Updated April 1, 2026 at 11:33 PM EDT
President Trump used a prime-time address to the nation on Wednesday to announce that the administration's goals in Iran have nearly all been achieved and that the war there is "nearing completion."
The roughly 20 minute speech was Trump's first formal address about the war since the U.S. and Israel began striking Iran more than a month ago.
With rising gas prices sapping public support for the war, Trump sought to frame the conflict as a success thus far. "In these past four weeks," he said, "our armed forces have delivered swift, decisive, overwhelming victories on the battlefield."
However, the Trump administration has given shifting explanations of its goals, and its list of accomplishments in the conflict are mixed and unclear, at a time when the president has been talking about finding a way out of the war.
When he first announced the strikes on Iran, Trump listed several military objectives: destroying Iran's missiles, destroying its Navy, keeping Iran's terrorist proxies from destabilizing the Middle East, and keeping Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
The U.S. has made progress on reducing the damage Iran is causing with its missiles — the number of Iranian strikes has fallen off since the start of the war, according to data compiled by the Associated Press.
But Iran may still have many of the weapons left: last week, a U.S. official told NPR that the U.S. has only been able to confirm the elimination of around one-third of Iran's missile capabilities. In addition, Iran is still inflicting regional damage with those missiles. Last week, an Iranian missile hit a U.S. base in Saudi Arabia, injuring U.S. troops.
Iran's Navy has been largely destroyed in the conflict, according to Adm. Brad Cooper, U.S. CENTCOM commander, who has reported that 92% of Iran's large naval ships have been destroyed.
On the issue of weakening Iran's proxies, it's unclear how much progress has been made. Israel has invaded Lebanon to keep the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah from attacking. However, Yemen's Houthi rebels also entered the war in recent days with ballistic missile attacks against Israel and threats against U.S. warships in the Red Sea.
It is much less clear how much progress the U.S. has made on keeping Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, with Trump giving contradictory remarks.
Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Tuesday, "They will have no nuclear weapon, and that goal has been attained. They will not have nuclear weapons."
But later at that same event, he hinted that another president may have to come back to the issue in the future.
"They will not be able to do a nuclear weapon for years, and when they already may be, in a long time from now, able to do a nuclear weapon, you'll have a president that will be like me, and that he will go there and he'll knock the hell out of them again, because they cannot have a nuclear weapon," Trump said.
In addition, after weeks of insisting that thwarting Iran's nuclear capabilities was central to the war, Trump in a Wednesday interview with Reuters said he's not concerned about Iran's stockpile of enriched uranium: "That's so far underground, I don't care about that."
There was one other goal Trump mentioned in that initial speech that was gone from his Wednesday address: helping Iranians overthrow their government. "When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take," he had said on February 28. "This will be probably your only chance for generations."
Since then, Trump has spoken little about that goal of a popular revolt against the regime. Trump had also at one point said the U.S. should have a role in selecting Iran's new leader, after U.S. and Israeli airstrikes killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. But Iranian officials selected his son, Mojtaba Khamenei, as a successor, suggesting continuity with his father's theocratic rule.
In his Wednesday speech, Trump said he never aimed for regime change but nevertheless declared that he had accomplished it.
"We never said regime change, but regime change has occurred because of all of their original leaders' death — they're all dead," Trump said. "The new group is less radical and much more reasonable."
Despite questions over the war's progress, Trump said he expects to be out of Iran soon.
"I can say tonight that we are on track to complete all of America's military objectives shortly, very shortly, we are going to hit them extremely hard over the next two to three weeks," he said, reiterating a timeframe he had told reporters earlier this week.
The focus on signaling an end to the war comes as the administration is facing growing headwinds on multiple fronts.
As a result of the war, Iran has sharply curtailed traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a key global shipping lane where one-fifth of the world's oil supply passes through. This has led to higher oil prices, with gasoline in the U.S. now averaging more than $4 per gallon. That higher cost could raise prices on a wide variety of products. The strait's closure also raised the price of some fertilizers, hurting farmers.
The war has further frayed U.S. relations with its NATO allies. In an interview with the Britain's Telegraph published Wednesday, Trump said he's considering pulling out of NATO because those nations did not join the war in Iran. The administration has since confirmed that NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte will visit the White House next week.
And with the U.S. now nearly five weeks into the Iran war, multiple polls have shown that a majority of Americans disapprove of a war that has resulted in the deaths of 13 U.S. service members.
In addition, Trump's approval rating has continued to slide, hitting second-term lows in both the New York Times and Real Clear Politics polling averages. The war has also caused divides among members of the president's political base, as some supporters grapple with how to reconcile the conflict with Trump's past pledges to avoid foreign interventions.
Amid those political challenges, Trump on Wednesday attempted to paint the current conflict as short in comparison to past U.S. wars: "It's very important that we keep this conflict in perspective," he said, before listing the lengths of U.S. involvement in past conflicts, including the more than 8-year-long involvement in Iraq.
"We are in this military operation so powerful, so brilliant, against one of the most powerful countries, for 32 days," he said.
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