WarRoom Battleground EP 983: Trump Backs Down From Bombing Iran; Ceasefire Agreement Proposed To Postpone Bombing For Two Weeks
Stephen K. Bann opens the April 7, 2026 episode by declaring President Trump will "medieval" on enemies while accusing MAGA Media of exposing lies from networks. The discussion centers on a proposed two-week ceasefire to postpone bombing Iran until 8 p.m., following CENTCOM's Pete Hexel reporting the worst night for U.S. forces. Bann argues the true enemy is an internal "Red Green Alliance" in sanctuary cities, shifting focus to Texas education hearings where Frank Gaffney accuses the Muslim Brotherhood of "stealth jihad." Guests Brian Kennedy and Brandon Weicker express skepticism about the deal's longevity after Iran claimed victory with 15,000 missiles, warning that U.S. grids remain vulnerable despite potential oil flow protections from Pakistan and China. Ultimately, the episode suggests the conflict's resolution hinges on whether asymmetric attacks can be contained while preventing humanitarian collapse. [Automatically generated summary]
We're going to get back to the war and what President Trump says are heated negotiations about a two week ceasefire or a two week pause in the hammer that is supposed to be dropped starting at 8 p.m., although I think the Israelis. Are already starting to drop part of it in the United States Air Force, I believe, are seeing some military targets.
As last night, just on the military side, CENTCOM Pete Hexes tells us that last night was the worst night they've had.
So these guys are continuing to hit.
We're going to get to all that as we run up on the 7 o'clock hour, which is only one hour away from the witching hour of 8 p.m.
Real America's Voice will be having special coverage.
It'll go from 8 to 9.
If there's reason to keep it going later, it will go later.
We got a crack team.
I may actually dip in and out of that as we're working on some other stuff here at the war room, but obviously very, very important.
I got Brian Kennedy and Frank Gaffney here with me.
Brandon Weicker is going to join in a while.
So we're going to go through a lot about the war, but I want to talk about something.
If you follow the war room and my public addresses and speeches, I keep saying that the enemy, we got to be the imminent danger to the United States of America, ain't coming from Tehran.
It's coming inside the wire here in the United States of America.
And it's coming particularly this Red Green Alliance, which now controls the financial capital of the world in the greatest city in the United States.
Yes, that would be New York City.
Also controls large swaths of blue states, particularly sanctuary cities.
And let's be blunt the White House political team has blinked.
You can't mention the word mass deportations or the phrase mass deportation more, but I will tell you the mass deportation coalition.
Is just getting rolling.
There's going to be a whole lot to be announced with those folks in the days and weeks ahead.
Also, they have selected the great state of Texas because they understand Texas is the jewel in the crown.
Last night we had Rosemary Jenks on about the H1B problems in Texas, and they are enormous and need to be addressed and need to be addressed immediately.
But the business before us is this Islamic invasion, the jihadist piece.
Are the green piece of the Red Green Alliance.
Frank Gaffney, you've been down really.
And this is the way that the Muslim Brotherhood and CARE and these terrorist organizations and this whole coming in on cat's paws Islamic invasion, because they're very sneaky.
And what they've done here, there's the Texas Board of Education, they're going through approving some textbooks that will have massive implications over the next decade, not just in Texas, but in 19 or 20 other states because the Scale economies of the publishing business are.
If Texas buys it, other states, to keep their costs down, are going to buy it also.
So Texas is kind of the lead here in making these decisions.
And they, months ago, I guess now half a year ago, nine months ago, said, Hey, we don't think the textbooks that we've even had are good enough about teaching patriotism.
And of course, CARE and the Islamic invasion got all over that.
And they've come up with, and they've got some weak sisters, particularly Republicans.
That are going along with them that think that what Texas schoolchildren need in their formation period would be an infusion of good old pseudo history about how much Islam has met to the United States of America and just how much it has improved the United States of America.
And quite frankly, how important going back to the founding of the Republic and the founding of Texas, it's been so vital to that history.
Well, there's a lot of patriots that understand that that is all.
Nonsense.
That is fantasy.
And that's how they try to win the information war.
Frank Gaffney, you were there.
Set the stage for us what happened.
You actually testified.
Let us know what happened and how the testimony, because last time this happened back in November, they had 91 people come and testified.
