Trump Says Iran War Is ENDING, US Blockade of Strait A SUCCESS
Trump declares the Iran war ending as a Pakistani mediator arrives in Tehran, while CENTCOM celebrates its Strait of Hormuz blockade despite Iranian tanker successes. Press Secretary Caroline Levitt tightens media access, fueling speculation about Vance and Rubio's 2028 ambitions amid $95 oil prices. Stephen Miller frames the blockade as a century-long "checkmate" to shift U.S. hegemony from pro-Israel to anti-China, potentially removing Netanyahu to neutralize Iran's role in China's Belt and Road Initiative while America fills Qatar's LNG void. [Automatically generated summary]
We are back on another beautiful, beautiful Wednesday.
Now it's Wednesday afternoon as the show.
It's the noon live.
So I take you into the afternoon on our Rumble daily lineup.
I'm very pleased to be back with everyone today.
We got some big stories.
Obviously, the big story everyone's talking about.
I think the president himself is bored.
If there's reporting, there's anything to go off of.
I think the president himself is bored of the Iran war.
But look, there's a lot of developments.
Obviously, the blockade is in full swing now.
CENTCOM has already come out and said it's a success.
We saw now a first ship passing through.
We see some ships passing through.
Now, the Iranians are claiming that an Iranian tanker made it through the blockade with no problems.
That was reporting from FARS, their state media agency.
There's a lot going on.
We're going to get into all of that.
Trump was saying that the war is close to over.
He was on Maria Bartomo this morning and he was sort of echoing that.
Look, the war's close to being over.
We're wrapping it up.
There was a report last night that he had said that the war is over.
And then this morning he says the war is close to over.
So obviously things are developing.
The ceasefire, no indications the American delegation is looking to extend it.
Now, obviously, I probably think that's more of a negotiation tactic, as is this blockade.
This is about putting maximum pressure on the Iranians before another round of talks hold.
The chief mediator from Pakistan has arrived in Tehran, probably.
Which is a good sign.
That indicates that, look, both sides are communicating, both sides are talking.
Peace is on the precipice, in my opinion.
This is the analysis of a lot of people in the space that this war is coming to a close.
That is certainly within the Trump administration's prerogative to get this wrapped up, to take an off ramp and start cleaning this up before the midterms arrive.
So, a lot of developments on that front that we'll get into.
We have a few other stories that we'll try to get to if we have time, and we will be joined here shortly.
By a lot of the great a lot of the Yahoo, and he is live from the White House.
He's awaiting a press briefing from Caroline Levitt, so we'll grab him.
But before we do, I have to play a quick word from our sponsor for today's show, and I'll be back with a lot of the Yahoo.
I'm currently at the White House here in the briefing room, awaiting for Press Secretary Caroline Levitt and Scott Besson to hold the press briefing here.
Presumably, they will be talking about taxes.
Today is Tax Day.
I suspect they'll be trying to gloat about the president's one big, beautiful bill, the part that added the no tax on tips that he's been really trying to flaunt right now.
And I'll tell you more about that as soon as she takes the stage here.
It's actually been a fascinating learning experience of how that really goes down here.
So, all the seats here right now, these reporters aren't the reporters who these seats are assigned for.
All the seats here are assigned during the briefings.
You need to be part of usually the legacy media gets the most front word seats, and the further back you go, it's really the less relevant you are, the further back you are.
And of course, the administration has control over this.
There was one change up, shake up, in how they arranged the seats this year.
They put in a couple of different Other right wing news outlets, the Daily Wire was one of them.
They're lucky to get a seat here, but if you're not lucky enough to have a seat here, you usually have to stake out along the side.
So, if you look over here, the side may over here, people stake out usually an hour before the briefing on both sides.
And they do this because, of course, you want to have a clear eyed view of Caroline Levin when she comes out of the door and is standing at the podium.
And when you have a clear eyed view, the idea is that she's more likely to call on you.
So, we're staking out right now.
If you don't have the honor of having a seat, Then you're kind of forced to come here an hour or a half hour early to not be in the way, way back.
Then again, Caroline can call on whoever she sees.
I think I could give a lot of people some more information on the new media aspect of the new media initiatives that the Press Secretary Caroline Levitt has been holding here.
So, for previous administrations, the room has really been controlled by the White House Correspondents Association.
And the people who are in the pool, the pool is the group of reporters who is actually allowed to go around the president when he is holding open press events, the people who get to travel with the president.
It used to be made up by people in the White House Correspondents Association, and they were the ones deciding who would be in it.
Now, as I understand, Caroline Levitt has a lot more control over that, and she's deciding who's in the pool.
She's also added a new media seat in the pool.
So there's constantly new media people, people from outlets like Lindell TV that you wouldn't ordinarily see.
Daily Caller is in all the time.
Daily Signal is in there very often.
Daily Wire is in there very often.
And she also has, during the press briefing, she's been cycling through different outlets and giving them the first and second questions here.
Really been a shakeup in how the media here.
And new media in particular has been given a certain level of access.
Now, I hope I'm not being too indiscreet with my question here, but is there tension, obviously, between these sort of new media figures coming into the press briefing and being given precedence in many situations?
Is there tension between, I mean, I guess you would kind of be part of that conglomerate between this sort of new stock and the old media?
