00:00So much mystery surrounding what unfolded, of course, over those two hours and why there wasn't a resolution that was
00:05promised by the president.
00:07As you've been talking to sources, piecing all of this together, what are the stumbling blocks?
00:10You heard from the president there, the red lines remain the same, the rhetoric remains the same, Iran can't have
00:15a nuclear weapon, etc.
00:16Where is there kind of room for negotiation between these two sides, as you see?
00:19And I wish, David, that I had the magic answer for what happened on Friday.
00:23I think it is interesting to note that that interview with his daughter-in-law that aired on Fox.
00:28Interview, conversation.
00:29Conversation is probably a better thing to call that.
00:32It was taped before the conversation, before the situation.
00:34Oh, really?
00:35As far as I know, that was taped on Thursday.
00:37So not fully even up to date right then.
00:40Not a hard-hitting interview anyway.
00:42But interesting because the president does share a lot of his views when he talks to Fox, be it his
00:48daughter-in-law or someone else.
00:49That said, you're absolutely right that basically it's in a holding pattern.
00:53And it's interesting because the president started off, was it last weekend on a Saturday, by saying, we've got a
01:00deal.
01:00We're going to let the details out shortly.
01:02That was a Saturday.
01:03On Sunday, he pulled back.
01:05And basically that whole week, we've been waiting for more.
01:07There is a Ned Ryersonian quality to all of this.
01:10Yeah, and there's a Groundhog Day quality to it.
01:12There you go.
01:13Right?
01:13Because the president has a lot of competing interests here.
01:16He obviously wants to get out of this war.
01:19He's got a lot of political reasons for that.
01:21But he, as the dealmaker-in-chief and as the guy who sort of built both a business and a
01:26political career on being a dealmaker,
01:28he doesn't want it to come out and be one that isn't great.
01:31And there are plenty of Republicans who are worried that that's exactly what he's going to do.
01:35Dana, I want to ask you about the state of play.
01:38The president contradicted himself a bit in those remarks.
01:41I want to play some sound for you and then get your reaction as somebody who's in the region.
01:45Their Navy is totally gone, 100%.
01:47Their Air Force is totally gone, 100%.
01:50Their military, we've sort of left it alone because we think that their military is somewhat moderate.
01:58They have other people that are moderate.
02:00We've taken them out.
02:01We've taken different forms of leadership out.
02:03We've actually left their military alone.
02:04People would be surprised to hear that.
02:07Because mistakes have been made in wars where you wipe out everybody and then you have a country that's, you
02:12know, for 40 years can never rebuild.
02:15It's a little unclear what the president means here because he says the Navy has gone 100%.
02:19The Air Force has gone 100%.
02:20But we've left the military alone.
02:22Maybe giving him the method out, maybe he's talking about some of the leadership structure there, not the physical.
02:26But when it comes to Iran's capability to still strike harm, especially among regional allies, one of the things that
02:33hasn't been discussed as much as the nuclear and the strait is their ballistic missile program, which, of course, was
02:38how it damaged all those countries around Iran at the start of this war.
02:43Do we have any idea what Iran's capacity is left?
02:46Can they still strike harm and can they still damage U.S. allies in the region if this deal does
02:50truly fall apart?
02:52I think it's not just about ballistic missiles.
02:55The damage that was done to a lot of the even energy infrastructure here in the region was caused by
03:00the drones, the really infamous now Shahid drones.
03:03And they've struck energy infrastructure in the UAE and Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and civilian infrastructure as well.
03:10I think the concern here is more about drones.
03:12And that's why we saw a Ukraine president visiting Saudi, visiting the UAE, trying to lobby for his own technology
03:20to counter and deter those drones.
03:23So drones remain a concern for the region here.
03:25And we saw even not even Iran's own capability.
03:29Let's remember that two weeks ago, it was Iraqi militias aligned with Iran that targeted the UAE's only operating nuclear
03:39power plant here in Abu Dhabi.
03:41So it isn't just about Iran's own capability, but the capability of its proxies, be it in Iraq and those
03:47militias there that have also targeted Kuwait.
03:50And of course, those in Lebanon, that's now where the war is raging.
03:54I think the concern is everything from the ballistic missiles and the drones and how to counter those.
04:01That's a very good point.
04:02Yeah, I forget.
04:03I don't forget about the drones, but in my head, I think of them as like under that umbrella.
04:06But you're not.
04:06You're right.
04:07They're a very different thing.
04:08And we're going to talk a little bit later about Ukraine and President Zelensky and how he is making new
04:13pathways through the release, partly because of that drone technology.
04:16Jeff, let me ask you about the strait and the president's tack toward it, reopening the Strait of Hormuz.
04:20Of course, there's been so much conversation surrounding how that might resolve itself, what countries might pursue some sort of
04:26tolling agreement or tariff agreement with Iran.
