Stephen K. Vance, Jim Rickards, and Eric Bowling dissect President Trump's March 26, 2026, extension of the Iran war deadline to April 6 amid Wall Street turmoil and $4 gas prices. While Trump boasts of sinking 154 ships and claims direct talks failed, Rickards argues Pakistan mediates negotiations and escalation is inevitable after ruling out regime change. The panel debates sending troops to Karg Island versus a final bombing campaign, noting Saudi Arabia's refusal to commit forces despite high oil profits. Ultimately, the segment suggests the conflict has shifted from diplomatic maneuvering to an existential military showdown with no clear exit strategy. [Automatically generated summary]
Tonight, Donald Trump is walking back his threat to obliterate Iran's power infrastructure.
In a social media post, the president said he is extending the negotiation deadline 10 days at the request of the Iranian government.
A reminder, the Iranians have denied that direct talks with the United States are happening at all.
Trump's announcement was made 11 minutes after the closing bell on what was Wall Street's worst day since the start of the war.
And the extension comes as the president is reportedly getting impatient with the war that he started.
Axios reports the Pentagon is developing military options for a quote-unquote final blow in Iran that could include the use of ground forces and a massive bombing campaign.
That's according to two U.S. officials and two sources with knowledge.
Tomorrow is the first surge of 2,200 U.S. troops and the first surge that is expected to arrive in the region.
At his cabinet meeting today, Donald Trump downplayed Iran's capabilities, issuing this ultimatum.
Another senior Iranian military leader has been killed.
Israel says its military has assassinated Ali Reza Tangsiri, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Naval Forces, as well as other senior Iranian naval command officials.
The commander has been a key figure behind Iran's near-total blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.
Now, Iranian authorities have not yet confirmed his death.
Extension came just 11 minutes after markets finished their worst day since the fighting began.
Quoting now from his social media post, which landed at 4.11 p.m., as per Iranian government request, please let this statement serve to represent that I am pausing the period of energy plant destruction by 10 days to Monday, April 6th, 2026 at 8 p.m. Eastern Time.
Talks are ongoing, and despite erroneous statements to the contrary by the fake news media and others, they are going very well.
About an hour later, the president phoned in to Fox with much more to say.
Well, the Iranians asked me to do that, and I was not happy with them because I made a statement that we're having productive negotiations.
I don't know that they get there.
Maybe they do.
Maybe they won't.
I mean, look, in a certain sense, we've already won because we've knocked out their Navy, we've knocked out their Air Force, completely knocked out their Air Force, just about completely knocked out.
We knocked out 154 ships and pretty good chips.
In fact, I said, why didn't we just take them instead of sinking them?
We could have used them ourselves, right?
They asked for seven.
You're going to say, oh, Trump's a terrible negotiator.
They asked for seven, and I said, I'm going to give you 10 because they gave me ships.
We talked about the eight ships, you know, the president that I talked about the other day.
But they asked for seven and I gave them ten.
You got ten days, and they were very thankful about that.
Now, they may say, oh, we're not speaking.
I don't like that because that wasn't true the last time, as you found out.
The interview went on for about 40 minutes after that answer, which we had to condense for time.
In addition to that, he held forth on whether Iran's supreme leader is gay.
He boasted about ending his own rallies with what he called, quote, the gay national anthem, which I'm assuming is YMCA, though the band now insists it's not a gay song.
The president also talked about JFK Jr. putting him on the cover of his failed magazine, George and New York in the 90s and his new ballroom.
All of it closing out day 26 of the war and an especially rough day on Wall Street.
Administration is anticipating Iran's retaliation would be?
Well, it could be really just an escalation of what we've seen a little bit of them doing to the kind of regional partners, regional U.S. allies, targeting whether it's desalination plants or targeting energy infrastructure.
And any of that would just, you know, further prolong the conflict and also make the current issues worse.
We're dealing with a global energy crisis first and foremost.
Oil prices going up, gas prices are going up.
If you now have Iran trying to take out infrastructure that is critical to that oil flow, that's only going to make that energy crisis worse, not only for the U.S., but the country.
Yes, what they've said is Caroline Levitt, the White House press secretary, said, quote, it's the job of the Pentagon to make preparations in order to give the Commander-in-Chief maximum optionality.
She said it doesn't mean the president has made a decision.
