Donald Trump has new statements on Iran, and it can change everything overnight. Plus, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is now on record talking about what s next, including the Strait of Hormuz. A sacred season is approaching, and God hears the cries of his people.
00:03:20.380He warned yet again he is willing to obliterate Iran's energy infrastructure,
00:03:25.600his exact words, if the talks do not lead to a durable agreement.
00:03:30.400Trump made the declaration in a message on his website, True Social.
00:03:34.660What remains of the Iranian government after the elimination of the Supreme Leader
00:03:38.240has repeatedly denied Trump's claim that it is in conversations with the American government,
00:03:44.580while also stating that it has responded to America's proposals,
00:03:49.140which would be impossible without a conversation.
00:03:53.020President Trump, smiling through that in a statement,
00:03:56.000saying that not only is America pursuing regime change in Iran,
00:03:59.840But the regime change has already happened, saying the United States of America is in serious discussions with a new and more reasonable regime to end our military operations in Iran.
00:04:11.920He followed up that comment with a threat.
00:04:14.580Great progress has been made, but if for any reason a deal is not shortly reached, which it probably will be,
00:04:21.500And if the Hormuz Strait is not immediately open for business, we will conclude our lovely stay in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating all of their electric generating plants, oil wells and Carg Island and possibly all desalization plants, which we have purposely not yet touched.
00:04:44.140quote unquote. The president went on to say this will be in retribution for our many soldiers and
00:04:50.720others that Iran has butchered and killed over the regime's 47 year reign of terror. Thank you
00:04:57.540for your attention to this matter. Now, President Trump is seriously weighing also a military
00:05:02.580operation, we're being told, to extract nearly a thousand pounds of highly enriched uranium from
00:05:09.080Iran. And while the Iranian government has not responded directly to Trump's statement at press
00:05:14.200time, the foreign ministry spokesman confirmed on Monday that Iran had received and was contemplating
00:05:21.340negotiation messages from the United States. At the same time, that individual also disparaged
00:05:28.180the proposals as being unrealistic, illogical, and excessive. But his statement nonetheless
00:05:34.060confirmed the existence of some form of communication between individuals in power in
00:05:39.780Iran and the White House, specifically Donald Trump. Quote, our position is clear. We are under
00:05:47.640military aggression. Therefore, all our efforts and strengths are focused on defending ourselves,
00:05:54.180according to translation by the Saudi outlet there. The government of also Pakistan claimed
00:05:59.780last week that it was mediating talks between America and Iran, handing Tehran a 15-point
00:06:25.560And despite erroneous statements to the contrary by the fake news media and others, they are going very well, the president said.
00:06:32.880Thank you for your attention to this matter.
00:06:35.240He also claimed that Iran was begging for a deal, contrary to the declarations in Iranian state media, clearly to keep the people in Iran in line.
00:06:45.980Also indicating the existence of talks, and those talks actually being very real,
00:06:51.240was the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, known as the IAEA,
00:06:55.940who told Italian media on Wednesday that talks about the Iran war would take place in Pakistan
00:07:08.320Three weeks of war have left their mark, which caused a lot of damage,
00:07:12.680affected Iran's economic, energy, and productive infrastructure.
00:07:17.460This will make the conversation, quote, a little bit different.
00:07:21.240Now, Pakistan did host talks on the Iran war this weekend,
00:07:25.020but reports indicated that neither Iran nor the United States of America, quote, participated.
00:07:31.180Instead, the event offered an opportunity for Pakistan to discuss the war
00:07:35.600with officials from Saudi Arabia and Turkey, as well as Egypt.
00:07:40.240Now, according to the Egyptian foreign minister,
00:07:42.000The objective of the talks is to de-escalate tension and encourage a negotiating process between Iran and the United States of America to spare the region comprehensive chaos.
00:07:52.960The Pakistani government also added that while Iran did not directly participate, Pakistani officials had a phone call with the Iranian foreign minister to discuss Tehran's position.
00:08:03.820Now, most of Iran's response to the current hostilities by the United States has been to targets its neighboring countries with missile and drone attacks, including Saudi Arabia and Turkey.
