Episode 5276: Trump Threatens Mass Annihilation In Iran; Miraculous Rescue Mission For US Soldiers
Stephen K. Banner hosts the War Room on April 6, 2026, analyzing President Trump's threat to destroy Iranian infrastructure by 8 p.m. if the Strait of Hormuz remains closed, a move analysts warn could constitute war crimes. The episode details a miraculous SEAL Team Six rescue of a downed F-15 pilot amidst Iranian resistance and discusses the new hardline regime led by Ayatollah Khamenei's son. With Iran utilizing decentralized asymmetric tactics and rejecting ceasefires, the segment concludes that Trump risks an escalatory trap where Gulf oil destruction could trigger global economic collapse. [Automatically generated summary]
It's Easter Monday, 6 April, year of our Lord 2026.
Later today at 1 o'clock, there's going to be a press briefing by the President of the United States about the situation in Iran and potential ceasefire, although I think that may have already been rejected by the regime.
We're going to get into all that.
We've got an all star lineup of analysts and observers to walk us through this, break it down off for you.
We're going to play, and for those with sensitive ears or children, We're going to play the newscast from yesterday's news as we always do in the cold open, let you see a wide range of what happened.
Some of the language is a little harsh because they're quoting a true social that the commander in chief put out at 5 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time yesterday morning.
Let's go ahead and let it rip to open the war room.
He has just threatened Iran in extraordinary graphic terms, giving the Iranian regime just over a day to either make a deal, reopen the Strait of Hormuz, or face hell.
If your children are watching, be warned.
The president did not use polite language.
Quote Tuesday will be power plant day and bridge day, all wrapped up in one in Iran.
There will be nothing like it.
Open the fucking straight, you crazy bastards, or you'll be living in hell.
Just watch.
We should note that destroying civilian power infrastructure is generally considered to constitute a war crime under international law, though the president could argue that the infrastructure has dual use and also is utilized by Iran's.
Because let's assume that there isn't a kind of totally dramatic escalation where you have a complete free for all, but Trump decides to do more bombing and then just quits in, say, 10 days or two weeks.
The strait remains closed.
At that point, is it left to countries like Saudi Arabia to find some way to negotiate with Iran and open the strait?
One I know you'll talk about later, which is the nuclear issue, and we could be looking at, if you will, open-ended bombing by Israel and the United States, kind of rather than having a formal negotiator arrangement, kind of red lines.
And if and when Iran were to move against them, there would be recurring military activity.
On the straight, it's what I've described as we broke it, you own it.
The president could simply walk away and say, as he's posted, that the United States is not directly dependent.
On energy moving through the Strait.
And then I think it's unrealistic to expect the local Arab countries or the Europeans to free it up.
So I think then we're looking at a long term situation where Iran derives enormous revenue, not to mention political leverage, from operating the Strait.
And I would think that ought to be an unacceptable situation.
If you add those two things together, the Strait and the nuclear, talk about being worse off after initiating a war of choice that didn't have to happen.
Strategically and economically, the United States and the world.
As your opening take suggested, it would be far worse off than it was five weeks ago.
It's worth noting that none of America's European or Asian allies were consulted, and many have spoken out against the war.
In fact, reports suggest that Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu sold Trump on this war not because Iran was an imminent threat, but because its unprecedented weakness provided an opportunity to strike hard to effect regime change.
Why else would Trump have closed his brief announcement at the start of the war by urging the Iranian people to rise up and overthrow the regime?
So you have a theocratic regime with a lot of military power that has not been destroyed.
As much as the president and Secretary Hegseth want to talk about the body count, as it were, of missiles and launchers and the capability to shoot, you know, Iran shot some more missiles into Israel just today.
So you're seeing a regime that's hanging on, that is saying we are now being attacked.
It's hard to overcome 47 years of screaming at the U.S. and Israel.
That they are the great Satan.
We're even worse Satans now because we seem to be killing a lot of civilians and trying to damage institutions which are rebelling against it.
So I think it's going to take a lot longer time.
And I agree with David Ignatius about letting it die its own death.
I also agree with Mark that it's going to die eventually, but I think it's going to be much longer.