89 testified for the Muslims, two for the Patriots.
And just on your previous point, I just can't say one of my personal favorites of this revisionist history of the jihadis is that the Alamo was actually a tribute to Islamic architecture and influences.
So that's the kind of crap that they're trying to float.
And you're right, they have been working stealthily.
I call it the frog boiling every way they can.
And this particular vehicle, To get into our pedagogy, as it's called, to essentially build on what the left has been doing since the 1960s, as you know, to, as they say, march through the institutions.
Well, this is another example of the red green axis doing the same.
And today it was a different deal.
Today there were patriots that were there pushing back.
I was proud to be among them.
I had all of two minutes to.
Make a couple of key points, the most important of which was my old boss, Ronald Reagan, a man I know you admired as much as I did, famously talks about the stealth phenomenon, I guess you might call it, the practice, in other words, of having.
I'm looking for TSA individual who might just grab my bags, which are over on the other side of this airport.
But the bottom line is, Reagan talked about an existential threat to freedom being something every generation had to confront.
And when he said that, He meant that we must rise to the occasion, both in the present generation in terms of what we bequeath to the next, but also to equip the next generation to do the same in their turn.
And that's what this, well, educational jihad is aimed at destroying.
It's discouraging people from thinking this country is worth fighting for.
And that corrosive effect is absolutely subversive.
And what they're trying very hard to do.
With their friends on the left is to make sure that the kids don't have any real understanding about what this is, this country, this exceptional country, and why, yes, it's worth fighting for and dying for if necessary.
So, what we talked about is that's not so what I'm careful with Pam Little's vote.
And I want to just say, I appreciate her saying she was not going to have any part of this.
And I want to also say thank you again to the posse because I think it is another example, Steve, of what happens when you equip your team, our team, patriotic Americans across this country with the facts and give them something specific to do.
They can make a profound impact.
And it does save this curriculum and it does save, as a result, this next generation or two from going down the maw of the red green types.
It will be a signal accomplishment.
Still to be determined how the votes go out.
It may be as late as late tonight, excuse me, as early as late tonight.
It may be in the next days, but it will be informed, I think, by the testimony that they heard from patriotic Americans.
And we had a wonderful, by the way, we had a wonderful kind of impromptu press conference.
In the foyer of the Barbara Jordan building.
The only problem was that CARE and its friends staged a press conference outside the building.
And guess what?
All of the press, literally all of the press, was covering them and their bitching and moaning about what's not satisfactory to them instead of what patriotic Americans, and we had hundreds of them, were saying and singing and praying about in the margins of this very important hearing.
All I can say is praise God.
It's another hopeful sign that, as you say, Steve, as Texas goes, so goes the nation.
And let's just be clear that is literally the case with respect to these textbooks.
If Texas goes down, the rest of the nation is going to follow for sure.
He was very aggressively trying to defend himself from the many attacks that were offered up by people who say, look, this is a betrayal.
This is servicing your enemies and enabling them to make real inroads into our country.
And, you know, I think that the ultimate accountability will come in the form of his name.
Will Hickman, his reputation, his standing as a Republican.
We had the deputy, I guess, deputy chairman of the Republican Party on our friend Debbie George Addison's program this afternoon with her Republican committeeman, Robin, co hosting.
And she just said, you know, this is a betrayal of Republicans.
And the problem with it.
As was made clear by Robin as well, it demoralizes Republicans.
And that's precisely what the counter, you know, the jihadis are all about.
They want to demoralize us, they want to defeat us, and they want us to think there's no hope and we just forget about it.
These are, we should be clear, these are people for whom the apocalypse is not only desirable, it is required.
They seek to bring it on.
I personally would be very, very concerned about the president wiping out all of the infrastructure that the people of Iran need in order to try to dissuade these guys from doing bad things in the Hormuz Strait.
I'm telling you, this is a moment when the only solution is to put them out of business.
And that means all of the third tier, all of the fourth tier, and so on.
But that's a hell of a lot easier, it turns out, than ferreting out where all of the rockets are, all of the launchers, the mobile launchers, the deeply buried launchers are, and so on.
This is a war that has to be fought to a decisive conclusion.
That means none of these guys survive to say they won, which is what they are.
Thank you for going to Austin, testifying, rallying the people down there, having a great press conference.
