President Trump is telling NATO allies they face a "very bad future" if they ...
help secure the state of our moves. The Iranian regime is blocking the key oil shipping route and attacking Gulf countries
as the U.S. is really war with Iran enters its third week.
I am Michelle Martin, that's a Martinez, and this is up first from NPR News. As a public remains deeply ambivalent about the war with Iran, President Trump is doubling down on his message that the U.S. is winning is that the reality on the ground
“or is he just trying to manage a global energy crisis?”
And Republicans are pushing a bill to require proof of citizenship to register to vote. Millies of Americans don't have easy access to those documents, does it have the votes to pass? See, with us, we've got news that you can start your day with. From the next through line from NPR, the rupture between Iran and Israel through the
story of Jewish Iranians. "Habib Al-Ayan was the realization of our dreams as an ethnic minority who wants to develop Iran." Listen in the NPR app, or wherever you get your podcasts. There is no sign the Iran wars ending anytime soon and Iran is exacting a painful
price. Iran is attacking Gulf countries and blocking the state of Hormuz, a key oil shipping route.
President Trump is pressuring countries to help reopen it, and a second from in the war
is heating up with new Israeli ground operations in Lebanon, and also potential diplomacy.
“NPR's Daniel Estrin is with us from Tel Aviv, Daniel what do they stand?”
Well, Iran is continuing to attack Gulf countries, it says it's punishing those Gulf countries for allowing the U.S. to use their territory to mount attacks on Iran. And so we are seeing the global implications. Dubai, international airport, the world's busiest airport, temporarily suspended flights, yet again, after a drone attack started a fire, and then there's the effect of the world's
oil trade. Iran is largely blocking that key shipping route the state of Hormuz, and President Trump says he's speaking to about a half a dozen countries asking them to send military help to reopen the state of Hormuz, he has threatened a "very bad future" if NATO allies don't help.
Daniel mentioned your in Tel Aviv in Israel, so what are the effects of Israel's attack on Iran now more than what two weeks into the war? And Israeli military spokesman briefed reporters this morning about how the war is going in their eyes, he said the Israeli military has taken at more than 70% of Iran's ballistic missile launchers, but we do see Iran still firing missiles daily toward Gulf countries
on toward Israel, including shortly before I got on to speak with you. Israel, according to the Israeli military, is now working to degrade Iran's nuclear program as well. And the military spokesman said that there have been some strikes that he cannot speak about yet.
The major question here is whether this war will end with Iran's still in possession of highly enriched uranium that it has, which Iran says has buried under rubble from the war last year. So the question is, could they simply after the war retrieve it and use it to build a nuclear weapon?
But Iran's military capabilities are deeply weakened in this war. The regime though is still intact, still able to inflict global pain as we see. And Israel's public timetable for this war keeps changing. Today the military spokesman said that Israel has war plans in Iran for the next three weeks.
Next three weeks.
“Another front in this war is Lebanon, what are Israel's plans in Lebanon?”
Two things are happening at the same time. We're seeing a military ramp up in Lebanon, and we're also seeing attempts at potential diplomacy. Hezbollah, which is the Iranian-funded militia in Lebanon, has been trying to expand their rocket attacks against Israel in recent days, according to the Israeli military.
And Israel has been hitting Hezbollah hard in this war. The Israeli military says now it has begun what it calls limited and targeted ground operations beyond the Israel Lebanon border area into new areas of southern Lebanon where the Israeli military has not previously been during this war. I spoke to a person briefed on the matter, not authorized to speak publicly and speaking
on the condition of anonymity. And the person told me that Israel intends to gradually increase this ground incursion deeper into Lebanon, while at the same time there are a lot of efforts behind the scenes for direct Israel Lebanon ceasefire negotiations. There are even reports of a French initiative for Lebanon to formally recognize Israel
for the very first time in history.
The person I spoke to who was briefed on this matter, said Israel has tapped Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's confident Ron Durmer to help lead this diplomatic effort on Israel's
Behalf and that the U.
government is interested in taking tougher steps against Hezbollah operating as an armed militia in the country. All right. That's NPR's "Daniel Estrin" in Tel Aviv. Daniel Thanks.
You're welcome. President Trump and his top eights are amplifying a message of winning the war with Iran. As far as I'm concerned, we've essentially defeated Iran. This latest effort to reinforce an image of strength comes as gas prices sore, global markets are down, and poll show Americans are skeptical of the war.
NPR White House correspondent Franco Ordoni has traveled with the president this weekend in Florida. So Franco President Trump is really kind of zeroing in on this message about winning the war over the weekend. So how does that fit with the shifting narrative to the White House has given for going
to war in the first place?
Yeah, I mean the administration has really struggled at first to give it a clear explanation of why the OS needed to go to war.
“You know, was it about helping pro-testers, was it because Iran was going to strike first?”
I mean, all that kind of confusion put the administration on a back foot politically. But now the talk is about winning and dominating, you know, on the way home, Trump boasted of taking out Iran's Air Force, the Navy. And he says Iran has a little fight left, but not much. So what's there to gain then by just repeating the idea that the United States is winning
this war? Well, I mean, as you know, messaging is very important to this White House, and you know, speaking with Jenny Strummer Galle, who studies political messaging at Syracuse University, and she sees this repetition of winning as an attempt to refocus the conversation on one of unified power.
When you watch Trump and his messaging, he's always aware of how the message is looking.