So, Joe, I think we're still balanced between the two fundamental themes of this war tactical brilliance.
Of the United States military was demonstrated in a different way with this rescue mission, but it was an amazing feat of arms, showed off our special operations forces the way they can do things nobody else on the planet can.
But it also showed that Iran can withstand our best punch and has got an asset in the Strait of Hormuz that it's very hard to take away absent diplomacy.
I've been thinking that.
If Trump did go through with his threat to blow to smithereens every power plant, bridge, et cetera, that would probably make the Strait of Hormuz impassable for decades.
It would leave behind such ruin and rage that the idea of reopening it under any circumstances would be almost impossible.
I'm not sure Trump thinks through the consequences of that action.
So we're again at a moment where, to me, the The path out of this towards something that will stabilize the region and achieve the basic war goals of the United States requires us to work with our allies towards some kind of diplomatic solution.
The idea you could just keep pounding the other guy and he's going to eventually say, okay, that's it.
I think the evidence in this war points in a quite different direction.
So far, aside from devastating Iran and crippling its already weak military, which was predictable in such a one sided contest, few of the desired results have been achieved.
The regime has not fallen.
Key leaders have changed for the worse.
The 86 year old Ayatollah Khamenei, who famously banned the development of nuclear weapons, was killed and replaced by his son, who is said to be more hardline than his father.
In general, the Revolutionary Guards, who have always been more militant, seem to be ascendant.
which makes sense in times of war.
The Strait of Hormuz, which was free and open despite many threats through 47 years of U.S.-Iran tensions, is now blocked by the new leadership, whom Trump terms much more reasonable.
President Trump says that after a few more bombing runs, the Strait will open naturally because Iran will want to export its own oil.
This misreads the situation.
The Strait is not closed.
It is open to Iranian oil, which is flowing freely, especially to China.
The net result of the war is that Iran now makes about twice as much On its daily oil sales compared to before the conflict.
In addition, if it continues to charge a reported $2 million per passing ship, Tehran will make hundreds of millions of dollars in additional revenue every month, enough to rebuild its military and more.
America's Gulf allies now face a far more unstable and tense environment than they did before the war.
Their business models require peace, stability, and economic integration.
Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Had mended ties with Iran in 2023 because he wanted to calm geopolitical waters to pursue his ambitious program of modernization.
Today, all that progress is in jeopardy as oil exports are crippled and the region has gone from having a path to be an oasis of stability rather than a cauldron of conflict.
We're learning more about this ceasefire and potential to see whether or not there could be a deal before the deadline tomorrow that the president has set.
I should note he actually extended that.
It was supposed to be this evening.
He then Appear to extend it until 8 p.m. tomorrow, but to see if these potential talks could at least be staved off for the time being.
Because as we heard from the president, particularly in that expletive laden post that he shared yesterday, really threatening to bomb Iran, saying that he would go after infrastructure and energy sites as well if they do not reopen the Strait of Hormuz by that 8 p.m. deadline tomorrow.
So what we're learning is really the countries who we know have been crucial negotiators throughout this entire process Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt, they are among those who have been.
Pounding out a 45 day ceasefire to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and again try to buy some time before we could see the United States military really escalate their attacks on these different infrastructure sites.
Now, the plan we're told was sent to the U.S. and Iran late Sunday and is used as a last ditch effort to try and see if they could find an off ramp to this war again, even if it is only temporary.
Now, we have also heard from the Iranians say that they said that they reject outright this idea of a temporary ceasefire, but of course.
Throughout this entire process, there's a lot we've been hearing publicly, not only from the Iranians, but also from the Trump administration, while things are happening, of course, private behind the scenes.
I will say we did hear from a White House official.
They did confirm that this potential 45 day ceasefire is just one, they said, of many options that the White House is considering as they look ahead to how they want to proceed based on this deadline that the president has set for tomorrow.
I think we read the headlines, you know, when President Trump took action to take on Iran.
You know, for 50 years, presidents have talked about doing this.
And he's the first one to do it and face the scrutiny of instant gratification.
Everyone wants to know is it two weeks?
Is it three weeks?
You know, give us a timeline.
