174. Trump’s Iran Deadline: Will They Call His Bluff?

13:40Katty Kay:Yeah, I'm Pete Hexeth. I want you. I got tattoos all over my body. I'm wearing a$4.99 suit. Okay, it's polyester and rayon. You got your American flag sunglasses. Yes, and I'm sauntering into the room. I'm alpha male warfighter. I just want to set the scene. You are the orange man. Okay. Okay. Okay. And I'm a war hawk. And I come in and I say, I say, Mr. President, the deadline is 8 p.m. April 6th. And I'm going to tell you, sir, with all due respect, we've missed three deadlines. We missed the March 21st and the March 26th deadlines. You keep moving the goalposts and you keep saying that the talks are going well.

14:24Katty Kay:But Mr. P, we know we're not talking to anybody. Those two Mackays in your office that look like Iranian diplomats that you're talking to, they're not responding, Mr. President. They're not responding. And this is, why are you laughing like that?

14:39Anthony Scaramucci:This is like the Muppets. Okay, carry on. I'm liking this. I like the puppet show. Okay.

14:44Katty Kay:Okay, we got the puppets going. And I'm just telling you, Mr. President, your credibility on this issue is eroding. every missed deadline weakens deterrence and strengthens the Iranian hand in negotiations. And you say what, DJT?

15:02Anthony Scaramucci:First of all, I'm thinking, Pete Hegseth, is this you that's putting forward such a coherent sentence? Okay, Mr. Secretary of War, what are my options?

15:12Katty Kay:I'm a war fighter, Caddy K. Remember that about me.

15:15Anthony Scaramucci:Yes, I know this. I don't like the fact. March 22nd, March 26th, March 27th, April 4th, April 5th, I've always pushed back the deadline. 48 hours, 5 days, 10 days, 48 hours again, Tuesday. So I realize I don't like this. We can't give them any more time. They have to open the bleep straight. What are my military options, Mr. Secretary of War? Tell me.

15:41Katty Kay:Well, I think we should bomb the living SHIT out of them. And I think we should commit war crimes everywhere because I changed the name of the Pentagon to the Department of War. And since war is in the sentence, I commit war crimes, I would like to commit war crimes on this country. And you say what?

16:03Anthony Scaramucci:Mr. Secretary of War, have you seen the Goldman Sachs report that came out last night saying that we're going to have an oil shock with rationing around the world and it's going to last for a considerable time and I have a midterm election in November? I don't like that idea. I need to get out of this quickly.

16:20Katty Kay:Oh, come on, DJT. We know you don't really give a shit about the midterms. We know that.

16:25Anthony Scaramucci:I don't want to lose the Senate. I could get thrown out of office, even though I pardon myself on the way out, but it doesn't look great for my legacy.

16:33Katty Kay:He's not going to do it, Caddy. So then what happens? So he then says to Hegseth, I'm going to push the ball down the road again because I'm not going to do it. He's not going to do it, Caddy. The calls are coming in from Peter Thiel saying, hey, Bozo, don't do that.

16:48Anthony Scaramucci:And why do you think Goldman Sachs is putting this report out on this evening? They're not putting it out just randomly the night before the deadline. They're putting it out because they want the president to wake up. So here's the question is, is he hoping that the Iranian regime falls quickly if he carries on like another two days of crazy bombing? Nobody thinks that's going to be the case. The Iranian regime can last longer than the global economy can at this rate if they carry on with this kind of action. So then you have what Barack Ravid in Axios is reporting, which is you have some kind of 45-day ceasefire during which time you negotiate the Strait of Hormuz.

17:28Anthony Scaramucci:But that means that the Strait of Hormuz may not be open for another 45 days and you negotiate the uranium issue. But even Axios is saying they think the chances of this are slim because the Iranians still want those two other conditions. They want reparations and they want to know that they won't be bombed again in six months' time. You sound very sanguine, Antony, this morning that there is not going to be any kind of escalation. But I'm not sure about that. I think there's still a chance that there will be.

