Countdown to Confrontation examines the collapsed U.S.-Iran nuclear talks in Geneva, where Iran defied Trump’s deadline by rejecting terms and vowing to retain uranium enrichment. The largest U.S. military buildup since the Gulf War—including the USS Abraham Lincoln, USS Gerald R. Ford, and 11 warships—follows Trump’s strikes (Soleimani, ISIS, bunker-buster bombs) and Iran’s alleged terror plots, like a $5K vape assassination attempt targeting him. Ambassador Nathan Sells argues Israel’s October 7th response weakened Iran’s proxies (Hamas, Hezbollah), fueling speculation of regime collapse amid protests and crises. Diplomacy remains the hope, but military readiness signals zero tolerance for nuclear ambitions. [Automatically generated summary]
Write down our toll-free telephone number this Friday.
It's 800-941 Sean.
If you want to be a part of the program headline, New York Post today, Nuclear Talk Strike Out.
Goes on to say Iran left talks with the U.S.
This in Switzerland and Geneva without a deal.
to end their nuclear program.
State-run TV actually confirmed that they'll never give up their right to enrich uranium.
And with President Trump's self-imposed deadline to reach an agreement now coming to an end as soon as this weekend, I think Donald Trump is pretty predictable.
And we now know what is likely to happen next.
We're going to have a full report throughout the show.
We're going to be monitoring the situation on the ground.
I can tell you that both the State Department and that Secretary of State, Marker Rubio, and also the U.S. Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, said, if you want to get out, get out now.
There was a picture in this New York Post, a stark huge anti-American message displayed in the Iranian capital of Tehran as these tensions mount.
The president did say help is on the way, and the president said he prefers peace, but he said that the last time, too, before Operation Midnight Hammer knocked out and obliterated their nuclear facilities.
Now, we do know that the Iranians had uranium that had been enriched, that they had moved to other locations.
We don't know how much they have, although Steve Witkoff, the Middle Eastern envoy, has said that he believes that they might have much more than we knew, and that makes it an even greater pressure cooker, if you will.
But as this deadline pressure mounts, and yesterday's meeting took place one week after President Trump told the Board of Peace that he would decide whether to hit this radical as Islamic fascist regime.
By the way, we're talking about radical Islamists.
I'm not talking about anything other than that.
We know what Iran is, the number one state sponsor of terror.
They have been fomenting nothing but death and terror in the region for a long time, serving as the proxies.
They have their proxies all out throughout the region.
Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthi rebels.
This is, if I had to guess, this will be the end of this regime.
I don't think they will be able to survive.
We have the largest military presence buildup in the region that we've had since the Gulf War.
And if you remember, shock and awe, I think Donald Trump has already proven he's a shock and awe guy.
And in keeping with the Trump doctrine.
Now, I know there are some that claim that the Trump doctrine, they clearly don't understand it because they clearly don't comprehend how Donald Trump is rolling.
Whatever he does do, I believe will be consistent with the Trump doctrine of no forever war and no forever wars, period, and no boots on the ground, period.
And I've been telling people for the longest time that future wars and conflicts are likely not going to be fought conventionally on battlefields, especially with emerging technology, the next generation of weaponry.
And you can already see this unfold.
I mean, you know, in the 12-day war when Iran was firing all these 2,000-pound ballistic missiles, now they have 4,000-pound ballistic missiles, according to intelligence and reports that have been made public.
This is a regime hell-bent on death.
And you would think after 14 bunker buster bombs were dropped on their nuclear facilities and the fact that the Israelis were so sophisticated, they even took out the scientists responsible for the nuclear program, just like they took out the top 10 leaders of Hamas and they took out Nasrallah in Lebanon and they had the whole Pager incident.
You think that some of these people might wise up and learn their lesson because this is an almost certain death sentence to the Ayatollahs and the Mullahs in Iran.
And it's certainly a different course than, say, Obama or Biden took, which is, oh, just pretty pleased with sugar on top.
You know, promise us that you're never going to pursue a nuclear weapons program.
And then they, you know, send in cargo planes full of cash and other currencies to the tune of billions and billions of dollars.
That is madness.
And there was a deadline on it.
In other words, they can reconstitute the nuclear program after they got the billions.
How stupid, how weak.
I want to talk about the very definition of appeasement.
That's it.
Now, this is a different day, a different time, and a very different tune and a very different president.
And let me remind some of you that don't understand the Trump doctrine.
No forever wars, no American boots on the ground.
That does not mean isolationism.