But he understood that it was going to take risk and it was going to take some short term hardships for a longer term gain for our country, for my three boys' future, certainly.
So I think this just shows that freedom is not free and things have to be fought for and earned.
And we have the best and the brightest in this country that are prepared.
You think of those going in to rescue these pilots, they're trained, highly trained.
Like I said, Easter Monday, 6 April, your reward 2026.
We're going to the White House at 1 o'clock, Real America's Voice.
We're going to cover that.
And do some pregame analysis.
The Israeli paper, Haritz, is just reporting now up on Zero Hedge that the commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guard is not prepared to agree to any concessions as part of a deal to end the war.
So, like I've said before, we're in it.
President Trump threw down pretty hard yesterday, ticking time bomb, 8 p.m., I think Eastern Daylight Time, Tuesday night is the deadline he's given him.
We're going to get into all of it the economics of it, the geopolitics of it, the national security.
An incredible, incredible, incredible joint operation yesterday to retrieve the weapons officer on the F 15.
Yeah, the president would yersee was a combination of Patton about Rommel and the general in charge of the 101st Airborne at Bastogne, his response to the Germans.
He was giving it to them with both barrels.
But, Sam Faddis, let me start with you.
I got Eric up here, a lot to talk about on the Strait of Hormuz and the.
Convergence of geopolitics and economics.
There's all these rumors going around, of course, on the internet about yesterday's really a 48 hour magnificent evolution, as we call in the military, to retrieve the weapons officer from the downed F 15.
And of course, a lot of people are saying, oh, this is just a cover on a failed mission to go get the nuclear powder.
Um, your sense of things, what I think is striking to people, even least a part of the conspiracy theory, is it was a pretty big firefight, and there were a lot of SEAL Team Six.
SEAL Team Six are kind of the assassins, right?
These guys go in as all SEAL teams are incredible, as all of our special forces Delta Force, you know, the Green Berets, Rangers, all of it.
Uh, Force Recon for the Marines, the special unit this the Air Force has.
But send in SEAL Team 6 and have their fight.
And we still don't know if they're casualties from that or not, but I did, I believe we lost two C 130s.
And then this morning, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard told President Trump no deals, right?
Nothing.
We're not giving up on anything.
Now, that could change in 30 minutes, but at least that's what the Israeli papers are reporting.
The A 10, the A 10 also down by the strait itself.
Also, I think a couple of helicopters got hit.
I don't think anything went down.
But.
I want to go back to something you said from the beginning that they've got an operational plan because they had a contingency this day was coming.
So it's not like CENTCOM, Central Command.
They disperse where this incredible rescue mission took place, it's not a suburb of Tehran, right?
It's also not near one of their major where they dispersed defense capabilities, right?
It's a fairly remote part down, pretty close to Iraq.
So, your theory is not just simply at Tehran, at these other four or five big military installations they've got, but it looks like they may have dispersed all over, correct?
Yeah, look, they spent 20 years watching the way we fight in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere.
They're smart boys and girls.
They developed a plan knowing precisely how we wage war and knowing that it would begin with decapitation, taking out major sites, essentially trying to destroy command and control.
Their response to that was to create 31 separate commands, autonomous commands all around the country, and those pieces continue to fight.
On their own, and at each one of those commands has access to everything you need to continue to fight, including the external, the military, plus the basij, the internal security guys, the thugs that beat people up in the street.
They are all they understood what was coming, they have watched it for 20 years, and they prepared for it.
So that's where we are now.
The theory that you were going to hit them real hard in Tehran and they would collapse was never viable, it didn't happen, it hasn't happened, it's not going to happen.
So, okay, I'm not, that is not me saying we lose.
It's just saying you need to accept that, face reality and adapt.
Our strategy has to be modified.
We can't keep just thinking we'll repeat the same thing we've done and get a different result.
But, first of all, regarding what Sam was just talking about, guys, we've been talking about exactly what's happening right now for the past four weeks.
We said, in fact, Steve, we sent, I sent a video of us talking this exact idea into Hengstad and into Susie Wiles that you need to bomb the literal daylights out of these folks.
You need to take out their media, their infrastructure, their roads, their bridges.
