Two Minutes on the Brink
What the State of the Union Didn't Tell You About Iran
On Tuesday night, President Trump delivered the longest State of the Union address in American history—108 minutes. He found time to debate whether a hockey goalie practiced a particular stick save. He narrated, in cinematic detail, a helicopter raid on a Venezuelan fortress. He plugged a website called TrumpAccounts.gov. He did not tell the American public about Iran.
Here is what Trump said: The June 2025 strikes, known as Operation Midnight Hammer, “obliterated Iran’s nuclear weapons program.” Iran was warned not to rebuild. They are rebuilding anyway. “We are in negotiations with them. They want to make a deal.” His preference is diplomacy. He will never allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon.
That was two minutes of a nearly two-hour speech. Outside the chamber, the picture looks different.
Five days before the speech, on February 19, Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One that Iran had “10, 15 days, pretty much, maximum” to reach a deal or face consequences. He did not mention this deadline on Tuesday night.
The United States has assembled the largest naval buildup in the Middle East since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Two carrier strike groups, the USS Abraham Lincoln and the USS Gerald R. Ford, are deployed in the region, accompanied by dozens of warships, submarines, and hundreds of warplanes. National security officials have informed the president that military assets are positioned and ready for strikes “within days.” None of this came up Tuesday night.
Last weekend, Trump’s own envoy Steve Witkoff told Fox News that Iran is “probably a week away from having industrial-grade bomb-making material.” This contradicts the president’s repeated claim that Midnight Hammer “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear capabilities. A July 2025 Pentagon assessment had already found the strikes set Iran’s program back only one to two years, not permanently. U.S. intelligence indicated Iran had moved most of its enriched uranium stockpile before the bombs fell. Trump did not address these contradictions Tuesday night.
The IAEA board meets on March 2 in Vienna, six days from now, where diplomats are expected to consider referring Iran to the UN Security Council. The last time the IAEA censured Iran, on June 12, 2025, Israel attacked the next day. European countries, including Poland, have urged their citizens to leave Iran immediately. Trump mentioned neither the IAEA meeting nor the evacuations on Tuesday night.
Iran’s position has hardened. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has said zero enrichment, Washington’s central demand, is non-negotiable, calling the country’s nuclear technology “a matter of dignity and pride.” Tehran has warned that in the event of an attack, “all bases, facilities, and assets of the hostile force in the region would constitute legitimate targets.” Supreme Leader Khamenei posted that what is “more dangerous than that warship is the weapon that can send that warship to the bottom of the sea.” Iran retaliated after last June’s strikes by firing missiles at the U.S. base at Al Udeid in Qatar. Trump said nothing about any Iranian response or threat Tuesday night.
The first reading of this silence is strategic: a president on the verge of military action does not preview his plans in a nationally televised address. Ambiguity preserves leverage. The less Iran knows about his intentions, the stronger his negotiating position.
The second is political: this was a midterm election speech. The “golden age of America” does not include the possibility of a second war with a nation of 88 million people within eight months. Tax cuts and cheap gasoline poll better than carrier strike groups and bunker busters. The American public would react differently to this presidency if the Iran section had been 20 minutes instead of two.
The result is the same either way. The Iran crisis, which could escalate within days, received less airtime than a reunion between a Venezuelan political prisoner and his niece. Americans watching Tuesday night came away knowing more about a helicopter pilot’s leg wounds than about whether their government is about to launch another military operation in the Middle East.
What also went unmentioned: the people. Trump cited 32,000 Iranian protesters killed by their own regime in recent months. He used their deaths as evidence of the regime’s brutality. He did not mention them as people with a stake in what happens next. The protest movement that has convulsed Iran since late 2025 is driven by Iranians who want change, many of whom are divided over whether American military strikes help their cause or bury it. After Midnight Hammer last June, over 600 Iranians were killed in the combined US-Israeli bombing campaign. The regime retaliated by hitting a US base in Qatar. Ordinary Iranians paid the price on both ends.
There are over a million Iranian Americans in this country, concentrated in Los Angeles and the Washington area. A second strike would land on their families back home. They did not appear in the speech either.
The carriers are visible on satellite imagery. The president’s deadline is counting down. The IAEA meets in six days. And in a 108-minute address about the state of the union, the people most likely to live or die by what comes next were reduced to a line about how badly their government treats them. That is not a small omission. That is the omission.