We'll have more on that tomorrow, particularly CARES press conference.
Can't wait to play some of that.
I want to thank our friends at Patriot Mobile.
None of this will be possible in Texas if it was not for Glenn and Jenny Story.
Just legendary folks.
972 Patriot.
Call right now.
They're customer service.
You'll get someone with an East Texas accent who's a citizen of these United States, and they'll walk you through all the benefits for switching today to the world's best mobile service, that is Patriot Mobile.
972 Patriot.
Tell them the Warren sent you, that you talked to Bannon about this, and they're going to give you a free month when you make the shift.
Also, we were honored to have Jim Rickards on this morning.
Uh, Rickards War Room.com.
It's a landing page.
You get access to strategic intelligence, which is based upon predictive analytics.
Just a very extraordinary, extraordinary, extraordinary newsletter.
Also, it throws in a free book on money and chat GBT, artificial intelligence, and fiat currency.
It's a thriller.
You don't want to miss it.
But read what CEOs and chairmen throughout the world are reading Strategic Intelligence do it today.
Go to RickardsWar Room.com.
Want to thank Jim Rickards for joining us this morning, Brian Kennedy.
First of all, Brian, your thoughts before we get into the war, your thoughts on Texas and why this battle against care and the Muslim Brotherhood.
And you see that they know it's important.
That's why care is showing up.
But particularly about textbooks and our children, which are our future, sir.
Islam is, as we know, completely incompatible with both Western Christendom and with the American way of life.
And unfortunately, that's not been explained adequately to the American people.
And the whole idea that they would create this narrative that, in fact, they're as American as you or I are American is just a matter of deception of which they are masters.
And because they're masters of deception, they're very good at playing on.
It seems to me the live and let live attitude most Americans have, which is you keep to yourself, we're fine, we'll keep to ourselves.
And so I have family in Texas, for instance, and they don't see this.
They don't see the Indians interfering with their way of life.
They don't see the Muslims interfering with their way of life.
They're just living their lives.
They go to church on Sunday.
They go to Little League.
They live the American dream.
And so the Muslims, especially in Texas, have managed to fly under the radar.
Now they think they can insert into our textbooks this false narrative about how they're as American as we are and their contributions.
This is, as Frank often says, and you often say, this is a stealth jihad in which they mean to replace Western Christendom with Islam.
And they've taken over New York, as you described.
We can't let that happen.
We have to fight it there.
We certainly have to fight it in Texas.
And we certainly need the Trump administration.
To ban the Muslim Brotherhood in all of its forms nationwide.
Not only the Brotherhood, but any of its affiliates, because that's really their army, as it were, that they can use to go around the country and bully these Americans who believe in live and let live into basically embracing their narrative.
Brian, we're 90 minutes away from what President Trump has put a deadline, and he was pretty blunt.
He said, Look, they asked for seven.
I gave them seven.
I threw in another three to get us through Easter.
I added another day so we wouldn't have to do this on Easter Monday.
But today's the deadline at eight o'clock.
What does that mean?
Particularly, President Trump's rhetoric has been pretty sharp and focused on what he intends to do unless they come to the table and at least begin the process of making a deal.
Yeah, it was a very interesting comment he made, and I was very interested in the New York Times story this morning.
First, on his Truth Social post, he really does believe in winning this war and whatever it takes to win this war.
I firmly believe that.
When he said he wants to destroy their empire, their empire would be destroyed, I would humbly submit that the greatness of Persia existed 500 years before Jesus.
And it really hasn't been the same since they were conquered by the Muslims in the seventh century.
What we see in Iran today is a civilization that is entirely Muslim in nature.
There is, of course, the genius of the Persian people and their ability to preserve their literature and many parts of their culture.
But what we see in Iran today is very foreign, in my judgment, to what the Persian people actually want.
And if President Trump is successful here in overturning this Islamic regime, I think instead of destroying the Persian Empire or Persian civilization, more accurately, it'll be a way of preserving Persian civilization.
I think if you're able to liberate the Persian people, and that's their job, not our job, I think they could recover what is great about them.
Again, that's not our job, it's their job.
But so long as Islam is the ruling doctrine, Of Iran, they will see themselves as the military vanguard of a global Islamic movement.
And I think if they succeed there, they will embolden Islamic movements all around the world.
