

And so therefore, they're using the leverage that they're that they didn't use the last time, specifically economic leverage.

And they're also hitting strikes around the Gulf.

And it also raises the question of even when the war is over, they will have this leverage that they've already shown that they're willing to use, which gives them a certain amount of power in the future.

I mean, I hear you saying agreeing with Mark, Felicia, do you feel like the White House was surprised, and if so, why?

We know that, for example, they were talking to Israel quite a bit in the leadup to this conflict.

You were based in Israel um years ago, and and you know the country well.

What's your sense of the information that they were getting and how how much of a a real reality check they had going into this conflict?

I think, you know, there were Arab diplomats flooding Washington, meeting any official they could meet with, saying it's going to be different this time.

Iran needs to change the deterrence calculation.

They're going to respond more forcefully.

I think there's been plenty of reporting suggesting that they did have, you know, they should have had access to intelligence showing this kind of thing.

But I think they Trump has is kind of a vibes president.

He's really taken a lot of lessons from what happened in Venezuela, uh, what happened in the 12-day war.

I think Iran and and its and its history and its people is a very different situation than what we saw in Venezuela.

And and I think, you know, some of it was like the experts are always wrong.

The blob always tells us we can't, you know, this joking dimminionative term people use for the foreign policy establishment that, you know, they told us we couldn't move the embassy in Jerusalem.

It was fine.

They everyone said the 12-day war was going to be a disaster.

Venezuela was going to be a disaster.

So, I think, you know, Trump has been able to do things that everyone told him he couldn't do.

And I think some of it was confirmation bias.

It's a small circle of people.

And I think, you know, like Steve Wickoff before uh the talk started, he went on Fox and he said, "We're just really surprised the Iranians won't surrender."

I think that's a a a big misunderstanding of of the regime and how they operate.

So, I think it was a bit of a just a misread of the situation.

Um Nancy, you wrote a story this week which uh which you which was entitled Iran has the Iran war has four stages and we're in the second.

Explain to us what those stages look like because it also suggests maybe there is an endgame in sight.

So, there's one on paper anyway.

Yeah.

Um I I wanted to write it to because I think people were asking what the timeline is and what are we seeing and so in terms of military strategy it it starts with the initial strikes the initial attacks attacks that we saw followed by sort of trying to control the territory dominate when the shift that you've seen in this is rather than using missiles we're seeing more and more aircraft flying over Iran in a bid to control the airspace.

If that goes according to plan, it becomes a stabilization plan and then finally a withdrawal.

The the phase that we're in right now is that second phase.

Now, depending on how the stabilization efforts go, this could be the longest and the most complicated phase of the war.

And so, when you hear talk about it could be four weeks, 6 weeks, 8 weeks, those are sort of the the phases they're moving through as they go through their target set.

And so, the question becomes, can they actually stick to that plan?

Can they hit those targets?

And what does stabilization and withdrawal look like?

As we've talked about at this table, there hasn't been a clear answer for what kind of Iran the US would be leaving behind at the end of it.

There's no clear sign of regime change, at least as of this week, nor is there a sign of some sort of alternative leadership rising.

So, a military plan can achieve a weakened military state for Iran.

doesn't guarantee strong governance or stronger um post period more in line with um US or Israeli values afterwards.

Secretary Hegsth um held a couple of press avails this week, although the relationship with the Pentagon and the press um under this administration has been pretty complicated.

What were the biggest takeaways in your mind?

What what is the message that they're trying to get out there to the public through the media on this war?

I think twofold that they that they know what they're doing despite the mixed messaging in terms of um aims and intent that um that there is an instate that the president will decide the timetable of these strikes that we don't need to tell you the details of what we're doing because that would compromise the operation and that they have um a a plan in place to to decimate Iran's military capability.

What's interesting to me is these press conferences have focused on what's happening in terms of strikes.

They have yet to answer to what end.

These the strikes in and of themselves don't guarantee victory.

You know, we the US history is filled with examples in which the US achieved tactical wins and and lost in terms of the consequence of them.

And so they haven't answered that question.

There's been such a focus on how much ordinance we've destroyed, how much weaker the drone capability is, the ballistic missile capability is, but it hasn't linked it to the strategic aims yet.

And and I think there's been a real focus on the military ones because it's the most tangible success they can point to right now.

That's a great point.