04:28Let's hear what the president had to say about that during that conversation with Lord Trump, as you say, recorded
04:31on Thursday.
04:33The strait has to be opened immediately and has to be free, no tolls, et cetera, et cetera.
04:37And number two is they can't have a nuclear weapon.
04:40That's all there is.
04:40It's very simple.
04:41And then we're going to get out of there and we don't need the strait.
04:45You know, we don't need it because we have more.
04:47So we produce now because of us, me, we produce more oil than Saudi Arabia and Russia combined times two.
04:55Think of that.
04:57We double what they did.
04:58Add Saudi Arabia and Russia, multiply it times two, and we're going to be much higher.
05:03We're the oil superpower.
05:05Jeff, talk a bit about this because this is the one thing that the president really can't jawbone.
05:10The fact that, yes, we're an oil superpower, but, of course, it's a global market.
05:13And his frustration is palpable over the fact that oil prices, gas prices are directionally going in one way.
05:18They're going up.
05:19They have gone up since the start of this conflict.
05:21Talk a bit about how, if at all, his tack toward the strait is evolving in light of that.
05:27Well, let's fact check a couple of things that he said there.
05:29He says, number one, that we, as in the United States, we don't need the strait.
05:33Well, that's not entirely true, largely because of what you just said.
05:37It's a global oil market.
05:39So even if the United States has a bunch of its own oil production, which he's very proud of,
05:44that doesn't help the gas prices writ large for this country because it's impacted by the rest of the world.
05:50Number two, the political reality is this was not an issue before the war.
05:54Iran has learned through this war that it has the leverage of the strait of Hormuz.
06:00And so he wants to reset that, but clearly is having some trouble getting the Iranians to just go back
06:07on something that they have learned as something that they can use.
06:10So trying to get that sort of go back in time to some extent with the deal
06:15and achieve a nuclear deal has proven to be a really tough lift.
06:20Denny, you mentioned this just a second ago, but I do want to circle back to what's going on in
06:25Lebanon
06:26because it is both a part of this negotiation.
06:29Obviously, the Iranians want a ceasefire in Lebanon to be part of that deal.
06:33Unclear if that's going to happen or not.
06:35And unclear if it's one of those 14 points on the 14-point plan.
06:38I mean, yeah, I think it's important.
06:40Also true.
06:41Yeah, also true, whether it's even included in this aspirational MOU.
06:44But there is some news in Lebanon today.
06:46The Israeli army has captured this strategic castle, and it's the deepest incursion into that territory in 26 years.
06:52What is happening there, and does it show any signs of secession?
06:57Or ceasefire is way too much to say.
07:00But what is going on, and why this action, and why today?
07:04So, yes, the Israeli army has expanded the ground operation that it started back two months ago into Lebanon.
07:13And like you said, they have seized a strategic ridge, which is the Beaufort Ridge,
07:17and that oversees the Galili, which is a lot of the northern community in Israel,
07:22which have come under fire from Hezbollah.
07:25Hezbollah has really upped its attacks on these Israeli communities in the north
07:29and Israeli troops inside Lebanon, inside the so-called yellow zone,
07:34which is technically an occupation zone where Israeli troops are along the border,
07:38along the Israeli-Lebanese border.
07:41And this is quite, could be a problem for the U.S. and the Iranians.
07:45Iran has always said that part of any deal with the U.S.,
07:48it should ensure a halt to all conflicts in the region, primarily the one in Lebanon,
07:54because it's a war, you know, basically on Hezbollah.
07:58Hezbollah is Iran's most powerful proxy, and the proxy that's proven most useful to the Iranians.
08:04Hezbollah engaged into this war, entered the war on Iran,
08:08when the U.S. and Israelis struck Tehran and killed, of course, the former supreme leader.
08:15And the first attack by Hezbollah was to avenge Khamenei,
08:19and that just proves how close they are to the Iranians,
08:21how linked religiously and militarily to the Iranians, and they didn't stop ever since.
08:26Now, we should kind of separate that from what is happening in the U.S. as well.
08:31The U.S. is sponsoring very rare talks between Lebanon, as the government, of course,
08:37and Israel on how to end the crisis.
08:39Lebanon insists on a full cessation of hostilities from the Israeli side.
08:44And, of course, Israel wants to guarantee that Hezbollah is completely uprooted from the southern region along the border.
08:52So there is no sign of stopping here.
08:54Both parties, Israel and Hezbollah, are exchanging fire.
08:58Israel is trying to push deeper into South Lebanon to strike a major blow for Hezbollah once again.
09:05It is weaker, might I say, like politically, militarily, but still it is there, and it poses a risk to
09:13Israel.
09:14So this is all up in the air.
09:15It's a very fluid situation and could become an obstacle in the talks between the U.S. and Iran.
09:22Very important point.
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