So President Trump is, I think, has firm resolve about this.
He has said for over 25 years they can't have nuclear weapons.
And we can disagree about their nuclear weapons program, but he firmly believes that.
And the New York Times story this morning basically had him reiterate in front of both Netanyahu and his own cabinet.
That they cannot have nuclear weapons, no matter whatever else may be true, that is firmly stuck in his mind.
The um, what you said about the military, how does the power and the oil, because that's what he's going after tonight, at least he says he's going after, he's going after their power plants, he's going to take them back to the stone age, their oil capacity.
How does that tie into the military program?
Because you got a lot of people saying, Oh, these are war crimes, he's committing war crimes, he's got to be brought up on charges of war crimes.
It's obviously nonsense, but what you've had a focus on defanging and declawing, as Captain Fennell tells us, now you're shifting unless they meet your demands, particularly about.
The Strait of Hormuz, what is he trying to accomplish in really going after essentially what looks like state collapse, sir?
And I share Frank Gaffney's concern that we would be essentially impoverishing and putting great humanitarian costs upon the Iranian people by destroying those power plants and bridges.
That may be required in order to win this war, but that is not a desirable thing.
I don't think the president believes it's a desirable thing.
I think he thought this would have been something that could have been done a lot quicker.
He said that in that New York Times piece.
But I think the danger here is if you destroy all of those things, then you have a regime that really has nothing to lose.
And when they have nothing to lose, what would they do with their military arsenal?
Where would they use that?
Would they use asymmetric attacks here in the United States?
They no doubt have sleeper cells in this country.
So, one thing I would caution. the war room posse about is the potential for violence here in the United States.
We can't dismiss that.
And even though the president doesn't discuss that, that is certainly something we have to be concerned about.
We don't want to destroy Iranian society.
We don't want to destroy those power plants and bridges.
And let us pray that there is a way of avoiding that, if at all possible.
But unfortunately, it looks like that's where this is going.
And I thought that was a fascinating expose of what people thought.
We know that JD Vance was very deeply concerned.
We know Marco Rubio and And Director Ratcliffe thought that the Israeli plan for overthrowing the regime was, in the way Churchill thought of things, too easy to be good.
Marco Rubio said it was BS.
I think that's right.
And the president now is dealing with how do I win this?
How do I make sure Iran does not have nuclear weapons that can hurt the United States?
And how do I do that in ways that do not destroy the global economy?
This is a very delicate balancing act.
I personally try to have a lot of humility about all this.
We don't know everything about this, but we do know the president has conviction, and let's pray that conviction is matched with the kind of prudence that would make sure that we can preserve the global economy and our own prosperity.
Didn't it strike you as odd that JD, Marco, Ratcliffe, and General Kane all came out looking like reasonable people in that article and President Trump looked like the guy just trying to bowl through?
Did it strike you as odd that they had so many direct quotes?
I mean, I strongly believe that that article and how that article came about and who talked to the reporters has got to be investigated.
That is, you should not get into the National Security Council.
That deeply with direct quotes.
And, you know, it's very disturbing.
Some of the information there is, I think, quite disturbing.
We'd like to have the president address it because I'm not buying it.
It's fake news because I guarantee you it didn't go down like that.
But I will say, well, I'm not so sure they, I'm not so sure the writer, I'm not so sure the writers made them look good.
I think that's why it's got to be investigated.
Who actually made them look good, we ought to find out because they look like reasonable people and they, and they, and they try to, you know, and they try to paint President Trump.
And that's why this thing is so difficult because now you've got another, you know, people are scrambling behind the scenes right now and there's a ton of people pitching ideas and, hey, we got relationships.
I don't think it's a better time for those of you that haven't gotten up the learning curve on the end of the dollar empire.
Right now, the hard copy edition, which is a bounded edition with graphics, et cetera, the first seven has kind of had a couple of press runs and is currently out of print.
We're printing more, but you can go online and get the first seven when you go to birchgold.com, promo code BANN, and you get to talk to Philip Patrick.
Most importantly, right now, particularly for everybody that's up to speed on the first seven, We finally have come out with the eighth free edition, the eighth free installment, I should say.
Make sure you immerse yourself in that because it talks about many of the issues facing the United States dollar today.
And I think as we've seen this budget come out in the last week or so, maybe even worse than we thought.
