Trump speech on the Iran war
It’s all one big master plan
Updated April 2, 2026 – 6:46 a.mReading time: 5 minutes
For the US President, everything is going according to plan in the Iran war. His dissatisfaction with NATO, however, could only be read between the lines. Four takeaways from Trump’s address to the nation.
David Schafbuch reports from New York
The speech had been eagerly awaited: On Tuesday evening (local time), White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt unexpectedly announced that US President Donald Trump would give an address to the nation on Wednesday evening: Trump wanted to give “important news” regarding the war in Iran. Since then there has been a lot of speculation about the content, especially because Trump has recently made more negative comments about NATO than ever and has repeatedly promised an end to the war.
However, the president did not announce his withdrawal from the defense alliance or an end to the war. What messages did Trump send instead in his address to the nation? Four takeaways from the US President’s speech:
1. Trump is selling the war in Iran as part of a grand master plan
It was not clear from Trump’s speech that the US government had repeatedly sent different, sometimes completely contradictory signals in recent weeks regarding its objectives and the possible duration of the war. Instead, the president used his address to portray his actions toward Iran as a stringent, grand master plan.
The president emphasized, for example, that Iran has been a terrorist state for decades. Trump has been saying for years that the country should not have nuclear weapons. That’s why he canceled the nuclear agreement with the country in his first term in office, and why the commander of the Quds Force, Qasem Soleimani, was killed at that time.
Despite these actions, Trump claimed that his first course of action was always diplomacy: But because that was not possible with Iran, he bombed the country’s nuclear facilities last year (“Operation Midnight Hammer”). At the time, Trump claimed that Iran’s nuclear program had been completely destroyed by the attacks.
Because an immediate threat had recently emanated from the country, the current attack was launched together with Israel (“Operation Epic Fury”). Trump said, for example, that Iran had developed long-range missiles and other previously unknown weapons. However, according to various media reports, before the war, US intelligence agencies had no indication that Iran was immediately planning a preemptive strike against another country.