And as the president said in the Oval Office recently, he is not planning to send ground troops anywhere at this time.
There's all types of rumors that 10,000 additional, have you guys heard this?
That they're prepping 10,000 additional combat troops in the United States, planning for augmentation to the two Marine Expeditionary Units and the 82nd Airborne Brigade, which is about 8,000,000, 9,000 troops.
So besides the 40,000 or 50,000 sailors we have there, other support personnel, and Air Force, it looks like at least President Trump in his negotiations is also keeping a hammer right on the table.
If Iran has rejected all of Trump's points and Trump has rejected all of Iran's points, and they're not actually talking to each other directly, which they're not, where's the negotiation?
So the way you think about this from an intelligence analyst point of view, and I know you know this, you have to take your politics and your personal opinion and put it on the shelf.
It's hard to do.
You need to kind of ice water in your veins and be completely analytical.
So there are only three ways to go here.
One is regime change.
And that could be revolution, a new Shah, it could be a lot of elections or whatever.
Regime change.
Number two, mission accomplished.
We say, hey, we won, we're going home.
And that was the big thing in Vietnam.
Why don't we just declare victory and go home?
And number three is escalation.
It doesn't have to be a forever war, but it could be a long war.
Well, I mean, if he's negotiating, you're looking for a negotiating partner who could deliver, you could theoretically say you've killed the Ayatollah and a couple, you know, all the way to the brigade level, but these guys still represent the spirit of the Iranian Islamic Revolution.
We took a poll yesterday, the folks that are here.
I'd like to do it again.
How many would, if you could talk to President Trump this morning, how many of y'all would say, finish what we started?
Run through the tape.
Okay, finish what we started.
If that requires us to do something more than bomb, continue to bomb, if it requires combat troops to get into Tehran and to do a regime change, is that when you say when I ask you, finished what we started is that what you believe we started how many let me see a show of hands How many want to march to Tehran?
No, that's not true.
That's not true.
We got some.
You want to march to Tehran?
Take it all down.
How many want President Trump to get the best negotiated deal he can get?
Has the objectives of what we're trying to accomplish now, raise your hand if you think you can answer what the objectives are.
Have they been articulated enough that you could make a reasonable, you could make a reasoned choice of backing a President Trump policy?
Do you believe it's been articulated enough?
Show of hands if you think it is.
It has.
Ben, I want to get some of these people.
If you want to march to Tehran, if you think it's a thing, can we get you just to talk to the audience?
Holy, hang on, The Senate, after John Thune did nothing to help President Trump's Save America Act, Mike Lee, we would stream it.
You saw Mike Lee every night speaking, Eric Schmidt, right?
You saw the same people going up there, pushing the president's number one priority.
I thought we were going to seize the floor and we're going to break the filibuster and we're going to force the Democrats into a standing filibuster.
How did they pass a bill that doesn't fund ICE, doesn't fund customs and border, which is the way that we've secured the border and President Trump shut it down his first 90 days and don't even talk about the Save Act and then go home and are not back to April 13th.
So what, by the way, I want to ask the audience, what do you think ought to happen with John Thune?
Has John Thune delivered for President Trump's agenda?
What should he be the leader of the Senate?
What should happen with John Thune?
He hasn't delivered anything.
No ICE funding, no customs and border.
So we don't have the secure border.
I probably got to send the National Guard down there or the Great Border Patrol works without pay.
And supposedly, theoretically, they've got pay from the original Big Beautiful bill, but there's a big argument.
Can you actually use that cash?
But he walked away from President Trump's number one priority, which is the Save America Act.
So I'm a show of hands.
How many believe John Thune should be removed as the leader?
When they get back, we're going to get all over the Senate about doing this.
Neil, stick around at the White House.
We're going to come back to you.
There's more breaking news there about the war.
Jim Rickards is with me.
Jim, do you think the president is preparing the American people right now for a further escalation like a ground invasion on Karg Island or one of the islands around the Straits of Hormuz?
Or do you think he's leading to say, hey, look, I'm going to negotiate as good as a deal as possible with this, whatever's left of this regime, and then we're going to get out.
I think the former, he's preparing the American people for boots on the ground, including coming ashore with the Marines, coming from the air with the 82nd Airborne.