Is that a tension that exists, or do they kind of understand what's going on here?
Because I mean, you know, I've heard, you know, not just from you, but from other people that are in this press pool that the jockeying can get quite intense.
You know, it's like kind of a low stakes kind of physical sort of jostling that occurs to sort of, you know, get the best sight lines possible.
A different approach over at the Department of War, the Pentagon, where they just completely locked out the legacy media.
And they cited, I mean, obviously, we covered this quite extensively when it happened, seeing as we were sort of part of the story, where they basically just locked out legacy media.
They were saying, there's too many leaks.
This is getting out of hand.
It's threatening national security.
We're just going to clean house and bring in new media, where it seems like Carolyn Levitt, I mean, obviously, the reporters there aren't walking the halls of the White House to collect scoops, but clearly she still views it as in her interest to be able to communicate things to legacy media.
And I will say this I don't think the press secretary is doing anything unique here.
I think in past administrations, actually, there has been a lot of hobnobbing with certain outlets.
You know, I like some outlets like to pretend they're more impartial than they are, but I think previous administrations have certainly had their fangirls in the briefing room.
I mean, when President Biden had his briefings, sometimes he would be given questions ahead of time.
There's actually a famous photograph, right?
A reporter's name and the question she was going to be asked on a place card that President Biden had during a briefing.
We don't see anything like that with the president.
They don't even try to vet our questions.
I don't know if they do with other reporters, but everything I'm throwing out there is completely from left field.
And I mean, you know, it ranges to how adversarial some of the reporters would like to be with the administration.
As far as I see it, I don't think they're people we should be handling with kid gloves.
Again, they're some of the most powerful public officials on the planet.
I think anything I could throw at the president or Caroline Levitt, they could definitely handle.
And, you know, and it's been a great opportunity to be able to have the chance to do that.
I think that kind of, you know, not to get sidetracked here, but I think that kind of hits at the kind of the dispensation of conservative media broadly.
And, you know, this has been the discussion recently with kind of this divide in MAGA or whatever is that I do think within conservative media, there's kind of a baked in distrust of institutions broadly, certainly of government institutions.
So, again, when Biden brings in legacy media who are providing favorable coverage or, you know, certain outlets that would provide favorable coverage, he can rely on them to.
Again, kind of pad the administration.
Where I mean, I remember when I was at the Pentagon and you were sitting here with all these new, you know, journalists that were, you know, given their credentials, everyone was kind of still debating sort of probing questions that they could ask.
Like they were not coming in to run cover for, you know, the Pentagon or for the Trump administration.
Yeah, and I mean, for all the accusations of the so called new media people, you know, allegedly running coverage for the Pentagon or the White House here, I think it's really ironic given how the White House correspondents, journalists in the past, I believe, have covered for President Joe Biden.
Obviously, we've seen the deterioration of him over the years, and we've seen the amount of access that some reporters have had.
But I feel like we really dropped the ball and dropped the story about the major decline of President Biden and how many reporters, many Democrats in Congress and Senate and all across the country.
Really had nothing to say about this, right?
None of the reporters here had any inkling about it.
None of the writers were willing to write anything about the president's decline, Joe Biden's decline in the past.
So I think that's more of an indictment of them rather than anything the new media has done or said.
Yeah, because you'll see, I mean, from outlets that would be considered like Trump administration allies by and large, you will still see quite critical reporting from time to time.
Again, I'm not pretending like there's, you know, every single new media seats completely impartial.
I'm just, yeah, kind of, you know, I guess sort of reiterating what you're saying there is like, yeah, I mean, there is a degree of.
Impartiality that still remains amongst the media.
I'm not trying to place the media, I'm just saying it's the reality on the ground.
Every outlet, even if you are right wing, does have their particular angle.
Some outlets are border hawks and believe the administration isn't going far enough, and we'll try to hammer them on that.
There are many outlets that care a lot about being pro life, and I know they don't think the president is sufficiently pro life, and we'll hit him on questions like that.
So, you know, there's still different aspects where I don't think people here are carrying water for the administration, as is often alleged by the new media people.
Well, with that, I mean, you commented that, you know, this was probably going to be primarily economics related.
I imagine Carolyn Levitt's going to be taking.
A victory lap on some of these economic indicators.
You know, I mean, like, you know, everyone was talking about earlier in the year, the jobs report wasn't so favorable, but there are some other, again, economic indicators that, you know, demonstrate that, okay, the Trump administration is making progress, is continuing to kind of dig out of the hole that the Biden administration was in.
Granted, they inherited a lot of those issues from COVID, but like, you know, that's what I would expect.
I assume you're expecting that as well from Carolyn Lovett today.
So I think they were trying to ease the concerns of some Americans about rising costs.
Obviously, rising gas prices has been a huge concern for many Americans.
And how this war is playing out, that's been a huge concern.
But I think they're going to try to tout parts of the one big, beautiful bill that was passed earlier during the administration.
Things like no tax on tip was included on that.
And then I believe no tax on overtime, too.
Those were some of the president's more popular policy aspects that he got passed.
Although we'll see whether or not this ends up being a wash.
I mean, people may save some money on their taxes, but if they're paying more for food and gas prices, we'll see how far their dollars truly go.
But I think they're going to try to focus on that angle, especially.
As we see the midterms coming up.
