The Ben Shapiro Show - July 15, 2026


Iran Blinked. Here's What Trump Did Next.


Episode Stats


Length

9 minutes

Words per minute

208.96

Word count

1,912

Sentence count

138

Harmful content

Hate speech

22

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Trump announces a new trade deal with the Persian Gulf States, and announces an end to the 20% toll on Iranian oil exports to the Strait of Hormuz, which had been a key sticking point in the negotiations with Iran.

Transcript

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Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Well, folks, the news out of Iran keeps changing by the hour, but the fundamentals don't really change much at all.
00:00:05.000 Mohistaba Khomeini, the Ayatollah's successor, he's still missing and probably still gay and probably still with one leg. 0.77
00:00:10.000 And Iran remains as intransigent as ever because, you know, it's run by the IRGC. 0.53
00:00:15.000 So Americans, you know, it would be wise to just recognize this may be a little while.
00:00:21.000 We will also get to some remarkably revealing comments from the late Senator Lindsey Graham comments that explain an entire school of American foreign policy, including why the State Department has been wrong about nearly everything for literally ever.
00:00:33.000 On foreign policy, the president did what I thought he would yesterday.
00:00:36.000 He backed off that 20% tolling the straight routine.
00:00:39.000 He says that there will be a blockade on Iranian oil coming out of Iran, but we won't be charging a toll.
00:00:45.000 Instead, we'll find other ways to do business with countries that are benefiting.
00:00:49.000 He said, Oil is flowing like never before.
00:00:50.000 This is on Truth Social, thanks to the awesome power of the United States military.
00:00:54.000 By the way, this is true.
00:00:55.000 There is oil that is, in fact, flowing.
00:00:57.000 There are various lanes that are in the Strait of Hormuz.
00:01:00.000 The lane that is furthest from Iran, from its shores, goes near Oman, and that lane is increasingly open.
00:01:06.000 He says a special salute to Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Kane, and Commander of the U.S. Central Command Admiral Brad Cooper.
00:01:14.000 Because of them and all members of the most powerful military any in the world by far, the Strait of Hormuz is open to all ship traffic except for Iran. 0.95
00:01:20.000 And that is because of their lying, violent, malicious leadership, which is taking them down the path of total destruction. 0.98
00:01:25.000 We'll therefore have a full blockade, but only on ships coming to and from Iranian ports or carrying anything having to do with Iranian cargo.
00:01:32.000 Based on highly productive conversations with Middle East leadership, I've decided to replace the 20% U.S. reimbursement fee.
00:01:37.000 With trade and investment deals that the various Gulf states will be making into the United States.
00:01:41.000 Those investments will be massive, but at the same time, extraordinarily good for them and their future.
00:01:45.000 As everyone is aware, we have the largest dollar investment into the United States of any country in history.
00:01:50.000 These new investments will make that number even larger.
00:01:52.000 We'll see factories, plants, and equipment pour into the United States at historic levels, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
00:01:58.000 Since the days of Iran killing hundreds of thousands of people, including 52,000 protesters, are over, most importantly, Iran will never have a nuclear weapon.
00:02:04.000 Thank you for your attention to this matter.
00:02:08.000 President Trump explained what that looks like in a press conference yesterday.
00:02:12.000 The Oval Office, increasingly gold.
00:02:13.000 Every time you look at it, it gets more gold, actually.
00:02:18.000 I was called by different people, different countries, kings and emirs, and all of the people that we all know and we all love.
00:02:27.000 And they've been, frankly, very strong partners.
00:02:30.000 And they said, we'd love to do it a different way.
00:02:32.000 We'd love to invest in the United States with billions and billions of dollars and continue our record setting because we would.
00:02:41.000 There's never been a time like this with the United States, with the factories, with the plants, with everything else.
00:02:46.000 And we would like to invest tremendously in the United States as opposed to charging a fee.
00:02:51.000 Okay, so again, as I suggested before, the United States is, in fact, absorbing the cost of keeping the strait open.
00:03:01.000 And so the idea that the United States ought to benefit, not in some sort of generic sense, but that other countries ought to contribute to their own defense, that if we have to do the work of the Japanese, for example, or the Europeans in keeping the strait open, then we're going to need some form of cooperation with them.
00:03:15.000 That's not a terrible idea, and it is fair for the president to ask for it.
00:03:19.000 There's a quote from Lindsey Graham that I think is really fascinating that came out yesterday in a piece from The Atlantic by Richard Fontaine.
00:03:26.000 He's a really interesting thinker and writer.
00:03:29.000 Richard Fontaine talks about a conversation that he had with Graham that has to do with foreign policy.
00:03:35.000 And it is fascinating.
00:03:36.000 He says, At what point in his career, I wonder, had Lindsey Graham gathered the boldness to assert himself so overtly in foreign policy?