Okay, hot of the true social press just passed to me from the President of the United States, based on conversations with Prime Minister Sharif and Field Marshal Asim Munir.
Told you he was close to that guy.
Field Marshal Munir of Pakistan, and wherein they requested that I hold off the destructive force being sent tonight to Iran and subject to the Islamic Republic of Iran agreeing to the complete.
Immediate and safe opening of the Strait of Hormuz, I agreed to suspend the bombing and attack of Iran for a period of two weeks.
This will be a double sided ceasefire.
The reason for doing so is that we have already met and exceeded all military objectives and are very far along with the definitive agreement concerning long term peace with Iran and peace in the Middle East.
We received a 10 point proposal from Iran and believe it is a workable basis on which to negotiate.
Almost all the various points of past contention have been agreed to between the United States and Iran, but a two week period will allow the agreement to be finalized and consummated.
On behalf of the United States of America, as president and also representing the countries of the Middle East, it is an honor to have this long term problem close to resolution.
Thank you for attention to this matter, President Donald J. Trump, president of these United States.
I think the buried lead there that is most important, at least for everything that everybody's been working for, is agreeing to the complete, and this is all cap.
In fact, we'll put it up right there.
You can see it yourself.
Complete, immediate, and safe opening of the Strait of Hormuz.
Brian Kennedy.
We told you some people were working behind the scenes.
Looks like the Pakistanis and this relationship with the field marshal came through.
Of course, we haven't seen any details of this.
We certainly haven't heard from the Iranians.
The last thing we heard from the Iranians on this very topic just a couple hours ago is that, yo, we've cut off diplomatic relations.
We're not talking to anybody, and we got 15,000 missiles and 45,000 drones.
Well, as I texted with you not long ago, I was somewhat confounded by my friends in Saudi Arabia who were acting like.
This thing is no big deal.
No fuss.
They seem to have a good read on the prospects of peace.
And now we know that the Pakis were in the background there maneuvering.
And so I think that Mr. Kennedy is probably correct.
The Chinese certainly were probably pulling a lever there.
But I also think that it's important to understand the Pakistanis, as you rightly note, that the leadership there have had a very close relationship with the 47th president.
And, you know, he helped them out.
When the Indo Pakistani war last year.
And so, in a way, this is sort of returning the favor.
So, good on them.
It looks like this, for now, is avoided the worst case scenario that I was fearing because I was watching B 52 Stratofortresses flying in from the United Kingdom carrying what I suspected were the JASM ER long range missiles, which are basically beyond visual range systems that would have been used, I suspect, to hit.
The Iranian oil and energy infrastructure, that would have led to a counterattack that would have been devastating to the Gulf region, would have had knock on effects for the world economy, would have probably ensured that the Republicans would not be able to win the midterms, and certainly would not help with the affordability crisis right now.
The president can build off this over the next two weeks.
He goes back to being the top dog, which is what you and I had been hoping that he would do this.
He would find an off ramp.
So, right now, it looks Positive, but I'm still very tepid because, you know, the Iranians haven't said anything.
So we don't really know what's going to happen next.
Well, in fact, what they said a couple hours ago when something like this was raised, they went to the Wall Street Journal and there was enough for the Wall Street Journal to print it that, in fact, they had cut off the negotiations.
They weren't ready.
They're winning.
As I say, whether they're winning or not, in their mind, they think they're winning.
And that they've got tons of ammo left, including drones.
Of course, the Wall Street Journal said that's obviously exaggerated.
What are you, by doing this, are you emboldening?
Some of the worst elements because the lower down the food chain you go, the more guys you kill at the top.
You're not getting to Jeffersonian Democrats, right?
You're not getting to Norman Rockwell, you know, the New England town hall guys coming there worried about their families.
These are hardcore, the hardest core Islamic theocrats that were formed.
Their formation was in the Iran Iraq war, right?
What, 30 years ago?
These people are formed in the cauldron of battle of which they really had the odds against them.
And had, I don't know, a million casualties, and we're sending 12 year old kids up to the front with sticks.
Do you think this emboldens them if we give them a two week and it's got these terms to it, we're trying to work out the terms?
Is that going to only embolden these guys to dig in even harder?
I got to be honest with you, they were emboldened already.