17:55Katty Kay:But let me rephrase. I don't think we're bombing desalination plants or power plants.

18:02Anthony Scaramucci:But we could be taking a few islands and claiming a win.

18:07Katty Kay:I do think that he's put ground troops there. And I think we learned from one of our producers that 60 or so thousand troops may get deployed out of Europe. Okay, we've learned that as well. And so that means to me that they're going to use the ground troops. And so what are they going to do? Maybe they're going to try to take that area around the strait to see if they can clear out the Iranian militias in that area that could potentially attack tankers like the Kuwaiti tanker was attacked. Maybe they take Karg Island, which I said last week.

18:40Anthony Scaramucci:Or some of the other islands. But all of these come with risks. You're putting American troops closer to Iranian fire. If you take the islands, my understanding is you don't even necessarily open the strait. And what? You're going to have Americans firing on Chinese tankers that are trying to get through. All of these come with risks, which I'm hoping, Mr. Secretary of War, that you have fully informed me of and I have fully listened to.

19:05Katty Kay:Of course, neither one of them are listening to each other because they talk over each other, which we both know. But go back to the 45-day option. Trump needs a way out of this caddy. He's looking around now and he's saying, you remember that line about playing poker, if you don't know who the patsy is at the day ball, you're the patsy. He's the patsy caddy. He's looking, let's talk about him saying that Zelensky had no cards. He's looking at his cards and he's going to play his cards and none of the cards look like great place. And he's sitting there saying, okay, I got taken advantage of here.

19:44Katty Kay:I overreacted. And rather than sticking with the February 27th and 28th negotiations, I went full bore with the Netanyahu strategy. And it turns out that I'm in a very complex thing. It turns out that the 2008, 9, 10 Donald Trump, the 2015 Donald Trump, and the 2025 Charlie Kirk, who very famously last year at this time, Charlie Kirk said, don't do it. They're going to push you to do it. It's going to be a disaster for us. It turns out those versions of Donald Trump and Charlie Kirk were actually right. And I know that Trump is nuts and you know he's nuts and you can't send out Easter tweets like that without knowing that he's not nuts.

20:32Katty Kay:But there are kernels of sanity in the guy's brain still.

20:36Anthony Scaramucci:Well, there are kernels of self-preservation.

20:38Katty Kay:Self-preservation. Okay, let's rephrase it.

20:40Anthony Scaramucci:He doesn't want to go out in a kind of be totally trashed by this. And that's why he's in this dilemma. He doesn't want to escalate, but he doesn't know what the options are. So, Cady, tell us how he gets out of it. There's one piece of advice that I've heard, which is that he needs to slow down. and wait this out and buy him. First of all, as advisors have said all along, stop putting out these damn ultimatums because you're setting a red line that makes it harder for you to row back from. He probably needs to carry on with the campaign as it is and try to get to a diplomatic solution. The only way you get around the uranium issue, the only way you get around the straight issue is through negotiation.

21:22Anthony Scaramucci:He cannot bomb his way to getting that uranium back and he can't bomb his way to getting the straight open at the moment. So there is an enormous amount of mistrust on the Iranian side because they feel that they were in the midst of negotiations with Wyckoff and Jared who were either unable or unwilling to really do a serious deal and then the war started. So they need persuading to come to the table. The Americans need to put something serious and And he's got a 48-hour window that he's not even, 36-hour window by the time this goes out, that he's put on himself. And he's going to have to put some kind of, if he wants to get out of this without escalating, he has to put some kind of serious plan on the table.

22:07Anthony Scaramucci:He has to go to the Pakistanis and it's possible that the Iranians would bite now. If he went to the Pakistanis and said, okay, here is a revised plan with some serious gifts, it's possible the Iranians might bite right now. So I think that's the only way out, right? He can't bomb his way out of this one.