And as we said earlier, that's the only choice he has because the Iranians are not negotiating.
He's really not negotiating.
You know, Jared Kushner and Steve Wyckoff, they've done a very good job, but now they've got a reputation internationally.
They're not really diplomats.
They're dealmakers.
And that's okay.
Sometimes you want a deal, but they're like Lucy in the football at this point, which is, hey, you know, Wyckoff will come out Thursday negotiation.
Hey, it went really well.
We're going to meet again on Monday.
And then Friday night, we bombed them.
So it's like, okay, how many times are you going to fall for that?
MEK-affiliated resistance units have been active on the ground for the past 10 years.
So they have a clear plan.
And even five days before the whole conflict started, 250 armed members of the MEK attacked Khamenei's headquarters in the middle of Tehran in a heavily secured area.
So there are boots on the ground, but those are Iranian boots.
And the Iranian people, with their organized resistance, will do the regime change by themselves.
They are saying that one of the reports of people in D.C. are saying one of the biggest strategic miscalculations that comes from the intelligence community and particularly the Israeli intelligence was that Netanyahu and the Israelis way oversold the Iranian people in an uprising to actually overthrow this regime itself.
It hasn't materialized as of yet.
You may be talking about an intention and people want to do it.
But so far, we're almost four weeks into this war and people are looking at how we got here.
One of the biggest things is that there was supposed to be a spontaneous uprising of the Iranian people, like it was back in January, where you had 30,000 people, looks like, killed.
That uprising hasn't taken place.
And there's a lot of people in Washington saying, hey, we may have been oversold.
The Israelis may have been oversold by their relationship with the Iranian resistance.
Any thoughts?
unidentified
Yes, I would say that, you know, it's very hard to come out on the streets when there is bombing on the streets of Tehran or Iran.
So the uprisings, you had nine major uprisings in the past 10 years, and every single one of them has been bigger, wider, deeper, and more radical than before.
So these uprisings will continue when the time comes.
Let me ask you, as people talk about, we talked about this bombing campaign and President Trump.
Yesterday, Pete Hegseth was very specific in the war cabinet.
He didn't mention ground troops.
He said more intense bombing every day.
President Trump has said you basically have till April 6th to negotiate a deal.
I'll start bombing the electric grid.
As this bombing goes on, how far into it do we have to get to we're going to see a spontaneous uprising of Iranian patriots?
unidentified
We need to have, we need to focus on the people of Iran and the organized resistance.
You know, that's something that it's missing from the American media, that there is armed struggle inside Iran.
As I said, you know, 250 armed struggle members attacked Khamenei's headquarters, but in the news, we did not see much in the Western media.
So we need to focus on the people of Iran, the organized resistance, and the National Council of Resistance of Iran with Maryam Rajavi's leadership, which they have a 10-point plan with thousands of endorses by the parliamentarians.
Do you folks think there's going to be a spontaneous uprising of Iranian resistance of any meaningful thing that's going to overthrow at least the regime?
And we now know that the intelligence was reporting this morning, they've only used one-third of their missiles.
This is the latest intelligence report.
Why don't you hang on to after the break?
Jim Bergen's going to be with us.
Eric Bowling is going to join with us.
Look, you guys have to come up.
You have to come up with your own opinion on this, right?
This is going to be a huge and massive issue in the coming weeks.
And President Trump's going to need your back, but you've got to think this through and come.
Nobody can sell you on any position.
This is why we're trying to put out all the possible information and have every various alternative out there so that you can think it through.
Come to use your own agency because this is going to be the number one topic.
It's already the number one topic.
But I mean, we're going to come to a decision point a couple weeks from now.
Jim Birkin's here, Eric Bowling, and of course the war room posse.
Just go, hey, Ben, I got some more customers for you.
Right over there to Ben Berkham, the camera.
Ben, we got some people that the mainstream media have been interviewing non-stop that are war room posse.
So I'm going to get to them in a second.
Jim Rickards, the uprising in Iran, because one of the absolute essential parts of the equation is how big and how hard and tough is the Iranian resistance in coming to basically assist in regime change or at least making sure the regime understands they have to negotiate with President Trump to get some sort of deal that can get this thing shut down.
What really, what traders are honing in on and what's really happening?
Get the noise out.