Maybe, you know, clearly there'll be civilian deaths in it, but that's what you need to do to get the IRGC back to the bargaining table, hat in hand, and then you can work out some negotiations.
It feels like Trump is melding together this kind of the art of war, as Sam points out, with the art of the deal, which he is all about.
And I just have this hope and suspicion that he's going to get what he wants.
The other side of that is, I also know Trump, as you do as well, that he's not going to be, I guess, disrespected on a global stage.
With the IRGC telling him to go take a hike with all his attempts on negotiations.
And I believe he will unleash hell on them.
And I think that's what everyone's waiting for.
Will this be the, you know, will we get another 45 day pause?
Will we get a ceasefire?
Will we get hell unleashed on Iran, which would be the oil markets?
And so everything is kind of in limbo right now, very nervously trading a very tight range.
Oil, $112 a barrel.
Gasoline's up to $4.12 nationally a gallon.
Brent is trading $130 a barrel right now.
It could be a lot higher.
If we do do unleash hell, bomb them back to the Stone Angels, you'll see probably a $150 barrel of WTI and $180, $200 barrel of Brent.
And that would be very, very negative to the stock market.
The other thing that you and I chatted about, Steve, offline, was this idea that, you know, this is, even if all things ended right now, there's an international, UN, I guess it was a UN study saying, even if the strait were opened today and ceasefire declared today, we're looking at months forward of Pain at the pump, higher inflation, and maybe there's a possibility of sending the world into a global recession, which should be bad for everyone, us too.
But again, there's an off ramp.
Trump may be thinking about various options, but he's got to portray that the only option to him left is to bomb the crap out of Iran, which I don't think is a bad idea.
I think letting them know that he's willing to go and he's ready to go, that's what he's good at.
Then you're saying that he's in an escalatory trap that he actually has to escalate now?
Is that what you're saying?
Because these guys, nothing over the weekend has shown, hang on, nothing over the weekend has shown they're even prepared to negotiate with people or talk to people directly.
There's something that JD's been up all night and trying to communicate with some guy, but the guys came back today and said, we're not giving up on anything, right?
We're not going to give one inch, one concession.
I think they're coming back with their own 15 point.
I'll tell you what, Eric, hang on for one second.
Sam Fettis, Eric Bowling to kick off Easter Monday.
Really, an incredible heroic, and it tells you about the really the valor of our because the equipment's incredible, the communications are incredible.
When it gets down to it, it's the valor and uh, savvy and toughness and grit of our troops.
The pilot himself, what climbed up to 7,000 feet, injured just incredible, incredible weekend.
But we're now down into it.
President, one o'clock from the White House, short break back in a moment.
Do you think President Trump right now is trapped in what we call the escalatory trap?
That he's got to go up to the escalatory trap, particularly if what Heretz and some of the Israeli media is reporting that the Iranian guard, because people don't really know who speaks for who, what faction, who's in charge.
I mean, one of the problems we got.
You've got the Pakistanis and the Egyptians, the Turks, everybody's trying to organize the Saudis.
You know, you got a couple of guys here, a couple of guys there, but at least, and Heret's a pretty good paper.
They're saying the Revolutionary Guard is saying, hey, here's what you think about your 15 points.
There's no deal, there's no ceasefire.
We don't need a meeting.
We're going to send you over our 15.
Stand by.
It sounds a little bit, they almost sound like they are taking the style of President Trump.
Yeah, well, I think we are potentially that that's precisely where we are.
I mean, this is what I mean by we tried something based on.
An idea we had of how what would happen that they would fold.
And now, since that didn't work, it appears our current plan is let's just do more of that without reevaluating, without stopping and thinking about what's really happening here.
And as I keep saying, I mean, we're in this war, so we got to win this war.
We don't have a rewind button.
We can't go back and revisit that decision.
We cannot walk away and have been defeated by the Islamic Republic of Iran.
But We do need to think about why it is not working and let's change that.
So, if we're going to bomb them, what are we going to bomb exactly, given that they have moved to a decentralized system?
Because continuing to think we're just going to bomb certain key nodes and they will collapse is not enough.
We also have to anticipate as we back them further and further into a corner, what are they going to do?