22:25Katty Kay:Can't bomb his way out. But this is what Trump should do at this moment. Okay. I put five points together, Kat. Are you ready? Okay. Point number one, he should declare victory and pivot. Maybe the deadline comes, the Iranians do nothing. He drops a few bombs that are not war crime bombs. And then after that bombing mission's over, he says, we've accomplished more than Obama and Biden ever could. And so we're now going to shift to diplomacy and claim a position of strength. Number two, use Oman and Qatar as quiet intermediaries and just go in there and say that we're going to use these guys to come up with a framework of not just a grand deal or just a mutual stand down, but how are we going to get the Strait of Hormuz opened in an acceptable way?

23:11Katty Kay:And then number three, which is the big one, is MBS. I would use MBS because the Saudis,

23:17Anthony Scaramucci:if you remember about three years ago - They did the deal with the Chinese.

23:21Katty Kay:Did a deal with the Chinese, that the Chinese brokered with Iran. I would bring MBS back in here and I would co-sponsor a Gulf War security framework conference or conversation. Okay. And then I would release SPR, Strategic Petroleum Reserve barrels into the market. Okay. And I would say that we're going to do this to keep the prices lower for American families. And then I would single tie ran through intermediaries that we need to get the shipping corridor open. What is it that they need from us? And the answer is going to be reparations.

23:57Anthony Scaramucci:Yep. And security guarantees.

23:59Katty Kay:And so the president's going to say to his Saudi friends -

24:02Anthony Scaramucci:You pay.

24:02Katty Kay:You pay, and I will figure out a way to get you paid back, but you got to pay. Okay. What do you think of all those?

24:10Anthony Scaramucci:Look, I think those are all very sensible. I'm not sure. I think, could he bomb a couple of bridges, a couple more bridges, maybe near Isfahan, you know, on the basis that that's where the uranium we think is, but it could have been moved, obviously, but that's where we think it was when we last knew where it was. You bomb those bridges and you call it a day. The Iranians at that point will declare victory. If America pulls out without the strait being open, they will say that this has been something that they have won. They held on longer than America and Donald Trump played chicken. I mean, that's how they'll frame it, right?

24:48Anthony Scaramucci:Does that really matter? Probably not. But how you get from that, him declaring victory to the strait being open, those are your other steps. Yeah, I think you go for any intermediaries you can. I would also add you go for the Pakistanis and the Turks in there as well. You try and get some kind of, which is what the UAE is trying to do is you go to the United Nations and you broaden control of the Strait of Hormuz for the future. Maybe that's what he'll do. Maybe tomorrow he will wake up or will be tomorrow evening and he'll say, okay, we're extending the deadline again. We've got what we wanted.

25:20Anthony Scaramucci:Or he'll say, okay, after a day after that, we've got what we wanted and we're going to call it quits. But I think that Trump needs to then look at the state of the Iranian country that he's left behind. We don't know because we're not getting very many images. But I think there is an awful amount of devastation and renovation and repairs that need to be done in Iran. And I think it's worth everybody on this Monday reading what Kareem Sajipur, who's the best analyst of Iran that I know of, is writing, which is that Trump is measuring what he's destroyed, but history is going to measure what he built.

25:56And if he doesn't build

25:58Anthony Scaramucci:something where you leave behind an Iranian regime that is healthier for the rest of the world and safer for the rest of the world, then I'm not sure that he's built very much out of this. In fact, he's destroyed an awful lot, but what has he actually built? Because so long as the Iranian regime is there, it's still going to be a threat. They're not going to, in six months' time, say, right, okay, we got those five points of yours. We're not going to carry on rebuilding our ballistic missiles and we're not going to rush for a nuclear weapon. The risk is that he gets through this short term, but he leaves behind a long-term problem still.

26:34Anthony Scaramucci:In fact, potentially, as the UAE knows very well, a bigger problem than it was before. Anyway, anything at the moment that Kareem Sajipour writes, it's worth you looking at. We'll put a link to that in our newsletter. And we'll also link to that Goldman Sachs report on the oil shock that is about to hit the world.