00:08:15.080Other countries Iran has bombed include Kuwait, Qatar, the UAE, Israel, Cyprus.
00:08:21.580Iranian officials have claimed the strikes are intended to target American and Israeli sites.
00:08:26.480But in reality, they are targeting a variety of civilian sites instead, including energy facilities in many of the Gulf states.
00:08:35.680Next story number two, which brings us to a one on one interview done on Good Morning America on Monday morning with Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
00:08:44.820I think it's incredibly important you hear what Marco had to say.
00:08:50.020Mr. Secretary, thank you for joining us this morning.
00:08:52.900Let's talk about the president's comments overnight, talking about taking the oil on Karg Island.
00:08:58.100How would he do this? Why would he do this? Won't it take ground troops?
00:09:01.700Well, first of all, it's important to remember the objectives of this operation from the very beginning.
00:09:05.740We were going to we are destroying Iran's Navy.
00:09:09.340We are destroying their ability to their missile launchers by a significant percentage.
00:09:13.080We're going to wipe out their defense industrial base, meaning their ability to make new missiles and new drones in the future,
00:09:18.400because it posed a great threat to the region.
00:09:20.140this iran that you're seeing now this is iran at its weakest point imagine them two years from now
00:09:25.440if they had thousands of more missiles the thousands of more missile launchers and factories
00:09:29.420to make even more that was an unacceptable risk it needed to be addressed and president trump is
00:09:33.980addressing it now they are making threats about controlling the hormu straits and perpetuity
00:09:39.400creating a tolling system and the like that's not going to be allowed to happen and the president
00:09:43.520has a number of options available to him if he so chooses to prevent that from happening
00:09:48.020happening. Obviously, I'm not going to discuss what those options are, and we're not going to
00:09:51.720discuss military tactics. The Department of War would be in charge of those things. I'd refer you
00:09:56.940to them, but obviously, they're not going to discuss it with you either. But there is a way
00:10:00.460forward here to achieve our objectives. We are going to achieve our objectives in a matter of
00:10:04.660weeks, not months. Well, let's talk about taking the oil, because the president laid out that
00:10:08.460objective last night, and taking the oil will take ground troops, won't it? Well, again, the Iranians
00:10:14.200are threatening that they're going to set up some permanent system in the Straits of
00:10:17.920Hormuz where they get to decide who goes through international waterways. That will never be
00:10:21.480allowed to happen. By the way, the rest of the world should take note of that. They have more
00:10:25.260at stake there than we do. We get very little of our energy in this country coming through the
00:10:29.340Straits of Hormuz. The rest of the world gets a lot more. That said, the president has several
00:10:33.960options at his disposal, and the Department of War is preparing optionality for the president
00:10:38.400for this and various other contingencies that might arise. That's what always needs to happen
00:10:42.840in situations like this. But what I want the American people and the people watching this
00:10:46.560broadcast to know is that fundamentally what this is about is the destruction of their air force
00:10:51.240which has been largely achieved the destruction of their navy which has been largely achieved
00:10:55.520the destruction of their factories that they make all these weapons with which is we're well on our
00:11:00.500way to achieving and a substantial reduction in the number of missile launchers that they have
00:11:04.940so that they cannot continue to threaten their neighbors in the future all of those objectives
00:11:08.900are being met ahead on or ahead of schedule and uh and should be able to achieve in a matter of
00:11:14.720weeks as you're speaking though the president is expanding the objectives just a couple minutes
00:11:18.940ago he put out a post on true social saying that we're in discussions now with a new and more
00:11:24.220reasonable regime in iran but he also added that if those discussions don't yield fruit the united
00:11:30.440states will blow up and completely obliterate all of their electric generating plants all their oil
00:11:35.340wells and karg island and possibly all desalinization plants which we have purposely not yet
00:11:40.200touches what he said that's a great expansion of the objectives well well i think the first point
00:11:45.540the president makes is he prefers diplomacy as i said those efforts are nascent there is messages
00:11:50.240being relayed back and forth some conversations going on including through intermediaries
00:11:54.200and he always prefers that look if the iranian regime had come forward at any point in the past
