New Delhi, April 2 -- US President Donald Trump sought on Wednesday to explain his rationale for the war against Iran at a pivotal moment at home and abroad, but he offered few new details as he amasses extraordinary executive authority to prosecute the military operation.

The war is fast becoming a signature of his second-term agenda and the speech was a capstone to a remarkable day flexing presidential power.

Trump started the morning as the first sitting president to show up for a US Supreme Court hearing, a stunning reach of the executive into the affairs of the judicial branch. He ended with his first primetime address from the White House about a war he launched on his own, bulldozing past Congress.

On an early spring night when ...