But, you know, we'll see how hopeful they even are for the midterms.
You have to be thinking in the president's mind how realistic he's viewing the midterms.
Obviously, on the year opposite of what the party in power is, they usually lose seats during the midterm, of course.
I think there's like a one seat Republican majority right now, depending on how you count Representative Massey.
Of course, the president was also fairly unsuccessful in his attempts to redistrict, do redistricting in many Republican states across the country to try to get him across the finish line.
So, nonetheless, I think there will still be touting this message about how he's trying to bring prices down, reduce taxes.
And to really bring that point home, the other day he actually had a DoorDasher, an old grandma, I'm sure you saw the video of it, come here and talk about a little bit more about how the no tax on tips helps people, low income people like her, of course, save on taxes.
Yeah, it's fascinating because this all kind of comes, you know, there's really an elephant in the room, obviously, with Iran.
You know, everyone's feeling the pinch on gas prices.
I mean, Okay, yeah, I mean, crude has dropped a bit from the highs at 110, but it's, I mean, check today, it's like 95 bucks still.
It's very high from the pre war.
It was hovering around 65 bucks.
So, I mean, everyone's feeling the pinch.
You know, we did see some reporting that, look, American oil exports have ramped up heavily.
We're filling the gap on LNG, which, you know, is obvious because they bombed Qatar's LNG production.
So, I mean, it's going to make sense that the Americans are going to fill the gap there.
But, you know, everyone's feeling the pinch on gas prices primarily.
And, you know, whether we like it or not, you know, the American people.
Voters, I mean, they're going to evaluate the success of the ruling party based off of their personal fortune, right?
Are they better off or worse off than they were before the current administration?
And a lot of people, you know, the Trump administration is obviously feeling the pinch here, is a lot of people are saying, I'm getting rinsed at the pump.
I'm not interested in what's the impetus to keep this party in power.
A lot of people, I'm not saying the voters are simple.
I'm just saying a lot of the voters are making calculations based off of their personal performance, I think, for lack of a better word.
A lot of different things from a lot of different people who used to be supporters of the president.
I think there are a lot of vocal defectors right now of the MAGA movement.
Obviously, people like Tucker Carlson, the president put out a tweet about people like Tucker Carlson, Alex Jones, Candace Owens.
I don't remember if Marjorie Taylor Greene was also involved in that tweet.
We also had Joe Kent, who recently resigned here and was posturing against the president.
So you have to wonder how much that is grassroots things or coming from the top down.
The president likes to say, That he still has, you know, hard control over the MAGA movement.
But as we're seeing these fractures, you have to wonder how much he's thinking the midterms might be, you know, an opportunity for the Democrats to really flip the House.
And then following that, the endless investigations that will come from that into his administration, he might be trying to do as much as he can now before the midterms because, you know, he might be a lame duck once Democrats take the House.
I was listening to Michael Tracy, and he was kind of providing some commentary on maybe where the president's head is at coming into the midterms.
And he postulated, I don't know if this is still his position.
This is something that I had heard him kind of throw out.
That's why I'm citing him as an example, because I've heard many other people in the space sort of speculate this as well is that perhaps the internal polling indicates that it is going to be a wash in the midterms.
And President Trump maybe is just really kind of seated there.
He's like, okay, well, maybe we're just not going to get a victory in the midterms.
So I need to conduct as many of these operations as possible before I kind of get, you know, stonewalled here.
Yeah, you have to wonder, too, if the president was just saying, hey, if I think I'm going to lose in the midterms nonetheless, then maybe I do launch the Iran war.
You know, maybe if he thought he had an opportunity, he wouldn't have launched the war, of course.
And I mean, we do have to see how all of that will play out.
I have been seeing some reporting that some European countries, I think the UK and France, were trying to get a coalition together now to try to help reopen the straits.
Of course, Iran has their current blockade.
The president might be moving now from.
Not a war with a using our military, but an economic war.
I think we might have moved past the phase of using our military in Iran and now moved to just strangleholding their economy.
The Iranian economy was struggling even before this war started.
You have to imagine now it's even tougher for the Iranian people.
Maybe he's again trying to stoke some revolution in the country.
We haven't seen these widespread protests that, you know, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has said there may be stoked.
I think the president believed there would also be more of these protests.
He might be trying to squeeze Iran more now with this blockade to try to, you know, encourage that to happen now.
I mean, I think that's my sort of analysis as well, as this is obviously a negotiation tactic.
Again, he's trying to gain leverage on the Iranians because, you know, whether we like to admit it or not, the Iranians do have some leverage here.
They're fully aware of the domestic situation for President Trump.
They're fully aware that, you know, parts of the base are in revolt, right?
And by and large, you know, although, you know, the general ballot has tightened up, which no one's talking about, you know, it's only like a two point spread right now.
That being said, You know, you can make the argument that voter morale is going to be down quite heavily going to the midterms if this were to continue.
The Iranians know that, and that's kind of like gives them a bit of leverage.
Now, completely reverses everything if this blockade continues to be successful.
I mean, there was reporting in the Financial Times this morning that Iranian oil production could just cease to exist.
Like, right, it could come to a complete halt if this blockade continues on the trajectory it's on right now.
I mean, that's stunning if that's the case, because that puts not just boxes in Iran completely and basically.
Forces them to accept American terms on anything, or at least forces the status quo to continue.
