transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:02] In the short term, I don't think it necessarily looks great for the president. I think it shows that he is in a much more difficult situation than he expected to be, and it just really amplifies that.

Speaker 2:
[00:15] Ships still aren't moving through the Strait of Hormuz. There still isn't a deal on Iran's nuclear program. The US war with Iran is starting to feel a lot like Groundhog Day. What's the next move to get the US out of the conflict? This is Sources and Methods from NPR. I'm Mary Louise Kelly. Every Thursday on this podcast, we dive deep into the week's biggest national security stories with the NPR reporters who are out in the world covering them. Today we have NPR national security correspondent Greg Myre in the studio. Hello, Greg.

Speaker 3:
[00:52] Hi, Mary Louise.

Speaker 2:
[00:53] And a big welcome, because making his debut, very first time on Sources and Methods is White House correspondent Franco Ordoñez. Welcome to you.

Speaker 1:
[01:01] Thank you so much. Great to be here.

Speaker 2:
[01:03] I have a fascinating fact to throw in, which is you and I discovered we both grew up in Atlanta.

Speaker 1:
[01:08] I know.

Speaker 2:
[01:09] I believe we discovered we graduated high school the same year.

Speaker 1:
[01:12] Did we?

Speaker 2:
[01:13] 1989.

Speaker 1:
[01:14] I graduated a year later in 1990.

Speaker 2:
[01:17] You're rubbing it in. And we went to arch-rival high schools. So go Lions.

Speaker 1:
[01:23] Go Wildcats.

Speaker 2:
[01:24] All right. On that note, we are all in the same studio. We are all in the same time zone. So I will timestamp this at just after 1 p.m. Thursday. Greg, you kick us off. I am following the war in Iran with intense interest, and I am struggling to make sense of exactly where things stand today. So where do things stand today? We know that the ceasefire is holding, kind of, and President Trump has now extended that ceasefire indefinitely.

Speaker 3:
[01:55] Yeah, it was supposed to expire this week, Tuesday or Wednesday, depending on how you want it to count. It's now got this indefinite extension, and it just has a feel right now that it could go on a long time. I think if there's any change in recent days, it's been what's happening to ships in the region.

Speaker 2:
[02:16] We're seeing ships being seized by both sides.

Speaker 3:
[02:18] That's right. Iran said yesterday they seized two cargo ships. The US says it's turned back more than 30 ships, and significantly it seized two oil tankers this week in the Indian Ocean. This is really spread out to hundreds and hundreds of miles. Iran is operating pretty much in the Strait of Hormuz, where it seems to be blocking, seizing ships. The US blockade is sort of several hundred miles to the east, actually, in the Gulf of Oman, which I think just to stay away from the very dangerous, vulnerable waters in the Strait. But these tankers that were seized were in the Indian Ocean several hundred miles further east. So it's a vast expanse of water that has now become part of these dueling US and Iranian blockades.

Speaker 2:
[03:10] Okay, so we'll circle back in a few minutes to get a bit more detail on what is happening in the region and around Iran. But I want to spend the next few minutes talking about who is making decisions here in Washington, who is influencing the president, who has his ear as he decides things like, do we extend the ceasefire? Do we try to give diplomacy another shot? Franco GD. Vance, the vice president, he was on deck to head to Pakistan to lead negotiations with Iran. He led the last round that didn't get anywhere. Why him?

Speaker 1:
[03:46] You know, it's interesting because JD. Vance actually did not have much of a role in the very early aspects of this conflict. And you know, from my understanding...

Speaker 2:
[03:55] He's not a diplomat with deep international experience.

Speaker 1:
[03:58] No, I mean, he was considered the member of the cabinet who was most opposed to the conflict. And this is something that I think has come up a lot because I think that is maybe one of the reasons why he has been brought up. But you know, fascinatingly or interestingly enough, I've been talking with sources who are close to Vance and close to the administration, who say, well, you know, it makes sense that he is now the person. Because you know, obviously Trump wants to get out of this conflict. He needs someone who can, you know, kind of relate or at least can, you know, be a sympathetic ear. You know, Iran could potentially see Vance as someone who does not necessarily want this to continue and therefore, maybe see him as having a sympathetic ear to some of their concerns. But also, what I'm being told is, look, it does make sense for Vance to be this person as they kind of think long term. Because he is, you know, the heir apparent of, you know, of the US perhaps.

