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

Washington:

President-elect Donald Trump confirmed Monday that he plans to declare a national emergency on border security and use the US military to carry out a mass deportation of undocumented migrants.

Immigration was a top issue in the election campaign, and Trump has promised to deport millions and stabilize the border with Mexico after record numbers of migrants crossed illegally during President Joe Biden’s administration.

On his social media platform Truth Social, Trump amplified a recent post by a conservative activist that said the president-elect was “prepared to declare a national emergency and will use military assets to reverse the Biden invasion through a mass deportation program.”

Alongside the repost, Trump commented, “True!”

Trump sealed a remarkable comeback to the presidency in his November 5 defeat of Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.

He has been announcing a cabinet featuring immigration hardliners, naming former Immigration and Customs Enforcement acting chief Tom Homan as his “border czar.”

Homan appeared at the Republican National Convention in July, telling supporters: “I got a message to the millions of illegal immigrants that Joe Biden’s released in our country: You better start packing now.”

Authorities estimate that some 11 million people are living in the United States illegally. Trump’s deportation plan is expected directly to impact around 20 million families.

While the US government has struggled for years to manage its southern border with Mexico, Trump has super-charged concerns by claiming an “invasion” is underway by migrants he says will rape and murder Americans.

During his campaign, Trump repeatedly railed against undocumented immigrants, employing incendiary rhetoric about foreigners who “poison the blood” of the United States and misleading his audiences about immigration statistics and policy.

Trump has not elaborated on his immigration crackdown in any detail but during his election campaign repeatedly vowed to invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to speed up deportations.

Critics say the law is outdated and point to its most recent use during World War II to hold Japanese-Americans in internment camps without due process.

The number of US border patrol encounters with migrants crossing from Mexico illegally is now about the same as in 2020, the last year of Trump’s first term, after peaking at a record 250,000 for the month of December 2023.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump arrives for a campaign rally at Trump National Doral Miami, Tuesday, July 9, 2024, in Doral, Florida.
| Photo Credit: AP

Donald Trump, the former U.S. president and presumptive presidential nominee of the Republican Party, has attacked Vice President Kamala Harris, raising questions on her competence and describing her as an “insurance policy” for incumbent President Joe Biden.

His attack against Ms. Harris, who is of Indian and African heritage, came amid chatter in the Democratic Party about whether President Biden should remain the nominee in the November 5 presidential election.

Mr. Biden, 81, has faced calls from some Democrats to step aside as the nominee following his disastrous performance during a June 27 debate with Mr. Trump in which he struggled to complete sentences or land any significant blows against his opponent.

“Whatever else can be said about crooked Joe Biden, you have to give him credit for one brilliant decision, probably the smartest decision he ever made. He picked Kamala Harris as his vice president. No, it was brilliant. Because it was an insurance policy. Maybe the best insurance policy I’ve ever seen,” Mr. Trump, 78, told his supporters in Florida.

“If Joe had picked someone even halfway competent, they would have bounced him from office years ago, but they can’t because she’s gotta be their second choice,” he said as he repeatedly mispronounced her name.

Mr. Trump said as Vice President, Ms. Harris was given two very important tasks – border security and to deter Russia from attacking Ukraine.

“First, she was put in charge of the U.S. border security. She never showed up. She’s never gone. She never went there once. And the border is the worst border in the history of the world,” he alleged.

“We have the best border in history because she has the worst border in the history of the world. Then, she was sent to Europe to deter Russia from attacking Ukraine. How did that work out? Not too good. Both times, the result was a deadly failure. Since Kamala was made border czar, the Biden-Harris administration has lost track of an estimated 150,000 children, many of whom have undoubtedly been raped, trafficked, killed, or horribly abused,” Mr. Trump said.

Mr. Trump accused Ms. Harris, 59, of being a socialist.

“I don’t think Kamala Harris’ California socialism is going to go down well with the people of Doral, the people of Miami, or the people of Florida. Because in Florida, we don’t like socialism. We want our freedom, right? We want our freedom,” he said.

“Joe, Kamala and the entire Democrat establishment have been caught red-handed in the thick of the biggest scandal and the biggest coverup…it’s a cover-up. It’s the biggest cover-up in political history. As you know, they are all co-conspirators in the sinister plot to defraud the American public about the cognitive abilities of the man in the Oval Office,” alleged Mr. Trump.

Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. President Donald Trump
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Federal prosecutors in the U.S. chided the judge presiding over former President Donald Trump’s classified documents case in Florida, warning her off potential jury instructions that they said rest on a “fundamentally flawed legal premise.”

In an unusual order, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon had asked prosecutors and defence lawyers to file proposed jury instructions for most of the charges even though it remains unclear when the case might reach trial. She asked the lawyers to respond to competing interpretations of the law that appeared to accept the Republican ex-President’s argument that he was entitled under a statute known as the Presidential Records Act to retain the sensitive documents he is now charged with possessing.

Alarming order

The order surprised legal experts and alarmed special counsel Jack Smith’s team, which said in a filing late on Tuesday that the 1978 law — which requires Presidents to return presidential records to the government upon leaving office but permits them to retain purely personal ones — has no relevance in a case concerning highly classified documents.

Those records, prosecutors said, were clearly not personal and there is no evidence Mr. Trump ever designated them as such.

Mr. Smith’s team said that if the judge insists on citing the presidential records law in her jury instructions, she should let the lawyers know as soon as possible so they can appeal.