It also puts a lot of pressure on the Chinese, who, I mean, 15 to 20% of their oil supplies come in from Iran.
To follow up on that Chinese point, too, there were some Chinese tankers that I believe I heard, I saw reporting that on Monday one tanker made it through.
Yesterday on IRL, Tim was talking about how one tanker made a U turn.
You have to wonder about how the president is thinking about potential escalation with the Chinese ahead of his potential meeting with Xi Jinping that's scheduled next month in China.
So, again, if one of these Chinese ships decided to try to transit the strait during this blockade, would the president decide to actually enforce the blockade and then board this Chinese vessel and then potentially blow up his meeting with Xi in a month?
I think he's trying to calm tensions, and we'll see how enforceable this is against certain vessels and how willing the Chinese are willing to play chicken against the president.
But one final thing, Tate, before I think I go here, you were talking about earlier how the briefing room fills out as we near.
The press briefing up.
You could see now people are kind of lining up on both sides.
Here we have already a big group of people developing.
Obviously, you know, things got a little hot and heavy in the press briefing.
There's no question about that.
Yeah, you know, so this is kind of interesting.
So, this is what I think we'll get into.
I'll just jump to the story right away.
This is from Reuters.
Trump says Iran war close to over.
Army Chief of Mediator Pakistan arrives in Tehran.
Sorry, that was a bit of a whirlwind headline there.
It was difficult to sort of extrapolate all the information that was being communicated there.
Yeah, so.
Clearly, the Trump administration's posture here is that, look, the war is coming to a close.
Let me see if I have it in the stack here.
This actually, I don't even know if Allah had caught this.
He may have.
We just didn't really get to it.
I think it was the direction that we were heading.
Trump put this out in Truth Social today.
So, regarding, you know, this is impacting China heavily, actually.
This is the statement that he made on Truth Social China is very happy that I am permanently opening the Strait of Hormuz.
I'm doing it for them also and the world.
The situation will never happen again.
They have agreed not to send weapons to Iran.
President Xi will give me a big fat hug when I get there in a few weeks.
We are working together smartly and very well.
Doesn't that beat fighting?
But remember, we are very good at fighting if we have to, far better than anyone else.
This is from the president, obviously, and it is a shot across the bow here.
Basically, he's, I think, trying to signal to the Chinese, like, don't bother, right?
I mean, we saw reporting yesterday that Iran has conceded that the strait may be completely locked down.
Now, it's kind of this.
Double blockade, which is really interesting.
You know, let me, this is what I like to do.
I like to pull up Google Maps and just kind of show you what I'm talking about here.
But there's kind of a double blockade occurring.
But this, the second blockade, the American imposed blockade, really just kind of takes the teeth out of any potential Iranian blockade.
I'll take, I'll show you here kind of what we're looking at.
Again, this is some of the stuff that we've seen.
This is obviously the Strait of Hormuz right here at the choke point.
This is where a lot of their mines are, and we saw reporting that the Iranians don't even know where the mines are.
Over the weekend, the US sent a fleet through the strait, again, in a mine removal operation, because, again, the Iranians are claiming they don't even know where the mines went.
But the blockade was right about here from the Iranians.
Now, from what I've seen, it appears that the American blockade is through this choke point right here.
So, just as you're approaching the Strait of Hormuz, there's a lot of action.
But I think we talked about it with Ilad.
I think the primary objective here for the Americans is, again, we're trying to build up as much leverage as possible on Iran going into potentially more talks, which is all encouraging stuff.
I mean, the fact that, again, we're seeing kind of unprecedented.
Levels of communication between the Iranians and the Americans.
We haven't seen that for 50 years.
I mean, granted, we probably saw a bit of that during the nuclear talks in the Obama administration, but as far as open dialogue, sort of both sides, I think, are seeking off ramps here.
Very encouraging stuff.
I do think a potential end to the conflict is on the precipice.
I'll read here from Reuters what they had to say.
US President Donald Trump said the war with Iran was close to over, telling the world to brace for an amazing two days as the army chief of mediator Pakistan arrived in Tehran to.
In a bid to prevent a renewed conflict.
And obviously, there is kind of a race against the clock here with the ceasefire winding down now.
We're sort of approaching an end to the ceasefire.
And the Americans have signaled that they're not seeking to renew the ceasefire, which again is just another negotiation strategy, obviously.
I think if push came to shove, we could probably ink another week.
But clearly, this is all meant to, again, apply maximum pressure on Iran here and gain as much leverage as possible.
Pakistan's military confirmed Field Marshal Asim Munir had arrived in Tehran.
A senior Iranian source told Reuters that Munir, who had mediated the last round of talks, was heading to Iran to narrow gaps between the two sides.
I think you're going to be watching an amazing two days ahead, Trump told ABC News reporter Jonathan Carl, according to a post by the reporter on X, adding he did not think it would be necessary to extend a two week ceasefire that expires next week.
That's where the reporting was coming from.
Quote, I think it's close to over.
I mean, I view it as very close to over, Trump said in an interview on Fox Business Network conducted Tuesday and broadcasted Wednesday.
This was like really, this interview was at like six in the morning.
The interview was like at six in the morning.
I don't think anyone saw it except maybe the most politically active among us.
Quote, we'll see what happens.