26:52Katty Kay:all of that makes sense caddy i get i guess the thing i would say if i were a trump advisor you have to pick things that are very contrarian and are outside of what other people would think that donald trump himself would do like i don't think anybody had on their bingo card praise to or whatever he said right in his thing right so he likes doing things that are not predictable ball, I would go to him and say, you got to open up a humanitarian channel here and announce a carve out for medicine, food, earthquake relief supplies, things like that. Frame it as it's, our fight is with the regime, not the Persian people.

27:34Katty Kay:It sounds soft, but it's strategically sharp. You know, it undermines the regime's narrative that America wants to starve Iran.

27:42Anthony Scaramucci:What do you rate the chances of his going for such a deal?

27:45Katty Kay:A deal in what way? Meaning -

27:46Anthony Scaramucci:The points you laid out, yeah.

27:48Katty Kay:Yeah, I think it's unlikely. And again, the reason why I think it's unlikely is that he has no one talking to him in a way that he would adjust himself to. If H.R. McMaster said he's a reflexive contrarian, drop food, medical supplies, and earthquake relief supplies, or whatever it is that you would do, Red Cross-like supplies, into Iran. that is something that Trump would respond to. You see what I mean? I don't think anybody's out there doing that with them. I think they're all frozen because they don't want to lose their jobs. They don't want to be embarrassed by a mean tweet and all of the different things that Trump does to them.

28:30Katty Kay:But I'm just saying to you, there's a path out of here. Okay. I mean, here's another idea, Caddy. This is another idea that no one would say Trump would do, engage Turkey. Yeah.

28:44Anthony Scaramucci:Engage Turkey and the Pakistanis.

28:46Katty Kay:Erdogan has relationships with Tehran and Moscow. He desperately wants to be seen as a major geopolitical broker. Use him, okay? He's vain enough to take the assignment. And the risk is that Erdogan would be the freelancer that he typically is, but I would rather have him freelancing in a direction towards peace.

29:06Anthony Scaramucci:There is a story going around Washington that there's a lot of money in Istanbul at the moment being used to try and lure defectors from the Iranian regime. But my understanding is they haven't managed to peel away anyone of significance. But the Turks are clearly focused on this. Okay, we're going to take a break and come back and talk about that extraordinary rescue, which really was an amazing achievement, perhaps one that Donald Trump stepped on with his Sunday morning post. But anyway, we're going to come back and talk about that.

29:41Anthony Scaramucci:Welcome back to The Rest is Politics US and now the good news half of this program. Anthony, that was all the stories coming out about the rescue. Everybody's got some of the great details, but this was amazing boy's own adventure stuff. Put on your Army Commando Special Forces outfit for a second and tell us what you thought of that rescue operation and what it says about America's military ability to get this kind of thing right. Because I think it's worth mentioning amidst all of the strategic problems with this operation, this particular event, this particular rescue operation, I think, does remind us what the American military does well.

30:24Katty Kay:Well, let me say a couple of things about military culture for a second that I think people will appreciate. when that pilot went missing the entire military and i'm talking about everything including space force was like how are we getting that pilot out of there yeah okay and if a cop is shot a police officer shot here in new york city guess what happens caddy every single police officer in the borough where that police officer was shot goes to the scene and they figure out how to capture the person. This is sort of the esprit de corps. This is sort of the culture. And so it doesn't matter the price.

31:03Katty Kay:It doesn't matter anything other than how are we getting back our servicemen alive. Okay. And to me, that is something I love about the American military. I love that about our culture and the notion that people like Laura Ingram are suggesting thing, that left-leaning people wanted the guy to die because it would hurt Donald Trump. Absurd. It's just the outrage machine of nonsensical behavior. There's not one person in this country that's rational that would have wanted that. We were all praying that they were able to extract him. But tell a little bit about the daring, Katty. Tell a little bit about what happened, because I thought that was a fascinating way they approached this.

31:45Katty Kay:And there was also a CIA diversion, which I thought was also fascinating.

31:49Anthony Scaramucci:So what we understand is obviously there were two pilots from this F-15. One was rescued within seven hours by a US helicopter. The second pilot, because the plane was moving so fast, actually ended up far away and they had to find him. He was a colonel and a weapons officer. He had just a pistol with him, but he also of course had his beacon. All of these pilots are trained in what to do in these circumstances, basically in how to stay alive until you can be rescued. He gets to this 7 ,000-foot ridge. It's a mountainous area of southwest Iran. He climbs up into a tiny little crack. You've got US drones and aircraft flying around the region.