Speaker 2:
[04:59] He's a heavyweight. If you can't negotiate with Trump directly, JD. Vance is seen as the next best.

Speaker 1:
[05:03] Exactly. Well, not only that he's the next best, but also he is, you know, who would be the next potential leader of a Trump administration in a few years. So I think looking at this in a potentially a long, you know, a long run, a longer picture, this may be seen as, look, this is not just a short term decision.

Speaker 2:
[05:22] Marco Rubio might have thoughts about that. So let me inject Marco Rubio here. How is it possible that the guy who is America's diplomat in chief, he is the Secretary of State and the National Security Advisor, that he's nowhere to be seen in a moment when the US is trying to pull off the highest of high stakes diplomacy?

Speaker 1:
[05:42] Yeah, I find that part very fascinating because Marco Rubio was very involved in the early stages of the conflict. He was really kind of setting the message, explaining some of the war goals, the goals of this administration. He was also actually talking about negotiations. On April 1st, I think he talked about a finish line during these discussions. He's often seen as kind of the more sober leader. He doesn't have the same type of belligerent rhetoric that Trump has, but in the last couple of weeks, he's definitely kind of moved into the shadows. I did ask the White House actually about this with Rubio.

Speaker 2:
[06:21] Yeah, what did they say?

Speaker 1:
[06:22] Essentially, they told me that he is still very much involved. When I talk to sources who are close to the administration, they tell me that he is likely moved more to a national security advisor role where he is managing the day to day, bringing all the agencies and put together and bringing it to the president. Obviously, we've reported many times that this president likes a close circle. That would be a big role for Rubio.

Speaker 2:
[06:51] He is involved, just to note, in the parallel war, the war that is happening between Israel and Lebanon.

Speaker 1:
[06:59] Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2:
[07:00] There are talks on that today and he's all in on that.

Speaker 1:
[07:03] Yeah, and those talks are today. They're a little indirect. I will say it's interesting that I was raising questions about Rubio yesterday, and I think others were as well because Rubio made an interesting appearance outside the white swing when the press secretary was talking to the press. He didn't say anything, but the cameras were there and they caught him as well. So I thought that was kind of interesting that they made him have an appearance.

Speaker 2:
[07:27] A visual signal. I'm here, guys. I'm in the fray. Greg, what about Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary?

Speaker 3:
[07:34] Well, he certainly seems to have President Trump full support and backing right now. In this war, he's maintained this sort of narrow lane. He's come out periodically, not a lot, not every day, to talk about how the war was going, but very much with military metrics, how many targets the US has hit, how many Iranian ships have been sunk. He hasn't spoken about anything broader, about strategy, about goals, the wider Middle East.

Speaker 2:
[08:09] So you're saying he's laying out numbers, this many bombs dropped, this many ships we've seized, this many, but not articulating, what's the end goal?

Speaker 3:
[08:20] Exactly. And I think that's where Trump is kind of keeping him. And again, we're hearing relatively little from him, given that we are now almost eight weeks into this conflict. So it's a limited role for Hegseth. And you do have this cast of characters. In addition, you've got your all purpose diplomat, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, who get thrown in to every crisis.

Speaker 2:
[08:48] Witkoff, as someone put it to me.

Speaker 3:
[08:51] There we go.

Speaker 2:
[08:52] I was at an embassy recently, the Witkoff team.

Speaker 3:
[08:55] But maybe at the end of the day, it still boils down to whatever Trump says. And that message oscillates wildly from one day to the next. There's almost a deal, or I expect to start bombing heavily. Just wait, if you don't like his message, wait 12, 24 hours and it's probably gonna change.

Speaker 2:
[09:13] Franco, what are your sources to say about who's got the president's ear?