I think they want to make a deal very badly.
Officials from Pakistan, Iran, and Gulf states also said both sides could return to Islamabad in the coming days.
The talks last weekend broke down without an agreement to end the war.
Which Trump launched alongside Israel on February 28th, triggering Iranian attacks on Iran's Gulf neighbors and reigniting a conflict between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Trump's optimism lifted global stocks towards record highs.
Oil prices have fallen on Tuesday, and an early Wednesday trade was slightly up at around $95 a barrel after the U.S. said its blockade of Iranian ports had halted seaborne trade in and out of Iran.
I'll just keep reading here because this is quite useful information.
The U.S. military said it was turning back more vessels, including the U.S.-sanctioned Chinese-owned tanker Rich. Stari, which was seen heading back through the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday.
A U.S. destroyer stopped two oil tankers attempting to leave the Iranian port of Chabahar on the Gulf of Oman on Tuesday, a U.S. official said.
An Iranian super tanker subject to U.S. sanctions crossed the strait towards Iran's Imam Khamenei port.
Despite the blockade, Iran's Fars news agency said on Wednesday, Fars did not identify the tanker or give further details of its voyage.
So, or voyage rather, I don't know if I said voyage.
Yeah, so I mean, that was the reporting that we saw from Fars is that, okay, apparently a tanker did make it through the blockade.
Now, again, there's some speculation that the way that this straddle is set up right now is that this bottom band here is fully U.S. controlled.
This is where the U.S. is sort of checking.
You have to check in with the U.S. as you enter the Strait of Hormuz.
But there's some indications that perhaps the Iranians still have strong control over this northern bend.
And that could be perhaps where this tanker sort of slipped through, so to speak.
Where did I stop off here?
Oh, yeah.
While Iran and the United States appear so far to have avoided a major confrontation at sea since the United States began its blockade on Monday, Tehran said it would retaliate against military action.
Iran's Joint Military Command warned it would halt trade flows in the Gulf, Sea of Oman, and the Red Sea, which connects to the Suez Canal, if the U.S. blockade continued.
So we'll keep moving along here.
This is what Trump had to say.
This is the quote that they were quoting.
I'll play this here because you want to hear it from the president himself.
Iran has demonstrated that they still have the ability to effectively disrupt trade through the Strait of Hormuz, even with their navy, quote, at the bottom of the sea, according to Trump, even with their missile capacity heavily, you know, heavily, heavily damaged or sort of drained, I guess, for lack of a better word.
The Iranians still have the propensity to, again, impact shipping trade, et cetera, through the Strait.
So, you know, while it is true that, you know, it's going to take the Iranians.
You know, a good amount of time to rebuild their military capacity to where it was, even with all those hits to their military capacity, they still have the ability to inflict pain on the global economy.
The global economy will still be feeling the pinch.
I mean, we even saw reporting that they would potentially activate the Houthis to, again, apply pressure on the Red Sea.
You know, we saw that they were striking, you know, vessels that were, you know, passing through the Red Sea.
And then obviously Israel inked a deal with Hamas to, you know, establish a ceasefire.
And then the Houthis stopped firing.
Missiles.
Keep going here.
This is quite interesting.
This was Secretary Wright.
He was commenting on the U.S. blockade of Iran, and he's basically giving away the game here, not like it was discreet.
He says, We're putting military pressure on Iran to degrade their capacities to menace the region, and now we're going to put the economic squeeze on them and their oil revenues from coming out of the country.
From the energy secretary, which indicates maybe a change in sort of the American approach here to gaining leverage.
Obviously, I think we've hit as many military targets as possible.
Again, they don't really have a Navy anymore.
It's difficult to see, like, where you know, what any further damage that we could inflict on their military.
And I think this is where a bit of a miscalculation came in.
You know, I got some flack on the show yesterday for saying that, you know, again, if the war winds down with the current status quo, it does leave the United States in a worse spot.
The reason I say that is because, again, the Iranians have demonstrated that they're able to, again, you know, disrupt shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, even without, you know, their navy or with a decreased missile capacity.
And in addition to that, the United States is having to pivot here.
They're having to pivot to full economic pressure, again, to build leverage on the Iranians.
If the Strait of Hormuz reopens, I mean, per President Trump here, China is going to be very happy.
That allows oil flow to sort of.
If the Strait of Hormuz is completely opened up, right, this would allow oil to flow back out of Iran.
So the United States is in this position where they just have to enforce this blockade as long as possible until a deal is inked with the Iranians.
One, I mean, the whole Hungary thing, which I haven't talked about in the show because it's just a really convoluted topic, quite frankly.
And I don't even know how interested the audience really is in the affairs of Hungary.
But JD Vance was heading over to Pakistan for the negotiations, and he made a stop off in Hungary to stump for Viktor Orban.
Now, everyone's kind of reading into this a little more than they need to.
I think, I mean, Trump came out himself and said, you know, we kind of knew Orbán was going to lose.
Like, you know, we're not idiots.
And I think this is the miscalculation a lot of people make in the commentary they just think that these guys are a lot dumber than they actually are.
They knew Orbán was going to lose.
I mean, it was kind of obvious.
All the polling was disastrous for Victor Orbán.
JD Vance stops off there as kind of an act of goodwill, right?
You know, it's to sort of reward Victor Orbán for his loyalty to the United States.