Up until now, you and I have been talking about how the Straits of Hormuz are the center of gravity here, by which we really mean oil and gas coming out of the Gulf.
Okay, but.
When you get the Iranians in a corner and really out of options, what happens when they decide to destroy the oil and gas infrastructure of the Persian Gulf?
So you're not looking at reopening the Straits.
You're looking at nothing's coming out of Kuwait and any other country in there.
One of the reasons, yeah, one of the reasons I, we, and we're going to spend more time on this in the next couple of days, one of the reasons we went back in recent history and talked about the 1980s is as they've gone down, On the command structure and taking out the senior people.
These are all people that came in as volunteers, as first lieutenants, second lieutenants, non commissioned officers, the nine year old, the 12 year old kids that gave them a stick and said, the Iraqis over there, go charge, like in World War I and Korea.
These are not, we're not getting, as you go down the ladder, you're not getting to Jeffersonian Democrats or members or guys that went through the Enlightenment.
You're getting the harder, you're getting harder core people.
Who, their entire life, their formation of them as young men was in a brutal war that was a war that they had to win against, at that time, Saddam Hussein in the West, right?
And so you're getting people that know how to dig in.
And these are Persians to start with.
You layer on top of it this radical theocracy, right?
This martyr, this whole philosophy and religion based around martyrdom.
These are tough people formed.
In the crucible of an apocalyptic war, which it was, I think there was a million casualties over the eight years of that war.
And you think about in Vietnam, the casualties, I think we had 50,000 killed, obviously tens of thousands of more casualties and millions on the Vietnamese side.
This was, and people should remember, and this I told the Sunday Times, I said, look, the military's had 12,000 sorties.
They're going to, I think the target right now is 13,500 or 14,000.
Before they say at least their initial mission is accomplished, we've only had a couple of planes shot down.
That is a pretty remarkable, but we're hitting these people.
We hit them again last night.
It's a relentless hitting of the kind of defanging and declawing of their conventional military apparatus, Sam.
But these guys are totally asymmetric now, and they're going to fight an asymmetric war.
And these appear to be people who would rather die than surrender or particularly capitulate to the great Satan, sir.
Yeah, as I've said to you many times, I worked against the Iraqis and the Iranians for many years.
The Iraqis were absolutely ruthless.
The Iranians were every bit as ruthless, but frankly, a heck of a lot more organized in that sense and smarter in the way they operated and more dangerous.
They were the folks you really had to watch yourself against.
And your use of the term asymmetric is dead on, Steve.
I mean, look, we're worried about missile batteries and them shooting down planes the way.
We would.
Okay, we should worry about that.
But the fact of the matter is, they've moved now to using these loitering munitions.
And I'm not talking about things that go up in the air and then hit a tank on the ground.
They're like sky mines.
They go up and they hover thousands of feet in the air, and they have passive infrared sensors.
And when your F 15 Strike Eagle comes by, they impact it.
We're looking for radar systems.
We're looking for SAMs.
We're looking for all of this stuff.
And they have relatively cheap munitions hovering over key areas.
This is back to the psychology, at least, of the Vietnam War, right?
We're using massive conventional force and we're fighting an enemy that's fighting us very unconventionally and asymmetrically.
I think the Iranians are open for negotiations, but they're not going to agree to a ceasefire unless they get what they want, because the track record of Israel and the United States for the last Two, three years when it comes to ceasefires in Gaza and Lebanon has been very clear.
Those ceasefires are rather quickly violated and they're used in order to be able to regroup, rearm, and then relaunch attacks.
So the Iranians are not going to fall for that.
And particularly if it's these kind of phased ceasefires, first Iranians do everything up front and then in phase two or phase three, the U.S. responds with some concessions.
Those are complete non starters and I don't think we should waste time on that because reality on the ground is.
This is not the type of scenario that existed before the war in which the U.S. had a lot of leverage vis a vis Iran.
Now the Iranians have a lot of leverage over the U.S. as well.
That requires real compromises, and that's going to take some time.
But if you start off those negotiations with these kind of low ball offers, you're just wasting time, frankly.
And right now, time is not on Trump's side.