Can anyone dispute that Donald Trump obliterating Iran's nuclear weapons program does not make the world a safer place?
You can't intelligently make that argument.
I'm not a warmonger.
I hate the fact, and I ask everybody to pray for our brave men and women that are in the military because their lives will always be in jeopardy if there's a conflict.
And I don't want that.
I wish evil didn't exist in the world, but it does.
And if we didn't learn anything from the last hundred years between Mao and China and Stalin and Russia and Hitler in Germany and Mussolini in Italy and Tojo in Japan and Pol Pot in the killing fields and 100 million human souls dead because of one evil ism after another, I don't know how you're ever going to learn that lesson again.
Why Radical Islam Is Stupid?00:04:49
I mean, you have idiots out there.
Well, if you think that, you know, radical Islamic terrorism is a threat to us, you're stupid.
Okay, go back to 9-11-01.
Maybe it's a while ago.
It's 25 years since that.
This is the 25th year anniversary of 9-11.
I remember it as vividly as the day it happened.
I've not forgotten one bit.
And for the families that lost love, they haven't forgotten either.
This is what infuriates me about these anti-Semitic bigots in the halls of Congress, college campuses.
It's now growing worldwide, growing in the punditry class, and these morons that don't have a clue.
Israel, the only democracy in the region, and what happened to them and what they've been living through for decades and decades and decades.
And I've been to Israel many times.
I've been in this network of terror tunnels.
Linda, you were on one of those trips.
I think you actually were there when that one rocket landed, what, 100 yards from us?
Yeah.
And this is what the people of Israel live, you know, every single day they live with.
And you went down in the terror tunnel, didn't you?
I think you did.
No, they only took you.
They only took you.
You and a cameraman.
Well, they don't trust you.
I mean, I get it.
No, I'm kidding.
I'm only kidding.
But you saw the images of it.
I mean, and think about it.
There are hundreds of them.
This was humanitarian aid given to the people in Gaza so they can build hospitals and schools and get them food and nutrition and medicines and so on and so forth.
No, instead, they build out a sophisticated network of terror tunnels so they can foment terror and try and kill as many Jews as they want.
And what happened on October 7th, this is what I cannot comprehend from you anti-Semites out there.
And I want no part of any of you.
I will have nothing to do with those people.
And we know who they are.
And I'm just telling you, it is disgusting because what happened on October 7th, 2023 in the IDF, they did share with members of the media, for those that had the stomach to watch it.
I know that some of my colleagues at Fox, they were being shown by Israel these videos.
Now, Hamas terrorists were taking the images of this.
We have phone calls recorded that were, you know, through surveillance of these Hamas killers, you know, calling home to mom and dad.
I just killed six Jews.
I just killed six of them.
Lost over a thousand people.
Here's the difference.
We lost 2,977 Americans on 9-11-01.
By the way, Prime Minister Netanyahu, he stood with us and in solidarity with the United States.
On October 7, 2023, they have less than 10 million people that live in Israel.
That's it.
That's the population size.
And what they are able to do militarily, being surrounded by enemies, is beyond the human imagination.
You want to know why they're so innovative?
Because they have to be to survive.
They've been surrounded by enemies that want to destroy them forever.
And it's the size of New Jersey, the entire country of Israel.
It's unbelievably inspiring what they're capable of doing.
You know, watching the Patriot missile system.
Now they have new next generations of missile defense systems that have been set up, and they're building out the next generation of missile defense systems.
But they weren't even during the 12-day war able to stop every missile.
And then, you know, what happened?
If you extrapolate out the population of Israel, under 10 million, and you compare it to our population, what is it about 360 million?
Linda, you know more than me.
And that would be the equivalent of losing about 40,000 Americans in a single day.
And then you look at these videos, and some of my colleagues, they had to walk out.
And some people were just crying because you saw on video murder and murder of young children and rape and torture and kidnapping and parents losing their children to these kidnapper terrorists.
If you want to understand the Trump doctrine, look what he did in his first term.
He took out the ISIS caliphate that grew under Obama and Biden.
He just wiped them out because he understood the existential threat that is radical Islamists that believe in convert or die.
He took out Solemani, the world's number one worst terrorist responsible for killing Americans.
He took him out on that tarmac as soon as that plane landed and as soon as he was ID'd on the ground, boom, they took him out.
They were ready for him.
They followed him for two weeks.
Uss Destroyers And The Clear Danger00:15:16
I got the backstory.
They did the same with Baghdadi and associates during his first term.