Speaker 1:
[09:16] Marco Rubio is one, I think, who the president relies on. Vance, obviously, is vice president. Of course, when it comes to this conflict, there's Netanyahu, the Prime Minister, Bibi Netanyahu of Israel, who's obviously played a heavy role. Someone I am paying very, very close attention to, though, is the Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. He has always been very hawkish on Iran. He's very outspoken about Iran. And he has talked a lot with the president, including coming out online and social media on Wednesday, saying that, really, really strongly backing this blockade that the US has and saying it could even go global. He is a voice that I think just resonates in some, that everyone should kind of listen to and pay attention to, because when it comes to kind of these hawkish things, I find that they are very much in sync. We don't hear Lindsey Graham necessarily talk vociferously like he is unless he feels like he has the president's backing.

Speaker 2:
[10:20] Interesting. With that, we're going to take a break. When we come back, did President Trump blink first? That's ahead on Sources and Methods from NPR. We're back and we're gonna talk about President Trump's quest for a deal, any deal, any kind of a deal with Iran. It was on Tuesday that President Trump announced he was extending the ceasefire. Now, there are not any talks happening. We know that JD Vance was going, then he was not going, then he was going, and then again, not going to Pakistan. Greg, to sum up, the Strait of Hormuz is closed mostly. There is no nuclear deal. Iran, to our knowledge, has made no concessions on matters like supporting Hezbollah and other regional proxies, which the US would like them to stop doing. Iran has made no deals that we know of about reining in its missile program. What has Trump gained by extending this ceasefire?

Speaker 3:
[11:23] Well, he hasn't gained anything, but I think he didn't have great options at this point. To resume, shooting really didn't seem to make sense. The US wasn't able to get what it wanted politically with more than five weeks of heavy bombing. So resuming that bombing or even trying to escalate wasn't necessarily going to guarantee success. It looks like any deal is gonna have to be a negotiated deal. So it seems like we are getting more and more locked in to negotiations, but they haven't been moving all that fast. We've only had one round of talks in the past two weeks. Still trying to set up a second round. I think there's a really key distinction to make here. The blockage of the Strait of Hormuz affects everybody. Perhaps Iran more than anyone else, which desperately needs it to sell its oil, but every country in the world is facing higher oil prices because of this. That was something that wasn't blockaded before the war. It has a great sense of urgency. You could see that being worked out because there's just so much pressure. Everybody would like to see a solution to that issue. But the other issues that you mentioned, the nuclear program, the missile program, Iran's support for proxies, those are going to be long, difficult negotiations that don't lend themselves to being worked out quickly.

Speaker 2:
[12:46] That feel more existential perhaps to Iran.

Speaker 3:
[12:48] Exactly. I could see with the US wanting this package, this comprehensive set of agreements, but that's going to be hard to do in the short term. Whereas I could see Iran wanting to split this up and saying, okay, we want the Strait of Hormuz open too, we can all agree on that. But setting aside nuclear and missile and proxy negotiations for later in what could be very, very difficult and prolonged discussions.

Speaker 2:
[13:15] I mean, we nodded to Groundhog Day at the very beginning of this episode, and I'm just hearing such echoes of negotiations back during the Obama administration for what became the JCPOA, the Iran nuclear deal, when the US then as now wanted it all, wanted a whole big comprehensive deal and said, we just can't get it, so let's at least get the nuclear piece and here we are again.

Speaker 3:
[13:37] Yeah, it's so important to remember, these are the core issues for Iran. They don't have the vast global interests that the US does. You can sort of see Trump getting itchy and say, I've got to meet with Chinese leader Xi Jinping next month. We've still got Venezuela and maybe even Cuba on the table. This is something he would like to resolve pretty quickly. This is it for Iran. They care about their country, their neighborhood, and they want to preserve the Islamic regime. They want to be a power in the region, and they insist on the right to have a nuclear program. So these are issues where they're going to be very grudging in any concessions they might make. These are their most fundamental core issues.

Speaker 2:
[14:25] So would it be fair to say, and I'm thinking of the early weeks of this war where you had the US and Israel dropping bombs, just constant unrelenting airstrikes. You had Iran shooting back and targeting US interests and allies in the Gulf. It felt like the US and Iran were in a steering competition, like just bring it. No, you bring it. Does it feel like by extending the ceasefire, and you just said the US doesn't seem to have gotten anything for it, does it feel like President Trump blinked?