If I were him, I would move much faster towards real negotiations that did not require the Iranians to give up everything up front and then the U.S. taking measures in phase two, because those are just non starters.
When you say real negotiations, President Trump, this is one of the things that drove him crazy, and you and I talked about this, drove him crazy at the beginning that the Iranians would be in one room, you know, Witkoff and Cushing in another room.
You have either someone from Oman or some intermediary passing notes back and forth.
Who is he really supposed to negotiate with?
If you had a recommendation right now, you got the Pakistanis working one thing, the Saudis working another, the Turks working another, you've got guys coming up as spokesmen.
I mean, If President Trump wants to make a deal and talk to somebody, and JD's been up all night, the media is telling us, talking to somebody, who is the President of the United States supposed to interact with that not only can deliver a deal or have a meaningful conversation about what you just talked about, but also, if they reached a deal, could actually execute it inside of Iran, sir?
So, Steve, earlier on, I think this was a very valid concern.
That the methodology of the negotiations were highly problematic, and that was overwhelmingly the fault of the Iranians, in which they originally only had these meetings in which notes were passed from one room to another through the Omanis.
The talks in Geneva, Kushner and Witkov sat in the room with the Iranian negotiators, and there were actually direct negotiations with them.
So the methodology had improved, and it should have been done.
So from the very outset, I think it was a huge mistake by the Iranians to do it in the manner that they did.
At this point, however, I don't think the problem is in the methodology.
The problem is that the two sides are too far away from each other on the substance of the issue, and that both sides are driving rather maximalist positions, and particularly Trump kind of still acting as if he can dictate the outcome here.
That is not the reality on the ground.
The Iranians have the ability to squeeze the American economy in a manner that they didn't have before this war was started.
And as a result, even though, of course, the methodology needs to improve, et cetera, et cetera, the real problem is in the substance here.
The US side can talk to the Iranians through the Pakistanis and others.
There's nothing wrong with those channels per se.
But if the starting point is essentially Iran gives up everything in terms of control of the Strait of Hormuz, and then in phase two, the US reciprocates, the track record of the last couple of years has made sure that no country that has leverage will ever trust the US to get to phase two or phase three.
And as a result, they won't even bother even contemplating phase one.
That's the problem of having done.
The manner that the Israelis wanted to do it in Gaza and Lebanon has just destroyed that credibility and has put us in a much, much harder position.
I'm not saying this is reality, but I want to know the reality as the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and the folks running the country, and particularly running the military, look at it.
Do they believe that they have the initiative in this war right now and not the Americans?
I think it's quite clear that that is their perception.
And again, whether that perception is entirely true or not could be a very different story.
But I think that they do believe that they have an escalatory dominance here because, for instance, let's say.
That Trump activates his threat.
And by the way, the Israelis are currently bombing power grids and energy infrastructure in Iran long before the deadline has been met.
Whether they're doing it right now in order to sabotage any small prospect for the Iranians agreeing to some sort of a ceasefire, or if all of this is once again another ruse in which the diplomacy is not serious from either side, we don't know yet.
But nevertheless, they're doing it regardless of Trump's deadline.
But let's say that that goes forward.
What the Iranians can then do, and they've already shown the ability to do it, is to take out the oil infrastructure in the region, not just stopping ships from going through the Strait of Hormuz.
The reason why we have high oil prices right now is not because oil is not being pumped out of the ground, it's because the oil is stuck in the Persian Gulf and it can't get through.
But once the Strait opens, the oil will go through very quickly and oil prices can come down very quickly.
However, if Trump activates his threat and goes after the oil infrastructure and other power, Infrastructure in Iran and the Iranians retaliate by taking out the oil and gas infrastructure in the GCC states, then we're not just talking about oil getting stuck in the Persian Gulf.
We're talking about oil and gas not getting out of the ground.
And that will then require years of recuperation before it actually gets back to a normal state.
And then oil prices will not come down quickly.
Rather, they will stay high for a long period of time.
That will be devastating for the global economy and for the United States, and that will destroy Trump's presidency.
That's why I think the Iranians feel confident that.
They have an escalation dominance.
Trump can do a lot of things in terms of blowing things up, but strategically, the Iranians can do a lot to destroy his presidency.