In addition to that, supporting the war effort indirectly.
I mean, obviously, they're a strong Israel ally, and Israel's sort of our junior partner in this conflict, senior partner in some instances.
So, I wouldn't read too much into it.
I don't think JD Vance was trying to save Viktor Orban necessarily.
I think, again, it was just kind of an act of goodwill.
He was heading that direction anyway.
You might as well stop off and give a quick speech.
But regardless, it is an unfortunate look in the press for him to stump for Viktor Orban, just trying to get wiped out the next day.
Obviously, the negotiations didn't go to plan, right?
And again, this is kind of where the debate has been raging on.
Did the Trump administration, and this goes probably deeper than we need to go here, but did the Trump administration know that there was going to be no wiggle room in the negotiations?
Because you've got to think the terms that the Americans feel they're immovable on, which is neutering Iran's uranium enrichment capacity and multiple other concessions.
Completely untenable because the Iranians' line in the sand is no, we want to be able to enrich uranium.
That's a non negotiable for them.
I think accurately, because they kind of look around the region and they see what happens to countries that don't have a nuclear program.
They don't really have much leverage and they just get steamrolled.
I mean, that's why they're pursuing a nuclear weapon.
That's the primary purpose, is again, to kind of give themselves deterrence, to build up deterrence, because again, they're kind of the last regional adversary of Israel primarily.
That being said, there's kind of this speculation.
This was posited by Max Blumenthal, who is an ally of Tucker Carlson and kind of sort of this new wing of anti Iran war commentary.
And Max Blumenthal came out, I read it on the show, as he said, Look, JD Vance is the fall guy.
Rubio was sitting ringside at the UFC while Vance was in Pakistan, sort of in a losing negotiations.
I mean, obviously, we didn't walk away with a deal.
So, some have speculated.
Now, again, I can't say if this is true or not.
Some have speculated that potentially, at worst, it's a sandbagging of JD Vance.
I don't know if that's the case, but I don't think the Trump administration put too much stock in negotiations.
I think they kind of understood that this is going to be a longer process than just flying over to Pakistan and getting everything signed and then, boom, end of the war.
Again, I don't want to step on any toes here, but it does seem like there is something going on in the White House right now.
It does seem like, okay, Rubio and Vance have said they're aligned.
They've said that they're both aligned on all of the Trump administration's goals.
And clearly they get along.
I mean, I think either Rubio or Vance said the other was like their best friend or their closest working partner in the White House.
But both these guys are politicians, right?
Both of these guys have political or presidential ambitions, obviously.
I mean, Rubio ran for president and then JD Vance is the vice president.
It would be natural to assume that he would have presidential ambitions.
It's not hard to believe that they're both kind of jockeying right now for building up their resume in the run up to 2028.
And if you look at Tucker Carlson, if you look at JD Vance, clearly the Iran war could be kind of that thing he could tout going into the 2028 primary, saying, Look, I'm the guy that negotiated the end of the war.
Look at me.
I am the guy that would bring about peace.
I'm the peacemaker.
I was able to draw this conflict to a close.
Or I think Marco Rubio is going to.
Try to build up his resume in a slightly different way.
He's going to run on Venezuela.
Obviously, the Venezuela operation was a massive success.
The ones who warned of calamity in Venezuela and ended up being one of the greatest single foreign policy, military, geopolitical maneuvers in world history.
What you're watching now in Iran with the implementation of this blockade is the total resetting of the American power dynamic for the next a hundred years.
President Trump is saying, we, the United States, have the world's not just most powerful military, but most powerful navy.
And whoever controls the seas is able to control the outcomes in any foreign policy showdown.
And so President Trump has put Iran in a box.
He's played the checkmate move.
And so now, no matter what path Iran chooses, America wins.
If Iran chooses the path of a deal, then that's great for the world, that's great for everybody.
If Iran chooses the path of economic strangulation by blockade, Then the world will pass Iran by.
New energy routes will be established.
New supply chains will be established.
Other nations throughout the region, throughout the world, and especially America will power the world, and Iran will become a footnote.
So that's the choice Iran has, and President Trump has put America into a win win posture.
Now, it's absolutely true here that, look, Iran is now on the back foot in negotiations as far as, like, okay, the Americans have now gained quite a bit of leverage.
It depends on the success of this blockade.
Now, so far, it looks like it's succeeding.
There's no question about that.
But again, if the FARS reporting is anything to be believed, now again, you have to kind of take it with a grain of salt because it is Iranian state media.
If they are able to navigate through the Strait of Hormuz, that's still not a massive victory for Iran because it still is a massive strangulation on their ability to export oil.
Now, looking at kind of the grand.
Kind of plan here, the grand scheme, so to speak, is the Iran war has been decades in the making, right?
Iran has been on the chopping block for Middle Eastern hegemony for a very long time.
The Americans want to establish Middle Eastern hegemony.
Now, the Trump administration is made up of a lot of China hawks.
I mean, there's a lot of China hawks that are littered throughout the administration.
And in addition to that, within the Intel community, China has been the main.
Sort of, it's all leading up to a posture against China within the intelligence community.
We've seen this, and this continued through Biden, even like you know, Sullivan was coming out and saying these sorts of things.