And so what we've been talking about for the last few days, told you, Steve, I spoke to one of the major, probably the biggest liquefied natural gas transporter, certainly in the country, maybe in the world.
And I'm speaking with a refinery here in Texas today.
And what we're finding is they're all very, very much fearful of a higher price, which makes what happens, the price go higher.
It just drifts towards the fear.
Call it a war dividend, whatever it is.
We're up $3 a barrel right now.
We're approaching $98 a barrel WTI.
Rent is $111, almost $112 right now.
So prices are rising.
Gasoline hit $4 a gallon for the first time, as we predicted in five years, four or five years.
Things are looking like they're drifting higher until we get some solid information.
For the first time, Steve, all the other times Trump said, you know, we'll give it a 48-hour pause.
Then there was a five-day pause.
Now there's a 10-day quote-unquote pause, and it didn't matter today because they're not listening to these things anymore.
They're going with what's going on in the Strait of Hormuz, in the oil markets, and all things are pointing higher.
You said something very important.
Where are the Arab countries?
You want to eradicate the threat that Iran is.
The gentleman in your audience is, I believe he's right.
I think you need actual troops, boots on the ground to fully eliminate the threat.
Who of those people, yesterday was 65%, Steve, said, let's end the threat.
And then you asked them, well, how many are willing to send troops, boots on the ground, our young men and women on the ground?
Yesterday we called for the Arab armies, particularly UAE and the Saudis.
They have big military operations to be part of this, particularly if you're going to take Karg Island with paratroops, 82nd Airborne, to take it, and then the Marines come in to hold it.
Don't you need participation of the guys actually in the Persian Gulf?
Remember, our Arab allies are making a fortune right now.
Oil's up, you know, two times, going to two and a half times where it was.
They love the fact oil's going up there.
They love the fact they're calling for force majeure all the time on the contracts.
Qatar's done it.
Iraq's done it.
The Saudis are talking about it.
So they're making a bundle.
I haven't seen them pitch in any money so far.
And there's articles today that the Saudis were pushing President Trump the entire time to go after Iran hard, but they have not made a decision yet whether they're going to participate in the combat operations.
It's not fair, and we've been highlighting this for a long time, Steve, because they're benefiting the Saudis, the Omanis, the Bahrainis, the United Emirate countries, all the producing, generally OPEC-producing countries are benefiting from this.
We talked, I did the math for you yesterday.
It's $21.6 billion.
If this price lasts for 60 days, we're almost 30 days already or whatever we are.
If it lasts 60 days at this level, we're handing Iran alone $21.5 billion of war dividend.
Saudis produced double the oil that Iran.
So of course they're going to be supportive of Trump publicly and pat him on the back privately even.
But when push comes to shove, this is a 50, maybe could be $100 billion equity raise, money raise, U.S. petrodollar raise for Saudi Arabia alone.
So no one is in a rush to have this end in the Middle East, maybe with the exception of Israel, but Israel's Israel's blown it up, in my opinion, a couple of times already.
They're off on the, you know, pulling their own strings and triggers and bombs, dropping bombs where they shouldn't.
Before I let you go, for the audience, both at CPAC and at home, talk us what's going to be.
The market is showing what they believe of what President Trump's going to do and walk us through how you think that's going to develop in oil markets over the next week.
Yeah, talk to us about what you've experienced so far, folks.
unidentified
Yeah, my wife and I have been here from yesterday and probably six different groups from Christian to Irish Star to Germany and a couple of other ones thrown in.
And basically the lead-in question is always, and it is a lead-in question: do you approve of the new war that Trump's bringing on?
And our response is that this is not a new war.
But then the follow-on is that, would you support troops on the ground?
I mean, it's basically a series of questions, which isn't unreasonable, I mean, given what is going on right now and what you're talking about.
But it seems to me that, you know, they are trying to accentuate a split.
They're coming here because they understand that you guys are the tip of the spear of the MAGA movement.
You are the guys that make it happen.
You are President Trump's most loyal followers.
You're the backbone of the MAGA movement.
For international media and for mainstream media that have no clue about any of this and hate President Trump, they want to come and hear what his followers have to say.
I think it's a legitimate question.
So I'm going to ask you, I wouldn't call it a new war, but what do you, and President Trump now refers to it as a military operation.