He dropped the mother of all bombs on Afghanistan.
He took out the Iranian nuclear sites with Operation Midnight Hammer.
Now, if you look at a map and where we are with this, and this matters, right now in the Arabian Sea, we have the USS Abraham Lincoln.
Now, this is, you know, to the south, kind of as I'm looking at the map that I have in front of me, we have the USS Abraham Lincoln, and we have three destroyers there.
And then if you look, you know, off the coast of Kuwait and off the coast of Saudi Arabia in the Persian Gulf, where Qatar, and we have our largest military base and the UAE, we have in that area five destroyers, three combat ships.
So we're covering three huge sides of Iran.
Now, off the coast of Israel and Lebanon, and, you know, just outside the Mediterranean Sea, we've got the USS Gerald R. Ford and three destroyers there.
Never mind fighter jets, drones, helicopters, you name it.
All of this is up, ready to go.
You know, we have airborne radar aircraft, and we're going to have plenty of firepower, the most firepower we've ever assembled since the Gulf War.
Now, are we going to have our national treasure, our brave men and women, going door to door, stepping over IDs?
No, those days are gone.
And the president's right to not have forever wars.
The president's right also to not put boots on the ground.
Now, after publicly giving Iran 10 to 15 days to reach this agreement, I don't think you can make an agreement.
I said it from the beginning.
You can't trust the Iranians.
They've proven themselves untrustworthy.
But he said, I will never allow the world's number one state sponsor of terror to have a nuclear weapon.
He said it again Tuesday night in the State of the Union address.
And the president first outlined the short timeline saying that the world would know within probably 10 days whether Tehran was prepared to strike what he called a meaningful deal.
So they met in Geneva yesterday, and then they go on state TV.
It's like they've been saber-rattling all over state TV about, you know, showing images of taking out American ships and making proclamations that Donald Trump will be in his coffin in a number of days.
Okay, I'm not sure what part of 14 Bunker Busters they didn't learn a lesson from, but it is what it is.
Prince Reza Pahavi, who's been on this program before, he said he thinks the regime is about to collapse as the economic crisis deepens.
They've also had a major water shortage, and they've had to move out the entire city of Tehran.
Anyway, we watch.
We'll pray for our troops.
Please, everybody listening, pray for those brave men and women.
Pray for Israel.
Pray for that innocent life gets protected and pray for a safer world.
We are watching what's going on in Iran, as we have been discussing.
And we have joining us now Ambassador Nathan Sells.
He served in the first Trump administration as ambassador-at-large for counterterrorism, acting under Secretary of State, played a key role in the maximum pressure campaign against the Iranian regime, their terror proxies.
In 2022, he was sanctioned by Iran, knows the country well.
He joins us today as the Iranians have rejected the list of agenda items that Donald Trump was insisting on if they wanted to make a deal with the U.S.
The president put a timeline on it.
That timeline is ending very quickly.
And as I just laid out for you, we have the largest military presence in the region since the Gulf War and the buildup in the Gulf War.
I mean, if you look off, for example, in the Arabian Sea, off the coast of Pakistan and Iran, you've got, you know, in that case, the USS Abraham Lincoln and three destroyers.
If you look in the Persian Gulf off the coast of Kuwait, Qatar, and the UAE, you've got five destroyers, three combat ships.
If you look off the coast of Lebanon, Israel, and the Mediterranean, you know, you got, let's see, the USS Gerald R. Ford and three destroyers there, and you got a ton of air bases in the region and fighter jets and drones and helicopters.
I don't know what part of Donald Trump they don't take seriously.
He gave him a deadline 50 days the last time, day 51, Israel started wiping him out.
That's pretty remarkable to me.
79% of Americans do fear a nuclear-armed Iran, and that it poses a direct threat to our country.
89% view Iran as an enemy.
They're not friendly.
Those are smart people.
And, you know, so I don't think the president has any choice, just like he didn't have any choice with Operation Midnight Hammer.
The Israelis did not have the military capability of dropping 14 bunker buster bombs to take out and obliterate those nuclear facilities.
Now, whatever uranium they had stored elsewhere in the country, I don't know.
Steve Witkoff seems to think that they're on the verge of potentially building out a weapon.
He's the Middle Eastern envoy.
There's nothing that it seems they won't do to get nuclear weapons, and they're just hell-bent on it.
Anyway, Ambassador Sales, great to have you back, sir.
Thank you for being with us.
Our prayers are with our U.S. men and women in the region.
Of course, the president has said he'd prefer peace.