So, clearly, this has been a long term goal to reposture, reorient, recalibrate our position in the Middle East from sort of a Netanyahu centric posture to an anti China posture because China played the first card.
You know, China they established their Belt and Road Initiative, they're seeking overland, you know, overland economic.
Trade routes with Iran over land, right?
They don't want to be reliant on the Strait of Malacca.
The Strait of Malacca is completely controlled by the United States Navy.
They don't want to be at the behest of the American Navy.
They want to establish their own control over trade.
They don't want to be dependent on the American Navy and having to play ball with the Americans.
That's why Iran had to go.
And the view of a China hawk is, again, Iran is this bulwark for China in the Middle East.
It's their counterweight in the Middle East.
And you're kind of seeing this change.
Again, America is trying to posture.
So, this was some speculation.
This is kind of interesting.
I'm going to try and flush this out.
I'm not saying this is a matter of fact.
I'm just saying this is sort of speculation.
Is this sort of a lot of people are speculating?
I've said speculating like five times just now.
Is that Tucker Carlson, Joe Kent?
This is all calibrated.
I'm not saying they're controlled opposition, but these guys are China hawks.
Tucker Carlson, in multiple interviews, has said that verbatim, this war is a proxy war with China, right?
This is about asserting total hegemony over the Middle East.
The United States wants to build a massive ban from Europe through the Middle East down through the Southeast Pacific to, again, box in China.
That is the long term goal, specifically of our intel apparatus, but by and large, our military apparatus.
What Tucker and Joe Kent are doing is intentional.
It is intentional because everything that they've said doesn't actually undermine American hegemony, right?
It doesn't actually threaten the actual system of the United States, the sort of global American empire, right?
None of this is actually an attempt to undermine that structure.
All they're really trying to do, it's kind of managed dissent, I think is the word that some people would use here, is they're trying to focus on Netanyahu specifically.
This is why, if you look at Tucker Carlson's commentary, even Joe Kent, And a few others in that sort of apparatus is they really have an axe to grind with Netanyahu because, as they see it, our foreign policy, as it's been constructed over the last 20 years, is a Netanyahu centric policy.
It's about protecting Israel, it's about sort of ensuring Israel's regional dominance, cleaning up their messes, so to speak.
There's some truth to that.
And so that's kind of the speculation Tucker and Joe Kent are trying to create an avenue for the public opinion on Israel, but specifically Netanyahu, to shift.
So that way, they can be removed from our ultimate goal of, again, establishing regional hegemony as a power, create a power block in the Middle East that has an anti China posture.
Because you have to think about it.
Netanyahu's out of the way.
Netanyahu's going to be gone.
I mean, he's going to be kind of in a similar situation that we've seen with a lot of these strongmen prior.
Is that, look, there's corruption charges coming his way.
His party would get wiped out.
So it's in his interest to prolong this war, right?
Because the longer this war goes on, the longer he stays in power.
As soon as this kind of wraps up and sort of the political situation in Israel demobilizes, like they kind of thaw out, right?
This sort of war mood in Israel.
I think you could see the sort of centrists in Israel take power again.
You could see a situation in which a two state solution isn't.
Because you got to look at the, like in the Biden years, during the Biden years, is all things were leading up until October 7th.
All things were leading up to a full power block being established in the Middle East, right?
Like the Saudis were negotiating with the Israelis.
We were inking a deal with the Saudis to effectively normalize relations with Israel, where Israel would be incorporated into kind of this Middle Eastern sphere.
And, you know, we would sort of establish again a power block in the Middle East.
That's where all things were heading.
October 7th changed everything.
If you look at polling within Saudi Arabia, it went from a tentative majority of Saudis or a plurality of Saudis were in favor of normalizing relations with Israel.
That completely changed.
And now 99% of Saudi Arabia does not want to see that happen.
They are sympathetic to the Palestinians, which makes sense.
They're obviously much more similar.
All that being said, it threw a wrench, October 7th threw a wrench in.
Sort of our intel agencies or our intel community's auspices to again establish that anti China posture in the Middle East.
You know, some people have you know said that potentially the Israelis allowed October 7th to happen.
Now, that's that's a big claim to make, and I'm not I'm certainly not claiming that's the case, I'm just you know saying that's something that people have postured is that the Israelis kind of understood that they would get sidelined and it would, um, these Israeli totalists, right?
These people that maximalists would be the word to use, these people that want to expand Israel's, um, uh, uh, Expand Israel's influence in the region, establish themselves as the regional superpower, that would actually be threatened by a full power block.
They would just kind of become another player in the region with the Saudis, with the rest of the Gulf states.
So that's, again, some people have speculated that's why potentially they sort of allowed it to happen.
Again, that's a very big claim to make.
I'm certainly not making that claim, but it would kind of fall in line with this theory of this recalibration that's occurring in the Middle East.
So, I mean, the reason I made, I think I established with Tucker and Joe Kent kind of what's Going on there is kind of a managed dissent.
Now, I don't think, you know, if you're sort of going down this route, this sort of speculation here, I don't think that implies that they're like sitting down in a room with the CIA and they're like, okay, Tucker, you say this, and then Joe Kent, you resign and say this.
That's not what's going on.
But if you look throughout, even what Tucker's saying now and what Joe Kent has been saying throughout his career, is they clearly view China as like, you know, a problem and a serious threat to, again, like global American hegemony.