What is your opinion right now of the military operation that we're in the third week of?
unidentified
My response to those questions, and that was one of the questions most of them had, was that basically several presidents have wanted to do, maybe they left office, so it was safe to say what they said, but this is the first one that did what the other ones were talking about.
MAGA Base vs Division Tactics00:04:14
unidentified
As they say, this is a continuation of a long-term problem that needed to stop.
But the media part, I agree with what you just said, that it's a compliment.
But on the other hand, they're trying to form a division of people that are here with these leading type questions.
The good news is that the MAGA base, you, know that they're coming here to try to have division.
But the reality is there is going to be division because not everybody's totally on board.
Let me ask you: you're supportive.
Do you believe there was an imminent threat, given you said there's five or six presidents that have never gotten anything done?
And I was there in 79-80 under Carter before President Reagan came for the disastrous, we were there for the workup, not for the actual raid itself, which was a total disaster in the first big failure after the Iranian Revolution.
Do you believe, given you had those five or six, seven presidents, there was an imminent threat that on Friday the 26th of March in the year of our Lord 2026, we're asking you and all these other patriots, what do you think about putting boots on the ground to take Karg Island?
So do you think it was in your mind, not spun by anybody, do you think there was an, as you weighed and measured things, there was an imminent threat that we would go in that we would three weeks later be talking about putting combat troops in?
unidentified
Well, I think the answer is yes, and that it was a time coming, and it was a point in time.
You know, I think Netanyahu expressed this several times, that this was a unique point, an opportunity to, you know, take out a lot of leadership at one particular point in time.
So that, I think, is the reason why it was that day at that time when that happened.
This is why we're trying to show every aspect of this.
I have Trita Parsi on, who's not just Iranian, but he's very close to some of those guys.
We have Kurt Mills on, who's a Buchananite, who's anti-Iraq, anti-all this.
We have Rabbi Walicki.
We have Brian Kennedy and Frank Gaffney, neocons from decades and decades.
Here's the reason.
For this to go forward and to make sure it's a success, the MAGA movement has to come to its own independent assessment as the facts that they see them, right?
And that's why your point of view is fantastic, because you've kind of thought this through a little bit.
Other people have to think it through.
This is not going to be able to be spun because more information is going to come out.
This thing's going to get a lot nastier.
It is.
And now, you're not just talking about B-2 bombers and that.
You're talking about sons and daughters of the MAGA movement because remember, it's working-class people in this country.
Their kids are Marines and sailors.
So now we're going another level potentially to actually put, knowing the lessons of Iraq, to put in Afghanistan, to put your sons and daughters, your grandchildren, in harm's way.
And that's why the MAGA movement is going to have to come to its own conclusion to assist President Trump in getting to a correct answer.
Yeah, so our mission right now is to wake up the church.
The truth is, every single country that's a Muslim country right now in North Africa and the Middle East used to be historically Christian countries.
The ones that remained and stayed faithful, it wasn't because of the great military might of those countries.
It was because of the courage of the church.
I mean, the Jerusalem cross I'm wearing right now is the symbol of the first crusade of a group of Christian men who said, we're not going to allow the Muslim hordes to come take over.
It's the Jerusalem cross, and it's the symbol of the First Crusade, most famously worn by one of the great Christian men of history, Duke Godfrey of Bouillon.
It's been this sort of third wayism where people have said, oh, we're just going to be nice to the people who don't want to be told that they're wrong.
But that's not at all what Christianity is supposed to be.
Christianity is a masculine religion where Jesus said, I want you to come and I want you to sacrifice and I want you to lay down your own life.
That's masculine sacrifice.
That's what Christianity is about.
And it's been carried forward by men who are willing to stand in the gap against evil.
And that's the Christianity that if it rises up, will save the country.
I believe that this country was founded upon the truth of God's word and that no other foundation will allow it, will support it, will let it stand.
And that if we don't return to those principles, every single one of the great men of this country was a person who got on their knees and said, Lord, I want more of you and less of me.
All right, listen, California, 31% of Californians are registered, registered independents.
Only 24% of Californians are registered Republicans.
Mathematically, it's impossible if you have 10 people in a race because no one's pulling higher than 8%.
And while we're all watching the Gulf and the Gas, we're going to sell off California to Iran and Israel as soon as the sun's going to come up tomorrow if we don't get on top of it.