Speaker 3:
[15:05] We're going to have to see how it ends. If the negotiations work out and the US gets some, most, all of what it wants, then you could argue that was the right decision to make it the right time.

Speaker 2:
[15:18] If this buys time for diplomacy and it will look like a shrewd move.

Speaker 3:
[15:22] Absolutely. So I don't think you can answer that question fully until we know how it works out. It may very much make Iran feel that, okay, we've got them. We want to draw this out. We want to drag it out. He's now playing our game. So that may be the thinking at the moment, maybe that's how it will play out. But I would hesitate to make a judgment on that until we see where we end up.

Speaker 1:
[15:47] I think it really, oftentimes, it depends on who you're talking to. If you're talking about some of the critics who I speak with, they're like, yes, he did blink. He threatened over the weekend that no more Mr. Nice Guy, that we are, again, he repeated that he was going to bomb bridges and that's an aspect of American credibility. It's certainly the credibility of the president. What does he stand for? What can you believe on? What can he back? That said, when I talk to people who are close to the administration, they're like, look, no one expected that the president was actually going to do this. It's not what he stands for. It's not what the US stands for.

Speaker 2:
[16:28] That he wasn't going to do what?

Speaker 1:
[16:30] That he wasn't going to bomb bridges and power plants. But it was a way of speaking to the Iranians, as it was told to me, in their language, in their rhetoric, to get their attention. So I think there are different ways of looking at this, but I do agree with Greg in the sense that it is a wait and see moment. Let's see how this turns out in the short term. I don't think it necessarily looks great for the president. I think it shows that he is in a much more difficult situation than he expected to be, and it just really amplifies that.

Speaker 2:
[17:08] Go back to, you just used the word credibility, and I'm hearing another word pop into my head, Greenland. We are, what, four months, not quite four months into 2026, and we have seen the president, President Trump walk right up to the precipice in terms of threatening military action with Greenland and then backing down. And all sorts of issues about credibility were raised then. Are some of those echoing today when you talked to people in and around the White House?

Speaker 1:
[17:35] Yeah, I mean, I think they really do. I mean, especially with Greenland. I mean, you remember, you know, the president really, really pushed the line on Greenland where the European nations, European allies, in some sense, finally stood up and said, no more and started sending or at least announcing that they were going to start sending their own delegations and troops and service members to help support Greenland. I think, I think that was something that was very clear and caught the president's attention. But I would say it wasn't just that. I think what another parallel to this is, is the markets and the fact that the markets reacted at that point to Greenland. And I think the markets are something that is happening again today. The president is clearly watching those markets. And when the markets, you know, royal or really get sparked, he usually responds. He even, you know, has talked about, you know, watching the markets and said, one of the reasons that he went on, in his words, excursion, was because the markets were doing so well. And that this was an opportunity to kind of take this role for the long-term gain. You know, it is, as put it to me, he is very focused on domestic economy, and if it's going to impact the domestic economy, that will really hurt his America First message.

Speaker 2:
[18:54] Does he have more cards to play in this one?

Speaker 1:
[18:56] I mean, I think the card that he's playing right now, and he's playing it very hard, is this US blockade in really trying to starve the Iranian economy. Caroline Levitt, yesterday at the White House, you know, called it an economic stranglehold on the economy of Iran, saying it's $400 to $500 million a day. When I talk to people, they tell me this could have, you know, dramatic impacts from more economic unrest, just more and more pressure on Iran that could maybe eventually break the dam. That said, I think one of the misperceptions, so far at least, that the US has faced is like, they have felt that they could put more, the more pressure they put that they think that Iran is going to capitulate, whether it's economic pressure, military pressure, and so far at least that hasn't happened. Will that happen now? I think there are a lot of doubters out there.