I prefer peace.
But the president has shown that the Trump doctrine is not isolationism.
Yeah, it means no boots on the ground, no forever wars.
But he did take out Iran.
He did take out ISIS.
He took out the Iranian nuclear sites.
He took out Soleimani, Baghdadi, and all his pals, and dropped the mother of all bombs on Afghanistan.
So they shouldn't be surprised when this deadline comes that Donald Trump's going to act.
Lashan, thanks for having me on.
I think you're exactly right.
The Iranians are exceptionally bad at reading the room.
The president isn't exactly being ambiguous here.
He's being very clear.
We want a diplomatic resolution.
That's plan A.
But we've got a plan B, and that plan B is floating off your coast with the ability to deliver overwhelming firepower.
Like you, I hope the Iranians come to their senses and negotiate an end to their nuclear program.
But what does it say about their priorities that they're prepared to take their country and the entire region to the brink of a war?
They're not doing that because they want nuclear energy.
They're not doing it because they want to lower energy prices for Iranian consumers.
They're doing it because they want to preserve a pathway to a bomb.
And that's why the administrations demand no domestic uranium enrichment of any kind.
That's why that's so important.
The only reason the Iranians could have for wanting to enrich uranium is because they want to preserve a pathway to a bomb.
And that's the one thing the administration has said is completely out of bounds.
All right.
As you look at the firepower we have in the region, and I can add to that, high-end F-22 fighter jets at an Israeli air base prepared for combat on top of it.
Then you have the ambassador to Israel, friend of this program, Mike Huckabee, sent an email to embassy staff telling them today that there's no need to panic, but if they want to leave Israel, they, quote, should do so today, according to a U.S. official.
It follows orders of a partial evacuation of the embassy and embassy personnel in Lebanon on February 23rd.
The timing of any military action against Iran will always remain unknown.
According to reports, Secretary of State Mark Orubio plans to visit Israel on Monday to brief Israeli leaders on Iranian talks.
We already know that they kind of, you know, failed.
Yeah, well, all this is consistent.
By the way, we didn't fail.
They just are stubbornest and stupid.
But we didn't fail on our end.
We did our part.
Well, that's right.
It takes two to tango.
We're extending an olive branch, but we also have an eagle's claw full of arrows that are ready to go.
And it's the Iranians' choice which one they're going to deal with.
All this is consistent with the administration's approach that, you know, we're serious about diplomacy, but we're not bluffing.
We're not moving people out of the region because we're trying to send a message.
We're moving people out of the region because this could get real very quickly.
And it's ultimately up to the Iranians whether they want to pursue a path of peace or whether they dig in their heels and risk their regime and risk their lives because they're so committed to an apocalyptic vision of a nuclear-armed Iran.
You know, they always say they don't want a nuclear weapon, but I don't think they've earned the right to be trusted.
Nobody should take that claim to the bank because their actions speak louder than their words.
And the fact that they are prepared to risk war again over uranium tells you that that is not a peaceful nuclear program.
It's only useful to them to the extent that it enables them to seek a bomb.
Did you hear about this story?
An alleged Iranian-backed terrorist bizarrely thought he could put a bargain-priced hit out on Donald Trump, paying two men a measly $5,000 up front and coming up with this insane plot that, you know, by placing a vape on a napkin to denote his target, meaning President Trump, according to details that were just released yesterday, this is the target.
How will it die?
And this idiot said, you know, as he gestured, you know, to a creamsicle-colored smoking device inside a hotel room filled with FBI secret cameras and footage played for a Brooklyn jury, apparently.
I mean, we have to understand, among the many people unvetted that Biden and Harris led in this country are known terrorists from over 200 countries, over 12 million people.
Murderers, rapists, known terrorists, child molesters, cartel members, gang members, other violent criminals, drug dealers.
This is insane.
And the Iranian regime is very, very capable at the dark arts of assassination and terrorism.
It's one of their preferred foreign policy tools is using terrorist proxies to carry out violent reprisals all around the world.
And so, you know, we can sit here and laugh at the incompetence on display in this.
Oh, this is a real clear present danger to our country and the people in this country.
I once had a fatwa in my head.
I've lived it.
Exactly, exactly.
And we should never take our eyes off the fact that as we speak, there are Iranian plots actively targeting a number of Americans just for doing their jobs as government officials.
President Trump, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former National Security Advisor John Bolton, all of these people live with a death sentence because they had the nerve to defend America from Iran.
And Iran will do what they have to to try and execute these plots.