32:35Anthony Scaramucci:He comes out only to put his beacon on, his tracker beacon on. He's worried that the Iranians might also be able to pick up the tracker beacon. It doesn't seem like they did, but he comes out of this little crevice really in the mountain to put the tracker beacon on and then retreats back into the crevice. The CIA, meanwhile, as the Iranians are looking for him and as the Americans are putting a huge amount of resources and planes into this, the CIA, meanwhile, dispersed throughout Iran, which shows that they still have assets in Iran that are able to get messages out kind of through the Iranian public, they put out a message that they've already got him, that the Americans have already got him.

33:18Anthony Scaramucci:And now they're trying to plan out how to exfiltrate him. Will it be by boat? Will it be by convoy somewhere? And so they send the Iranian forces apparently into a kind of, now look, all of this we're getting from the Pentagon and the White House. So you have to take some of the kind of, you know, a little bit of your critical thinking around this, but it seems that this CIA effort did manage to get the Iranians looking in multiple directions and that kind of put them off the scent of the guy who's up in the mountain, whose name we don't know yet. And then this was all being monitored from the situation room by President Trump and the pilot managed to survive for two days.

33:55Anthony Scaramucci:The hairy thing I understand is that the aircraft, the rescue aircraft landed fairly near the mountain and were on the ground for several hours while they went looking for this guy and that was the most worrying moment. They had light aircraft as well. They actually ended up bombing some aircraft that were left on the ground because they didn't want the Iranians to get the details or any of the tech from that aircraft. Given the caveat that we're getting this information from the Pentagon and from the White House and they want to paint this as a glowing success as possible, it does seem like this was an extraordinary, I mean, an unbelievable rescue operation as the Iranians were closing in and with a lot of effort and time and money put in by the pentagon i'm just glad i wasn't that guy i mean that would have been can you imagine and and kudos to him for managing to stay alive for two days in enemy terrain i think the whole story is amazing it'll you know obviously

34:50Katty Kay:the makings of an amazing hollywood movie yeah who's signing up to be the pilot who is who do you have tip for the pilot i don't know this is like a mark walberg sort of a movie right i think I don't know, maybe it's Tom Cruise sort of movie.

35:03Anthony Scaramucci:Whoever is the younger Tom Cruise out there, whoever doesn't manage to become 007, who we still haven't had named yet, which I'm just a little annoyed about. But anyway, I still want to know who's going to be the next James Bond. Whoever is the runner up to James Bond should be the pilot in this one.

35:17Katty Kay:All right. Sounds like a deal. But here's the thing I would say to you that I was blown away by. These commandos, they scaled a 7 ,000 foot ridge. he's got sprained ankle and he's talking to he's got to also identify himself and he's got to prove that he is the guy that the transponder isn't in the hands of iranian militia iranian captors right and then they they get booby trapped right so this is another fascinating part of the story but i'll just say three quick things number one iran's air defenses are not destroyed caddy okay They took down F-15s and A-10 Warthog. Okay. We can say that the C-130 went down for mechanical reasons, but -

36:03Anthony Scaramucci:Two Black Hawk helicopters were also hit during the rescue mission.

36:07Katty Kay:Two Black Hawk helicopters. And again, this is all verified by the Pentagon, so it's not the Iranians saying this. It just tells you that. Okay. Number two, the CIA deception story is the best part of the story for me. That means that these guys are working in coordination with each other, which is something that you'd like to see. Of course, prior to 9-11, there was a lot less coordination in the American military and the American government as it related to different interagency communication. But whether we like this or not, both sides are claiming victory. Okay. And what I mean by that is that the Iranians are going to be putting out there that this is like the Carter failed 1980s hostage rescue attempt.