You know, what we did in those first rounds of airstrikes was we went in and killed Kamani and some of those older senior IRGC guys.
But I, you know, I was talking to a former Navy SEAL.
A few weeks ago, and he said his fear was that the younger guys coming up were actually the crazier ones.
And now that the older guys were knocked out, they were going to be really emboldened.
And it looked like for a period of time now, since those original hits on the Iranian regime in February and early March, it looked for a while like that was exactly what was happening.
And so I actually think that those guys are going to be emboldened regardless.
And if anything, by, by taking our foot off the gas pedal here, yes, there are some downsides in terms of what we lose that tactical momentum, but ultimately it also gives time for Iran's People to kind of reorient.
And right now, they're rallying around their government because they're afraid, because they're worried that we could do something crazy against them.
And so this now puts the pressure and the onus, in my opinion, back on the Islamic Republic.
Because let's face it, they are a repressive, awful regime.
And if left to their own devices, as we saw with the Soviet Union in the 1980s, if left to their own devices, I am convinced that that regime will implode under the internal contradictions of its own.
You know, system.
And it was on the brink of doing that, I believe, before we militarily intervened.
And I think this could actually buy time for the people to reorganize and start pressuring their government for the much needed reforms and changes that they all want.
How do you, you've been on this closely, you've had a number of great calls, particularly about the shortage of ammo.
We know from the New York Times story, as much grief as you got about that, this New York Times story today actually, but it actually reinforced what you said at the time.
This part about President Trump that he put up in all caps you have to have a complete, total, and free navigation immediately of the Strait of Hormuz.
Do you think that actually happens?
And if we can't get to that, do we go back to shooting?
Well, it's going to be the next probably six days are going to be very important.
And what role the Pakis, and I say that with all due deference, I don't want to offend my Pakistani friends, what role the Pakistanis will have, because I do believe they're a great hinge player here where they do have sort of one foot in with the Chinese camp, which includes Iran and the Russians, and they have one foot in with the White House.
And I think that's actually very helpful here.
I think what's going on is we're going to find out in the next probably four to six days if there can be any real consensus.
But, you know, if maybe there's some give where we tell the Iranians, you know, we can work something out where you're going to have some role in the Strait of Hormuz.
I know that was floated to Lawrence Wilkerson in 2007.
Perhaps there's some, it won't be perfect for us.
But if we can get that oil flowing again, Steve, we can really hit the reset button.
And we might even be able to find an off ramp more generally with the regime in terms of just putting them back in their box.
Ultimately, the real wild card here is not going to be us or Iran or Pakistan or China.
It's going to be Israel.
Is Israel going to accept an even temporary ceasefire?
And I am fearful that the Netanyahu government will not.
Yaakov Armador said that to me, that they don't care.
Yaakov Armador said last two weeks ago, two Mondays ago, told me to my face that the Israeli government does not care about the Strait of Hormuz staying open or closed.
And I think Brandon and you were both right about this.
It seems to me, though, if Israel should break this ceasefire, that would break our alliance with Israel over this.
If we're not operating in concert here, what are we doing?
Now, all that having been said, I agree that this younger generation is quite likely to be at least as radical as the previous set of leaders.
If that's the case, Will be in a shooting war again very quickly here.
And I think that's probably more likely than not.
We don't know exactly what the Iranians are believing here.
We don't know if there's some Iranian general who has control of things and capable of actually negotiating something that would approach an end to this war.
But the likeliness of that is probably remote at this point.
The one thing I think we have to remember I don't think President Trump is going to end this if Iran still possesses.
Or possesses the capability of producing nuclear weapons.
If that is still the case, I don't see this war ending.
And that's really the, that really is, I think, for President Trump, the threshold here.
Will they have nuclear weapons?
It's partly about the Strait of Hormuz, but it's also about their capability of having nuclear weapons.
Okay, let me just go back over this one more time.
Nuclear weapons are obviously very important.
You can't trust anybody in this region.
America's greatest ally has doubled dealt us from the beginning of this, right?
The whole situation of shifting the center of gravity of the battle down to Persian Gulf was they're taking on the gas field of the Qataris that they kind of joint managed with Iranians.
But the guys, supposedly on our side of the football, are even worse.
You can't trust them for anything.
Also, I keep saying it's not just somebody who will say, Yeah, I got 10 points.