We have to remain vigilant.
I'm glad to see this case proceeding because it's just the tip of the iceberg.
The Iranians are playing for keeps when it comes to assassinations and terrorism.
Do you think there's any scenario under which the Iranians can survive what is likely to come their way, assuming they don't agree to what President Trump is demanding?
It's a great question, and I think it really depends on how ambitious a strike the president orders if he does order a strike.
You know, one option is to go for a decapitation strike and take out regime leadership figures.
A more modest approach would be directed specifically at the nuclear weapons program and, you know, some of the regime security elements that were responsible for brutally murdering thousands and thousands of protesters not too long ago.
If the administration goes for the middle approach, you know, going after the nuclear program and regime officials, that doesn't necessarily mean that the supreme leader is safe.
It might precipitate an uprising among the people who take matters into their own hands and bring about regime change on their own.
That's not something that the American people can decide for Iran.
That's something for the Iranian people to decide, but they may well rise up depending on how weak the regime looks in the aftermath of a possible U.S. strike.
Now, I'll just give people some information.
I, at the time, never shared it with this audience because I was told not to.
The Mossad contacted FOX Security and the NYPD, and they said that there's a fatwa that was issued by some Imam against me.
And, you know, I'm grateful that they gave me the heads up.
I'm grateful that the NYPD gave me a heads up.
I'm grateful Fox provided security for an extended period of time with me at all times and around my house and protecting my children.
And it was, and what I was told at the time is this is very real.
This is not a game.
Take it seriously.
And the order was to put my head on a spike.
Wouldn't have been that attractive, I don't think.
But I took it seriously.
And, you know, it ends up this particular Imam is dead.
But the idea that there are cells in the U.S. that there were people that would be sympathetic to this type of order given.
And for, you know, me being told to take it seriously is chilling, especially in light of, you know, in the case of President Trump, far more important than little old Sean Hannity.
You know, we've had two, you know, would-be assassins against him.
He came within a millimeter of losing his life.
That's scary stuff, Sean.
Really, really chilling story.
And unfortunately, this is the kind of stuff that the Iranian regime specializes in.
You know, we talked about the plot against John Bolton.
This is why the southern border is so important and why it's essential to secure the southern border.
The plot against Bolton, the Iranian regime reached out to Mexican cartels with instructions to try and come to the U.S. and carry out an assassination.
Iran's Terrorist Network00:02:37
And the same thing happened more than a decade ago.
They tried to blow up a restaurant in Washington, D.C. to kill the Saudi ambassador.
And guess who they were working with there?
Again, Mexican cartels on the southern side of the border.
So that border has to be locked down, not just for immigration reasons and a million other reasons, but because we can't afford to expose a vulnerability to Iranian-backed terrorists.
You know, I've been friends with Prime Minister Netanyahu for 30 years, and I've been over to Israel a number of times, as I know you have been.
And I've been in the terror tunnels, and I've been to border cities that one city in particular was Darut hit with 10,000 rockets in 10 years, if you can believe it.
Kids can't even play outside.
They played in underground bunker playgrounds.
And I've told that story many times.
But, you know, the amount of security that the prime minister lives with every day is beyond any comprehension people can have.
Let's put it that way.
Because if they could, they would want to take him out.
They would.
And frankly, they're less capable of doing that today than they were two or three years ago.
And the reason for that is because after October 7th, Israel fought back and really decimated a number of the Iranian regime's frontline terror proxies.
Hezbollah in Lebanon has been reduced to a shadow of its former self.
Hamas has been systematically defeated.
Nazrallah is dead.
The top 10 leaders of Hamas dead.
They got them all.
They got the nuclear scientists.
They're dead.
They took down their air defense systems and a lot of their missile battery systems.
Exactly right.
Iran is really on its back foot because Israel kept its eye on the ball and applied pressure to all of those different tentacles of the Iranian regime's campaign against it.
They tried to encircle Israel with a ring of fire, and Israel was able to fight back and successfully defend itself against all of those different threats.
That doesn't mean Iran is not a threat.
They are, but they're in a much weaker position today than they were maybe at any time since the revolution.
They're weaker abroad.
Their proxies are in tatters.
And at home, they have no legitimacy whatsoever among the Iranian people.
You have protesters out on the streets lighting their cigarettes with pictures of the supreme leader.
That tells everything you need to know about this regime.
All right.
Our prayers are with our brave men and women in the region if they are called to duty.
Nathan Sales, Ambassador, thank you so much for being with us.