00:11:59.460and said we're going to walk away from our nuclear ambitions we're going to do nuclear energy the way
00:12:04.100every other country in the world primarily almost every other country in the world does it and that
00:12:08.160is through a peaceful means in which you bring in the fuel and it's supervised and so forth we're
00:12:12.800not we're going to stop supporting terrorist groups across the region look at this region
00:12:16.480every single terrorist group in this region has a link to the iranian regime every single one
00:12:20.880the houthis hezbollah hamas the the shia militias that are attacking everyone out of iraq every
00:12:26.980single one of these groups and all the destabilization in this region tracks directly
00:12:31.060back to the iranian regime those things have to be addressed and if iran had been willing to
00:12:35.200addressed us in the past we wouldn't be having this interview on this topic right now their
00:12:39.340refusal to do so and their continuing move towards one day acquiring a nuclear capability
00:12:44.140these people are lunatics they are insane they are religious zealots who can never be allowed
00:12:49.560to possess a nuclear weapon because they have an apocalyptic vision of the future and all of their
00:12:53.700neighbors know that by the way which is why all of their neighbors have been supportive of the
00:12:57.320efforts we're conducting you call them lunatics but the president just had this post where he
00:13:01.300says we're in discussions with a new and more reasonable regime let me try to pin you down
00:13:04.880on that who is this new and more reasonable regime is the united states is in direct contact with
00:13:10.140them well i'm not going to disclose to you who those people are because it probably would get
00:13:13.660them in trouble with some other groups of people inside of iran look there's some fractures going
00:13:17.260on there internally and at the end of the day i think that if there are people in iran who now
00:13:21.800given everything that's happened are willing to move in a different direction for their country
00:13:25.980that would be great imagine in iran that instead of spending their wealth billions of dollars
00:13:30.680supporting terrorists or weapons had spent that money helping the people of iran you'd have a
00:13:35.180much different country so we are always hopeful that that would exist over there it's unfortunate
00:13:39.320the people of iran are incredible people the people who lead them these this clerical regime
00:13:43.900that is the problem and if there are new people now in charge who have a more reasonable vision
00:13:48.320of the future that would be good news for us for them for the entire world but we also have to be
00:13:52.800prepared for the possibility maybe even the probability that that is not the case but the
00:13:57.780The president said they are. Is that the case or is it not? I'm just trying to get some clarity on that.
00:14:02.460Well, what I mean is, yeah, so you have people that are saying some of the right things privately.
00:14:06.560Obviously, they're not going to put it out in press releases and what they say to you or put out there for the world doesn't necessarily reflect what they're saying in our conversations.
00:14:14.120But at the end of the day, we have to see if these people end up being the ones in charge, seeing if they're the ones that have the power to deliver.
00:14:19.460We're going to test it. We are hopeful that that's the case.
00:14:21.860There are clearly people there talking to us in ways that previous people in charge in Iran have not spoken to us in the past.
00:14:29.080Some of the things they're willing to do, some of the things they're saying they're willing to do.
00:14:33.980We're going to test that proposition very strongly because we always prefer to settle things through negotiation and diplomacy.
00:14:40.380But we also have to be prepared for the fact that that effort might fail,
00:14:43.680that we are dealing with a 47-year-old regime that still has a lot of people involved in it
00:14:48.660who aren't necessarily big fans of diplomacy or peace.
00:14:51.540And if it fails, the war expands. What's that? I'm sorry. If it fails, the war expands.
00:14:56.560Well, the war is this operation. OK, and that's what this is. It's about very specific objectives.
00:15:02.420The president laid them out on the first night of the operation. I'll repeat them to you now because I hear a lot of talk about we don't know what the clear objectives are.
00:15:09.040Here they are. You should write them down. Number one, the destruction of their air force.
00:15:12.680Number two, the destruction of their Navy. Number three, the severe diminishing of their missile launching capability.
00:15:19.420And number four, the destruction of their factory so they can't make more missiles and more drones to threaten us in the future.
00:15:25.280All of this so that they can never hide behind it to acquire a nuclear weapon.
00:15:29.860That was our objective from the beginning.