00:03:43.000 When I was first elected to the House, he recalled, I looked for the they.
00:03:46.000 They who run things. 0.90
00:03:47.000 They who know how things really work.
00:03:48.000 They who know what they are doing.
00:03:50.000 But I couldn't find the they.
00:03:51.000 And then he says, I went to the Senate, but there was still no they.
00:03:54.000 And then I started to get invited to the White House, into closed door briefings, into meetings with top officials. 0.97
00:03:58.000 No, they. 0.89
00:03:59.000 What I finally realized, he concluded, is that there is no they. 0.90
00:04:02.000 There is only we. 0.64
00:04:03.000 And we usually don't know what the F we're doing.
00:04:07.000 And, you know, again, that is right.
00:04:11.000 That is right.
00:04:12.000 I mean, there is this kind of self appointed State Department expert class, and they are wrong about nearly everything.
00:04:19.000 But it is not as though there is some sort of conspiracy in which people get together in a room together and figure out the they who control the foreign policy.
00:04:27.000 Lindsey Graham was right.
00:04:28.000 And here's the thing. 0.89
00:04:29.000 If the they ain't American, the they's going to be Chinese or Russian or Iranian. 0.92
00:04:33.000 That is the way it works. 0.79
00:04:34.000 We'll get to more on this in a moment.
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00:05:41.000 Well, the president also made a large scale announcement yesterday that America is going to complete our withdrawal from Iraq completely by September 30th.
00:05:50.000 That was also announced by Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al Zaidi.
00:05:55.000 That is the end of a military presence that began with the American invasion of Iraq in 2003.
00:06:01.000 US troop levels in Iraq peaked in 2007.
00:06:03.000 We had 170,000 troops in theater.
00:06:07.000 Right now, there are about 2,500 U.S. troops remaining in the country.
00:06:11.000 Now, that doesn't mean American involvement in Iraq is over.
00:06:13.000 There are American oil companies that are going to be very active in Iraq.
00:06:16.000 One of the reasons the president feels more comfortable doing this is because the last Iraqi regime was very pro Iranian.
00:06:22.000 The new Iraqi regime is significantly more pro Sunni.
00:06:26.000 So much friendlier with Saudi, which is good, much friendlier with Turkey, which is not so great. 0.70
00:06:30.000 The bottom line is that Iraq is not going to be a thoroughfare for Iran any longer. 0.82
00:06:35.000 And so what you're watching is that the Iran war has reoriented the region away from Iranian power. 0.95
00:06:42.000 Again, Iraq used to be Iran's playground. 0.89
00:06:43.000 That is not the case anymore. 0.98
00:06:44.000 Iranian power is on the wane, for sure.
00:06:47.000 Here's President Trump explaining. 0.99
00:06:50.000 Iran was a big burden on Iraq because they were the bully of the Middle East, as you know. 1.00
00:06:58.000 And we were just talking about that. 0.95
00:06:59.000 But they're not going to have that problem anymore because Iran has been very much destabilized, and really their military power is just a tiny fraction of what it was just four months ago. 0.53
00:07:16.000 Okay, so, yeah, again, that is true. 1.00
00:07:19.000 We can only hope that that maintains.
00:07:21.000 Well, today, the president also reversed an immigration policy that was announced briefly yesterday, in which ICE was going to suspend traffic stops.
00:07:28.000 So, traffic stops was one way for ICE to find people who they were attempting to deport.
00:07:34.000 Tom Homan, the Border Czar, came out yesterday on Fox.
00:07:36.000 He said that we are still arresting a lot of people.
00:07:38.000 There's going to be a short term review of vehicle stop training to make sure that we don't have more of these incidents where people attempt to flee or direct their car in the direction of Border Patrol or ICE agents and then get shot.
00:07:52.000 There's an extensive vehicle stop training, much like the Borbatrol has.
00:07:56.000 So, again, we'll let this play out where it is, but I think ICE is going to continue doing record arrests, record removals.
00:08:03.000 And this is, I wouldn't even call it bumping the road.
00:08:06.000 I mean, this is going to be a short term review.
00:08:09.000 So ICE feels comfortable that their agents are safe, they're doing the right thing, and get back to doing what they do best, which is making vehicle stops.
00:08:20.000 So, the president did put out a statement about three hours ago.
00:08:23.000 Prior to the show, saying the men and women of ICE are doing a great job, one that has to be done.
00:08:27.000 Crime is way down in America, in many cases with numbers that haven't been seen in decades.
00:08:31.000 The open border policy of Sleepy Joe Biden allowed 25 million people to pour into our country unchecked and unvetted.
00:08:36.000 Many were criminals.
00:08:37.000 We have to get them out.
00:08:38.000 In order to do this, we must be strong, tough, and smart.
00:08:40.000 We cannot give up one of ICE's most important and effective crime fighting tools, the traffic stop.
00:08:44.000 Once we do, we are playing right into the criminals' hands.
00:08:47.000 The radical left Democrats would like to see this done, but it won't happen on my watch.
00:08:50.000 ICE, be judicious, fair, and smart, and go back and do your very important job.
00:08:54.000 Keep those crime stat records coming.
00:08:57.000 So, the president is not going to back off of that one.
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