Name: Trump mulls 'winding down' the war and says 'other nations' should guard Hormuz | DW News
Uploaded: 2026-03-21T16:56:06.000Z
Duration: 39 min
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I'm Melissa Chan and we're here to give you the latest on the Iran war, where things stand three weeks into the conflict, heading into the fourth week.

And we'll be speaking to two analysts plus our correspondent in Jerusalem.

Now, I have my laptop with me to keep an eye on what those in the chat via YouTube or TikTok might be saying.

And I will grab any questions you might have, which I will pass on to those experts joining us.

Thanks, Magic, I believe, and Ross Evans for joining the chat so far.

Post your questions and comments and we will forward them to our group of experts and our correspondent.

Now, a quick recap of where things stand.

US President Donald Trump has sent conflicting signals over what he intends to do next, as he have so many times over the past few weeks.

So let's start with this sound bite, have a listen.

Well, look, we can have dialogue, but we don't.

You know, you don't do a ceasefire when you're literally obliterating the other side.

They don't have a navy, they don't have an air force, they don't have any equipment to, they don't have any spotters, they don't have anti aircraft, they don't have radar.

And their leaders have all been killed at every level.

he also suggests things may be winding down, as you can see from this truth social media post.

We're going to pull that up where he talks about, quote, winding down military efforts because he claims of the deep degradation of Iranian military capabilities.

And then he goes on to say, quote, the Hormuz Strait will have to be guarded and policed as necessary by other nations who use it.

Now that might be news to these other nations.

The American president seems to believe he can just walk away from the conflict if he wants to.

So without further ado, we're going to bring in Willem Alberich, who is a former NATO official and now a senior fellow with the Pacific Forum, which is a think tank based in Honolulu.

And later, in a few minutes later, we will have Sarah Kermanian of the International Relations Department at the University of Sachsex.

You've spoken to DW News quite a number of times over the past few weeks.

What do you make of Trump's soundbite just now?

I think there's a real dichotomy within the US Government as to exactly what the war aims are in this conflict with Iran.

Do they want complete regime change as in a government that's acceptable to the United States, or do they want to just degrade Iranians military capabilities, especially its missile capabilities?

Are we going to go after the nuclear highly rich uranium 440.9 kg of which is still unaccounted for.

So I think the shifting war aims, plus the market pressure, the huge spike in oil prices which is going to drive inflation, which is going to raise the price of everything.

Even though Trump has said we don't need running oil, it does mean that the oil prices are spiking and that will have effects.

And I think Trump is incredibly sensitive to those sort of market shifts which, which could have a huge effect on midterm elections in the United States.

Now William, I think one of the things, one of the reasons, if I can say so as a former correspondent who is based in the United States as well, is that there's a lot of infighting within the White House.

So the President seems to be changing his mind in part because of that infighting.

Do we have a sense, for example, of where Vice President J.D.

vance stands in relation to National Security Adviser and Secretary of State Marco Rubio and and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and so on?

Well, you know, you hate to psychoanalyze people from afar, but

just based on their past positions, you would say that J.D.

vance was very much against further engagements in the Middle east and the so called forever Wars.

On the other hand, Rubio has been much more of a classic Republican neocon, willing to take US Interests overseas and engage in conflicts where necessary.

And then Hegseth just seems to like to blow stuff up.

It's really difficult to discern any sort of longer term strategy from that fella.

But I would say that you're right that within the MAGA movement there is this very strong group fed by Trump's promises not to engage in forever wars, not to get mixed up in the Middle east versus those who really do want to use US power, want to build up so much US Power and wield that anywhere in the world, anytime we feel like it.

And those two groups are really tearing each other apart.

I mean, you can see sort of the internecine warfare within the MAGA movement between those who support this war and those who wonder why in the world we're fighting it.

And I want to welcome others in the chat who are posting Green, Jerry and Dave, thank you very much.

I'm going to keep asking William a few questions and then we'll look at your comments and questions that you provide now.

William, meanwhile, in the last few hours, Iran says there has been a US Israeli attack on its Natanz uranium enrichment facility.

Israel just in the last hour or so has said it was not aware of this attack.

Now, you're a nuclear non proliferation expert.

What does this latest attack mean and long term, are Iran's nuclear capabilities set back?

So Iran had the ability to enrich uranium at three sites.

One was at a place called Fordeau and then two sites within Natanz, one on the surface and one deeply buried.

We're pretty sure that those facilities have all been hit very, very hard and knocked out of operation.

However, Iran was building a third facility at Natanz just to the southwest of the other two facilities.

And we saw work on tunnels before the June strikes last year, and

we've seen some work happening in between June and this most recent outbreak of conflict.

So it may be that they're striking that facility, but

I am surprised because I don't think there's really any capabilities there.

There may be some storage for centrifuges in some of the tunnel complexes, but

really the prize is, as I mentioned before, the highly enriched uranium, which we believe is stored underground at Esfahan and may have been buried in the rubble there.

Now, it may be that some of the uranium is still at Natanz or Fordeau and maybe they're trying to destroy that in place rather than to try to risk a ground operation to go in and seize the material.

So there is a substantial amount of 60% enriched Highlander uranium in gaseous form in these big metal containers in Iran.

And getting them accounting for them or destroying them will be a key war aim.

Trump may be wanting to finish that so he can declare some sort of victory.

William, just for those who might not understand, including myself, frankly, the science behind this, to what extent can you bomb to the point of trying to get rid of this uranium?

Could that sense set off a chain reaction?

I think there's a lot of questions around the safety of that strategy.

So these are just basically large metal tanks that contain uranium hexafluoride gas that has been enriched.

You would then have to take that gas and turn it into a solid form and turn that solid form into metal so that you could make a metal pit that would be the center of a bomb.

And you'd need for highly uranium, somewhere around 20, 25 kilograms of 90% wretched uranium.

It is close to bomb making quality, but it is not in of itself dangerous.

I mean, if one of these tanks exploded in the room here, I'd be dead, but

The amount of potential radiation release from destroying these metal containers filled with uranium gas is very low.

Again, it's toxic to breathe in, but it's not going to have huge radiation effects.

So uranium emits alpha particles which can be stopped by clothing.

This is more like a temporary gaseous release that would be dangerous for people on site, but

So there's no real danger of any kind of fissile explosion or any kind of radiation release that you would be able to detect from far off site.

So absent boots on the ground, this is the best alternative as a strategy.

It's rough because even from the air, you're still going to have a very tough time of knowing whether you've destroyed all of these containers because, you know, we're talking about dozens and dozens of these containers.

And I would, I would be loathe to try to be able to tell whether or not we had hit them, considering they're buried probably under tons of dirt and concrete right now.

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Trump mulls 'winding down' the war and says 'other nations' should guard Hormuz | DW News

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