Speaker 2:
[19:55] After a short break, what we know and don't know about life inside Iran, its sources and methods from NPR. We're back with Greg Myre and Franco Ordoñez. Now, I want to remind folks, it is really hard to get information out of Iran. Much of what we know firsthand is from our reporters who are at the border, who are talking to people as they cross in and out. Those reporters include Duri Burskarin, who has been reporting for us from Iran's border with Turkey. She's been talking with folks who are struggling to get information out into the world, also struggling to receive it inside Iran. Duri spoke to a product designer who asked that we not use his name because he is scared of being arrested. But this product designer travels back and forth between Iran and Turkey, and he does that just so he can use the Internet. He's saying they are in absolute darkness, and that despite all of that travel back and forth, he has lost out on work opportunities because he can't stay in touch. He says there that his team has lost so many deals, that they have been labeled as people who don't keep their word, and that their credibility is in danger. Now, Greg, let me flip this to you. Again, with the emphasis, it is really hard to get a sense of life inside Iran. Do we know how Iranians are getting news about this war, about the status of the ceasefire, for example?

Speaker 3:
[21:34] Yeah, we really don't, in a full sense. You know, it seemed like we'd reached that point in human history with the ubiquity of the internet and everybody having a phone in their hand to film and post.

Speaker 2:
[21:46] It was impossible to be out of touch.

Speaker 3:
[21:47] Yeah, yeah, but we have, because of the internet blackout there, because there's no foreign media, limited domestic media even in Iran. So, I called up a woman named Nazila Fati. I first met Nazila 30 years ago, most exactly, in Tehran in 1996. I was on a reporting trip there, and she was a young Iranian journalist. She later became the New York Times correspondent in Iran for a decade or so, then was forced to flee the country for her own safety, has landed in the Washington area, wrote a book about her experiences, and she's been trying to stay in touch with what's going on in Iran. Here's a little bit of what she had to say.

Speaker 4:
[22:33] People were saying during those days that everything was available. There was food, there was no shortage of anything. Prices were going up, but once the ceasefire went into effect, I don't know if it is because people have noticed what's happening in the economy or the economy took another dramatic turn, but inflation has been completely out of control.

Speaker 3:
[23:00] You know, so she said that most things are available.

Speaker 2:
[23:03] It got worse since the ceasefire.

Speaker 3:
[23:04] Exactly, exactly. Yeah, yeah. And she said things are still available, as best she can tell. It's not like there's dire shortages of anything, but the prices have gone way up. People were sort of hunkered down. Their apartment buildings were literally shaking while these bombings were going on. And she said now that they're sort of coming out and feeling that trauma. But she said it's still very difficult to make contact with people in Iran. Here's a little bit more about what she said in terms of trying to stay in touch with people there.

Speaker 4:
[23:35] It is hard to speak on the phone for a long time. You get disconnected. So it's not that you can get a free flow of information. And people are very reluctant to speak about the situation. They're scared. People have been arrested. A lot of people have been put on death sentence. And the situation is a wartime situation. Every night, a lot of people come out on the street to support the regime, the military. It's not normal circumstances.

Speaker 3:
[24:10] Yeah. And she's saying that because she's saying the regime is not popular. But people, either because there was a little bit of a rally around the flag effect because they've been bombed for weeks, or they don't want to get themselves in trouble and act like they're somehow against the government. But she's saying you're just seeing things that you wouldn't expect to see.

Speaker 2:
[24:32] It's interesting hearing her use the words normal circumstances and trying to picture what even remotely counts as normal circumstances in these times for people inside Iran. It reminds me of talking to you, Greg, about reporting from another war zone you've spent a fair bit of time in, in Ukraine. Obviously, very different war, very different circumstances, and they're now four plus years in. But how people adjust to all kinds of things. And when you walk around Kiev these days, a country that is in all-out war, an existential fight for its survival, that you see a lot of things that look like normal life. People go into school, go on to work, go on to the market.

Speaker 3:
[25:13] It's always extraordinary to find the way people adapt. And they do so far more adaptable than you think they would be and in creative ways that you can't imagine, and in ways they couldn't imagine themselves, going about their ordinary lives and suddenly seeing themselves thrust into the middle of a war.

Speaker 2:
[25:33] All right, let me bring us toward a close. We're going to end, as we nearly always do, with OSINT, Open Source Intelligence, not classified, not secret, but telling details that we stumble across in our reporting. Greg, kick us off.

