Before U.S. President Donald Trump delivered his national address on the evening of April 1 in the White House, Iran and Hezbollah launched heavy missile attacks at Israel. While Mr. Trump was speaking about America’s achievements in the war, including degrading Iran’s missile capability, missile alerts were issued in the UAE. After Mr. Trump concluded his speech, Iran launched another salvo of missiles at Israel.

What Trump said

There was much speculation on what Mr. Trump was going to say in his first primetime national address since the U.S. and Israel launched the war on Iran on February 28. Some said he would escalate with a ground attack, while others said he would chicken out or issue a timeline to wind up operations. But the U.S. leader did not say anything new. The speech was largely a reassertion of the claims he has been making over the past few weeks. He said the U.S. was “on track to complete all of America’s military objectives shortly”. He also said the U.S. was going to hit Iran “extremely hard” over the next two to three weeks. “We are going to bring them back to the Stone Ages.”

Mr. Trump said discussions were under way and asked the Iranians to make a deal. “If there is no deal, we are going to hit each and every one of their electric-generating plants very hard and properly simultaneously.” He said the Strait of Hormuz, a critical waterway connecting the Persian Gulf with the Gulf of Oman that has been taken control of by Iran after the war, is not America’s problem. He had earlier asked America’s allies to send ships to reopen the Strait — which nobody is willing to do.

He also indicated that he was not considering a ground operation to seize Iran’s enriched uranium because it’s buried deep underground. “It would take months to get near the nuclear dust,” he said, adding that U.S. satellites are monitoring Iran’s nuclear sites.

What were Trump’s goals

While the main objective of the speech appeared to make the case for the war to the American public, it also underscores the limited options Mr. Trump has in winding down the conflict. In the speech Mr. Trump praised the Venezuela attack earlier this year.

But in Venezuela, U.S. troops went in and got out with President Nicolas Maduro, handing the country to his Vice-President who is willing to work with Washington.

But in Iran, the assassination of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei seemed to have strengthened Iran’s resolve to stand up to the U.S.

Also read: West Asia war updates on April 2, 2026

On February 28, when he launched the war, Mr. Trump outlined five broad objectives: to “raze” Iran’s missile industry “to the ground”; to “annihilate” Iran’s Navy; to ensure that Iran’s “proxies” could no longer “destabilise” the region; to prevent Iran from ever obtaining a nuclear weapon; and to bring about regime change. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations,” he said at the time. In his April 1 address, Mr. Trump claimed the U.S. was now completing all of these objectives.

Ground reality

The ground reality, however, tells a different story. Despite a month-long campaign by the U.S. and Israel, Iran continues to strike Israel, which is more than 2,000 km away, with ballistic missiles, and target American bases in the Persian Gulf region. Mr. Trump has claimed that he has annihilated Iran’s navy, but he is not willing to send American troops to reopen the Strait of Hormuz—no country, even Britain, America’s closest ally in Europe, wants to join this war. In fact, the U.S. Navy has stayed away from the Persian Gulf, where Iran still takes shots.

Israel is bombing Iran while carrying out a ground invasion in Lebanon against Hezbollah, an Iranian ally. But Iran and Hezbollah continue to launch coordinated attacks. Last week, Yemen’s Ansar Allah (better known as Houthis), another Iranian ally, launched a ballistic missile at Israel, formally joining the war. The Houthis, who rule almost half of Yemen, have the capability to shut the Bab el Mandeb Strait, a chokepoint between the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea. If the Strait is closed, traffic through the Suez Canal will be disrupted. And if the Strait of Hormuz and the Strait of Bab el Mandeb are closed at the same time, it would be catastrophic for the global economy. And Mr. Trump’s last objective, regime change in Iran, remains distant. He now claims that regime change has already occurred, which is not a serious argument. The assassination of Ali Khamenei did not alter the state structure of Iran. If anything, it has strengthened elite cohesion within the Islamic Republic and further elevated the IRGC’s standing in the system.

What Mr. Trump can do is continue bombing Iran, which is what he threatened to do in his speech. He is using the threat of extensive strikes, including at civilian infrastructure, as an added layer of pressure to force Iran to shift its position and make a deal. But if Mr. Trump follows through on his threats, Iran is likely to retaliate by attacking energy infrastructure across the Persian Gulf, driving up fuel prices further. Iran maintains, at least publicly, that it was in talks when the U.S. bombed the country. In the words of Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, Tehran is not ready for a ceasefire.

With Mr. Trump lacking an exit path and Iran prepared to absorb the costs and play a longer game, the war is likely to drag on, with serious implications for the Persian Gulf and the broader global economy.

Published – April 02, 2026 01:05 pm IST

President Donald Trump arrives to speak about the Iran war from the Cross Hall of the White House on Wednesday (April 1, 2026), in Washington.
| Photo Credit: AP

Asked what Donald Trump meant by accepting only “unconditional surrender,” Karoline Leavitt said on Friday that it will be achieved when the president “determines that Iran no longer poses a threat to the United States of America” and the mission’s goals have “been fully realised.” 

“Then Iran will essentially be in a place of unconditional surrender,” she told reporters outside the White House “whether they say it themselves or not. Frankly, they don’t have a lot of people to say that for them.”

-AP

The United Arab Emirates is weighing freezing billions of dollars of ‌Iranian assets held in the Gulf state, a move that could ⁠curb Tehran’s access to foreign currency and global trade amid the U.S.-Israeli military conflict, the Wall Street ‌Journal reported on Thursday.

UAE authorities are weighing measures ranging from freezing the assets of UAE-based shadow companies used to mask ‌trade to a sweeping financial crackdown on local currency exchanges, which are used to move money outside of formal banking ‌channels, the report said, citing officials familiar with discussions.

If the UAE decides to move on Iran’s shadow-financing empire, ⁠a key target would be accounts affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the ‌report added.

-Reuters