He's a showman still at heart. And as a showman, part of his show is this vision of strength and success. So Franco, this is something definitely not new for President Trump. Not at all. I mean, Trump is very attuned to the politics of the moment.
You can see the polls, he can see how the split among his own supporters who are concerned about this dragging on. Strummer Galle calls it an exercise of power in trying to convince people of something their eyes may not actually see. This strong, repetitive, or winning, or winning, or winning, I think is against strategically
an effort to try to get everybody on the same page with this story, so that they can shape a reality that this is not going to be a crackmire, that this is not going to be
“like a rock, because that's the comparison, and that's what they're fighting against.”
You know, the president is also blaming the media as part of the effort. For example, he posted this weekend that the media wants the U.S. to lose the war, and then a little bit later, the FCC chair threatened to pull broadcast license over stations coverage of the war. Now, objectively, there have been some military successes for the U.S. with a cost though,
13 U.S. service members have died, and it's not really clear how long this is all going to last, oil prices are up, what could the possible consequences then be for president Trump? Yeah, I mean, it's about public support and goes back to the challenges, Trump has faced offering different rationale for the war.
I mean, Trump never really made a public case ahead of time, so the messaging kind of took place after the strike started. He eventually settled on this idea that he had a feeling Iran was going to strike
first, but he never really provided evidence.
And now he says the end of the war will come soon, and he also says it'll take as long
“as necessary, and really all of that just seems arbitrary.”
The White House continues though to count on its message resonating, with at least its most loyal supporters, you know, and as they have successfully done any times before. That's White House correspondent, Franco, or Donas. Thanks a lot. Thank you.
Republicans, in the Senate, are set to take up an issue this week that is near and dear to President Trump's heart, non citizen voting. It has never been shown to be a widespread problem in American elections, but Trump continues to insist that it is, and he's been pushing Senate Republicans to get around a procedural hurdle by blowing up the legislative filibuster to pass new voting restrictions ahead
of this year's midterms. PR voting correspondent Miles Parks is here with us now, so Miles this bill is called the Save America Act. What is it? So it's a major election's overhaul to require all voters to show photo ID to vote,
but the most notable change is actually on the registration side of things. The bill will require people to provide proof of their U.S. citizenship when they register to vote, which may not sound like a big deal. The vast majority of Americans believe that only Americans should vote in American elections, but having the documents to prove that citizenship is a whole different beast.
We're talking about a birth certificate, or a passport in most cases, and research has shown
That tens of millions of Americans do not have easy access to either of those...
notably because they're expensive to acquire.
We just got a passport for our daughter a couple weeks ago, and it cost hundreds of dollars to get. Yeah, that's a lot of people and primaries are already underway, when would this new law then take effect? It would be immediate, so then when you think about the millions of people who could potentially
be negatively impacted versus these relatively few cases of nonsense and voting that we
“see every election cycle, that's why election experts basically look at this overhaul”
and say this could create an administrative nightmare with very little upside. All right, so what are the bills, chances then? President Trump is pushing hard for it, and he's also pushing to expand it to restrict vote by mail in a lot of instances as well, but it is looking increasingly likely that he's going to be disappointed when he gets to a vote this week.
To pass, the bill needs 60 votes to overcome the Senate filibuster. Senate Democrats are a flat out, no. So Republicans have just 53 votes, and there is currently no appetite on the GOP side of things to change the Senate rules to circumvent that filibuster that 60 vote threshold. That's all according to Senate Majority Leader John Thune, who alluded last week when
talking to reporters that he's basically between a rock and a hard place between his colleagues
in the Senate and the president. It's about to vote, it's about the math, and I'm for better or worse, I'm the one who has to be the clear eyed realist about what we can achieve here. It's an interesting moment politically, though, because Trump has insisted that this bill be expansive, not a water down version he says, but if it were narrow or more targeted
specifically at the photo ID provision, for instance, it might have a better chance of getting these Republicans on board and even getting Senate Democrats. So President Trump, when he talked about this bill in the Senate Union, he repeated a very familiar lie saying that it was needed because Democrats can only win elections if they cheat.
“Are we likely to see more of that messaging, that language, if the bill fails?”
I mean, if the midterm student not go Republicans way almost certainly, I think the bigger question is whether these sort of election lies that Trump has been pushing for years are as potent now as they were in the time after 2020, for instance. The president won the 2024 election, he won the popular vote, and his voters universally said that that was a well-run election.
So the question now is, do those people believe the same system is now rigged against him just two years later, and Pierre just released a poll with PBS News and Maris College. It's sort of point in both directions on that. The majority of Republican voters said they do believe voter frauds can happen in the midterms, but the majority of them also said they expect their state of locality to run a good
election.
“I think if Trump keeps pushing these sort of lies, you can expect that latter number to go”
down. And PR's Miles Parks, thanks a lot, Miles, thanks a lot.
Today's episode of Up First was edited by Hannah Block, Dana Ferrington, Ben Swazie,
Mohammed Elbardisi, and HDMI, it was produced by E-Mont Mani, and Nia Dumas. Our director is Christopher Thomas, we get engineering support from Nisha Heiness, and our technical director, Stacy Abbott, join us again tomorrow. On the next through line from NPR, the rupture between Iran and Israel, through the story of Jewish Iranians.
Happy Iranian was the realization of our dreams as an ethnic minority who wants to develop Iran. Listen in the NPR app, or wherever you get your podcasts.