Speaker 3:
[25:47] Yeah, we're just about to hit the 40th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in northern Ukraine, just coming up in a couple days. And, you know, it's an unfinished story in some ways. Russian troops occupied the area around Chernobyl in 2022 at the beginning of the full scale war. They did some really crazy stuff. They dug trenches and that disrupted the dirt. And by overturning the soil released more radioactivity than the already elevated levels that you would find there. Now, they were driven out fairly quickly, but the Chernobyl sarcophagus that protects it was hit by a Russian drone last year and caused damage and caused additional repairs. And then just very briefly, as an additional note, the Russians have occupied the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in sort of southeastern Ukraine for four years. There's been shelling all around that plant, and they're keeping Ukrainian workers to keep that plant going. It's in a cold shutdown. It's not generating power, but reducing the risk of an accident. But it's still not zero. And there's apparently at least like 20 Ukrainian workers who, under Russian gunpoint, are still working to keep that plant going and make sure that there's not some sort of accident.

Speaker 2:
[27:09] Fascinating hearing about the legacy all these years later of the Chernobyl nuclear plant and the radioactive dirt that sounds like just keeps on giving, even as we contemplate the nuclear program that Iran may or may not be aspiring to in the middle of what's happening there. Franco, what do you have?

Speaker 1:
[27:28] Mine is, you know, as all this is happening in Iran, you know, there's more and more kind of speculation of what could be next. And there's a lot of talk about Cuba. And in the midst of all these talks that are happening with Iran, there's also been talks, high-level talks in Havana, the first of its kind in years, in a decade, since, for example, a US government plane has landed in Havana. We were talking about Rubio and what he's been doing and what he's been disappeared. He kind of disappeared a little bit. Well, this is something that he has certainly been leading and very involved with, something he's been involved with for decades.

Speaker 2:
[28:08] Who's on the other side of the table? Who's he talking to?

Speaker 1:
[28:11] On the other side of the table is one of the Castro's nephews who's been talking. But there's a lot of different parties involved. And what I think the message, at least the administration is trying to get across, is that this hardline policy, the administration has been not, or Trump has not hidden his, it's not been veiled threats of potential military action there either. He has certainly been very aggressive about that. And the administration seems to be indicating that that is kind of working in that, and it's kind of creating these opportunities for conversations. I think what is kind of interesting though, because as things don't necessarily go the way that the administration perhaps wants it to go in Iran, I'm hearing more and more that it may not be surprising if Trump kind of turns to Cuba, where conversations seem to be going a little bit better to kind of turn the page for a little bit more of positive news on the foreign policy arena.

Speaker 2:
[29:14] Cuba, watch this space. I will land us with a bridge, to be specific, the first road bridge between Russia and North Korea. This week, Tuesday, Russia and North Korea held a ceremony to celebrate its completion. This is a bridge over the Tumen River, and the Russian Transport Ministry put out pictures. You can look at them online. These guys in orange hard hats with giant wrench, leaning down, presumably to tighten that last bolt. Russia says the bridge will open for traffic this summer, that they think about 300 vehicles, maybe close to 3,000 people a day could transit. So, interesting, just little snapshot of expanding contact, deepening ties between these two countries. We reported, by the way, NPR reported last year when they launched direct flights between Pyongyang and Moscow. They did not have direct flights. Now they do, and they are literally building bridges. So two of the most sanctioned countries in the world, two countries that the US would love to see more isolated countries with fewer friends, and here's a new bridge. So there we go. All right, with that, let me say thank you to NPR National Security correspondent, Greg Myre. Great to see you as ever.

Speaker 3:
[30:38] It's a pleasure.

Speaker 2:
[30:38] And White House correspondent, Franco Ordoñez, please come back early and often.

Speaker 1:
[30:42] I would love to.

Speaker 2:
[30:43] All right, before we go, you knew it was coming. Wait for it. A plug. If Sources and Methods is a part of your weekly ritual, first, we are honored. Second, why don't you make it official? You can do that on the NPR app. You'll get every episode the moment it's ready. Turn on those notifications. We'll handle the rest. You can download the NPR app today. And once you're in there, make sure to search for and follow this show. That's it for today's episode. Thanks for listening. I'm Mary Louise Kelly, and we're back next week with another episode of Sources and Methods from NPR.