And they need to be curtailed.
And Netanyahu disrupts the orientation in the Middle East to, again, just build out a power block that can be repelling Chinese influence in the region.
It's a pretty compelling theory.
And I do think that could potentially be why the United States has decided to act in Iran, as they felt like, okay, well, now is the time to, again, try to blow up this incursion of Chinese influence in the Middle East.
Because, look, as long as this war continues, we got to take out their proxies, right?
We got to take out Iran's proxies in the region.
We got to effectively take out this last impediment to American hegemony in the region.
And then I don't know, who knows what happens with Israel after that?
That's later to unfold, whether they normalize and they establish a two state solution and it kind of defangs Israel or if they continue to impose their will.
Once Netanyahu is out of the way, the centrists take power back.
I think they do come to the negotiating table.
I think that's a very realistic possibility.
So, again, it takes a lot of unpacking.
I guess I could probably do it on the show at some point, is kind of pull up all the different indications that this is what's going on.
In the NSS, it says it right there that it's the posture of the United States to curtail Chinese influence.
We saw it in Venezuela.
And then we bombed Chinese ports and Panama.
Clearly, the United States is going on the offensive and curtailing Chinese influence globally.
We've effectively rooted them out of the Western Hemisphere.
And once Cuba goes down, it's really over for them.
And now we're seeing this play in the Middle East.
There's a lot of other factors as to why we took action in Iran.
I do still maintain the position.
I said on IRL and I caught some flag for it, but I do still maintain the position that we did actually think that regime change was possible.
I do think it's a secondary.
It was a secondary goal of the United States to sort of conduct regime change or for regime change to sort of naturally occur.
I think when we saw the protests happening, again, that was Israeli intelligence, we were under the impression that if we just kind of bombed them and this submission, we would be greeted as liberators.
And then, you know, like a pro Western regime would emerge in Iran.
That hasn't happened.
Actually, the opposite's happened no matter how many of their leaders we've killed in Iran, they get replaced by people with the exact same ideology.
So it's like clearly the Iranian regime was a bit more durable than I think we anticipated.
But for the Israelis, regime change was the prerogative.
For the Israelis, you know, a total regime change in Iran was the prerogative.
I think that was the main reason they acted.
And I think that's clearly the case.
So I'm going to keep going along here.
What else did I have?
This is reporting in the Wall Street Journal.
Again, that's kind of tough to parse through.
This was two days ago.
Saudi Arabia is pressing the U.S. to drop its naval blockade.
They're obviously worried that Iran's going to chimp out because of this blockade.
So this is reporting in the Wall Street Journal.
I didn't see it anywhere else.
The Gulf states are actually a bit worried that this isn't over.
Again, the United States, the mood is that a deal, you know, a deal is, we're on the verge of a deal, right?
This could be coming to a close.
The Gulf states, if this reporting is anything to go off of, they're actually convinced that potentially Iran is just not going to fold on any of their fine lines, right?
That they will re escalate tensions in the region.
And there could be something to that.
I'll read a little bit here.
Saudi Arabia is pressing the U.S. to drop its blockade of the Strait of Formis.
This is two day old reporting.
Maybe things have changed now.
It looks like the blockade.
Is successful and returned to the negotiating table, fearing President Trump's move to close it off could lead Iran to escalate and disrupt other important shipping routes.
Arab officials said the blockade is aimed at raising the pressure on Iran's already crippled economy, but the officials said Saudi Arabia has warned Iran might retaliate by closing the Bab el Mandeb, a Red Sea choke point crucial for the kingdom's remaining oil exports.
That was obviously, we saw some reporting that the Saudis might, or sorry, the Iranians might activate the Houthis and seek to disrupt shipping through the Red Sea.
The pushback is a sign of the risks and limitations of the U.S. efforts to pry open the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran shut early in the war by attacking ships in the waterway, cutting off around 13 million barrels a day in oil exports and sending futures prices above $100 a barrel.
Now, something that's worth considering is America has never exported more oil than we are right now.
Oil exports in the United States are through the roof.
This was zero hedge, but I mean, this is reporting that's everywhere.
The headlines were sexy.
Total U.S. oil exports jumped to record highs.
So, again, the United States, not just are we limiting exports, Imports now of oil.
Like, we're not importing as much oil, but our exports are sky high right now.
We saw, let me see if I have it in the stack here.
I don't have it, but we saw like a string of tankers, they covered on IRL, a string of tankers, empty tankers heading to American ports because our refineries are operating as normal.
Again, we're importing oil.
The Venezuelan oil is on the market that we can refine.
The refineries in Texas are equipped to refine Venezuelan oil.
Obviously, it's that heavy oil.
It's like almost like a gel.
Look, I mean, you know, some have speculated this was the goal the whole time it wasn't even about Iran.
It was just about, again, growing the American economy, right?
This was about sort of establishing America as the leading global exporter of oil, right?
That we would become the centerpiece of the global energy trade.
Those people, you know, right now, this is good reporting for them, people that subscribe to that line of thinking that, look, this is actually just about sort of recalibrating the entire global energy.
Economy around the United States.
I mean, take a look at this.
This is Jack Prandelli.
He writes on global commodities and these sorts of things.
7.91 million barrels a day.
US oil product exports just hit an all time record, up 23%.