I'm going to text them over to you.
Let's negotiate.
It's who can deliver actually a deal.
I'm not so sure that, I'm not certain, let's say, that the decentralized command of the Revolutionary Guard has total control of, I believe, Brandon and Brian, which is largely Bedouin kind of these Arab pirates that have had that side since time immemorial.
In fact, when Alexander the Great went, I'm not sure they report to anybody but themselves.
And it's going to be interesting to see about this Hormuz when President Trump makes it the thing that's in bold cap letters that has to be opened or we don't have a deal.
This will develop tonight and I'm sure tomorrow.
Brandon, any thoughts on that before I let you punch out?
Well, I think that we're in a wait and see mode again.
And you know, I'm usually very skeptical about the prospects of negotiations.
But I think the Iranians are right in feeling that they are emboldened right now.
And actually, that might work in our favor.
That actually might give us a window to ratchet this thing down.
Uh, kind of hit the reset button and let the regional powers, including Israel, but the Arab states and Pakistan, let them and Turkey kind of take the lead on figuring out what's the best way forward.
The key thing here, Steve, we have to delay getting involved further militarily.
It will destroy our military power projection for a generation and it will take our economy down and it will hand the Democrats all the power they want in November if we do anything more than we've already done militarily.
And you were pretty convinced that President Trump, if we didn't have this, what just popped up here over the last hour, that the military had a hammer that was going to definitely drive some nails into the blank tonight.
They were lined up, and it looked like just looking at what I was seeing on open source, that B 52s, we don't know what the B 2s were doing.
I'm sure they were involved.
But my understanding is we committed our entire, and this was very irresponsible on our part, we committed our entire JASM ER long range missile arsenal.
To this fight, which are key weapons for deterring China, and they're very hard to replace because they're very complex and expensive.
So I'm very glad we desisted from this because I thought that was a very dangerous prospect.
But yes, we were prepared.
And the problem also, though, is that had we done the strikes on the oil and electrical grids, as Brian was talking about before I joined, the fact is the Iranians have capabilities both in the cyber domain as well as fifth columnist here in the United States, thank you, Mr. Biden, who are prepared to launch in kind attacks on our vulnerable electrical grid.
Even physical attacks on our electrical grid with guns taking out these substations.
So I am glad we are avoiding this because the Iranians, I do not believe, will initiate an attack like that unless they are attacked first.
Brian Kennedy, you have done a ton of work over the last decade or so about the electric grid and vulnerabilities.
Does Brandon concern you when he says, hey, there are guys here, fifth columnists and others, sleeper cells, which seem to be pretty sleepy right now because nothing's popped up, or at least nothing that the FBI has told us about or authorities have told us about?
Are you particularly concerned about that?
And I should add right now, because the engine room reminds me before we leave the air, I don't believe we've heard from the Iranians yet.
All I'm saying is that earlier today, when these things kind of went around this thing, the Iranians came out and they couldn't have been more up in your grill.
We've cut off any type of one on one.
We're not negotiating.
We've got 15,000 missiles and 45,000 drones we've built up over 20 or 30 years, and we're winning.
You want to fight?
Let's get it on.
So we haven't heard from the Persians yet, I might add.
We've got a minute or two, Brian, your thoughts on the vulnerability of the United States here in our grid.
Well, we've been talking about this with the Committee on the Present Danger China, and I have separately for quite some time.
You can take one of these large transformers of ours and physically destroy one using automatic rifle fire.
We have found that various times in the United States.
We also get most of our transformers, by the way, from Communist China.
And there's also the possibility that Communist China, we know Communist China has built into many of those transformers the ability to hack into them and turn them off.
Or disable them.
So we certainly have to be worried about that.
I should say, though, Steve, that one thing I disagree with Brandon about is the ability of the United States to project power.
We have a great military.
We've seen that time and again.
We also have a great country that can be a manufacturing power again.
And if some of that is building the kind of material and munitions that make sure that we remain free and capable of defending our interests both at home and abroad, we ought to be setting about today to do that.
We have to make sure we have the industrial capacity here in the United States to make sure we can defend ourselves with all the missiles, all the other military systems that are required for our national defense.
And that's one thing that the administration is set on doing.
We have to be much more serious about that and take that much more seriously right now.