36:51Katty Kay:And I'm not saying it is because it was successful, but they're going to be beaming those burnt planes and downed helicopters into the propaganda space of their own citizens.

37:03Anthony Scaramucci:We should talk just quickly before we go about the communications war that is happening online between the two of us, because you and I have been sending forwards back and forth to each other, all of these videos that are being put out by an independent Iranian production company, obviously not totally independent, and also being amplified by the Iranian regime and by Russia Today and the Russia Today network and by the Chinese. But the communications ability, so you've got the CIA managing to get into the Iranian ecosystem within 48 hours, misinformation about what's happened to this pilot, whether they're doing it through broadcast networks of some kind or whether they're doing it through people in the country, we don't know yet exactly.

37:51Anthony Scaramucci:But then you've also got the Iranians who are putting out within, as I texted you, within an hour or two hours of the news that this pilot was still missing, they had already put out little videos, these little Lego figurine videos, it's worth everybody having a look at them, of a pilot being captured and Muller's chasing after him. The level of sophistication of the Iranian communications propaganda is extraordinary at the moment. Their use of AI and rap to put out these political propaganda films is worth watching because it reminds us how sophisticated the country is that we are dealing with.

38:31Anthony Scaramucci:I think that is something that this White House and maybe previous White Houses as well, but I think this White House underestimated the sophistication of the regime they were dealing with, the country they were dealing with.

38:42Katty Kay:We both grew up in the West where a lot of propaganda has been spewed that has effectively dehumanized Iran, right? Particularly during the hostage crisis when we were both kids, you know? And it's a way more complex, ancient civilization with a tremendous amount of smart people in it. And I think obviously the less we dehumanize people, the better. But I want you to think about this one last thing. Iran offered 60 ,000 US dollars. It wasn't dominated in Iranian currency. It was denominated in US dollars, right? But the US spent something like$2 billion to extract this officer. I don't know. As an American, I am actually very proud of that.

39:32Katty Kay:I'm not for this war, but I am for our troops. If somebody's in harm's way and we're spending$2 billion to get the person as a harm's way, spend$3 billion if you have to. I think that's the message for me. I appreciate the military not leaving anybody in a situation like that. But look at that ratio. It's a 33 ,000 to one ratio, Gadi, the 60 ,000 versus the 2 billion.

40:03Anthony Scaramucci:Yeah. And Iranian forces got within two miles. I think exactly it was 1.8 miles of the pilot's position. So they were getting close. They kind of started to know where he was and they were getting close to finding him. I think the shadow Vietnam hangs heavy over America. So many people who were downed and taken by the Viet Cong forces during the Vietnam War that ever since then, there has really been a huge push to make sure that no person is left behind. And this young colonel is now back home.

40:36Katty Kay:I appreciate it. That's for sure. So stay with us this week. On Wednesday, we'll be answering your questions. Some of these questions are actually awesome. And we'll also be discussing whether or not King Charles should be visiting Trump this year. And, Caddy, why has Hex had fired so many army generals? And the last but not least, what about US tourism? Way down, Caddy. So anyway, to hear all of that, you've got to go to the restispoliticsus.com, become a founding member, which, Caddy, we've got a lot of founding member. So I'm very happy about that. And people walk up, they, please, if you see me on the street and you say, I'm a founding member, you're getting a hug.

41:17Katty Kay:Okay. I just want you to know that.

41:19Anthony Scaramucci:That's a free bonus. Yeah.

41:21Katty Kay:And by the way, you may not want me in your physical space. So don't tell me that.

41:25Anthony Scaramucci:Yeah. Okay. Now we now may lose a whole load of founding members. Okay.

41:29Katty Kay:That's true. Okay.

41:30Anthony Scaramucci:Okay, guys, we will see you on Thursday. We'll have passed the deadline by then. So we'll find out what the president has decided.

41:37Katty Kay:See you then. Thanks guys.

42:04Anthony Scaramucci:We'll be right back. and half 2025 all rights reserved must provide very recent postpaid consumer mobile bill in the name of the person redeeming the deal additional terms conditions and restrictions apply usaa

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