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- [00:00]
A
Hi everyone, it's Brian Kilmeade here. Are you tired of those uncomfortable dress shirts, especially when they bunch up under a sweater? If so, then you must check out Collars and company, makers of the dress collar polo. Listen up. These shirts are four way stretch, buttery soft polos with firm dress collars on them. So they give you the dress shirt look but extremely comfortable polo feel. You can wear them with anything under a sweater, with a blazer or by themselves as an elevated polo. They work for any occasion. These polos are perfect whether it's in the office, on a golf course or a night out. Collar Co. Is exploding and have gone viral on social media thanks to the 1 million investment they received on Shark Tank from Mark Cuban and Peter Jones. You don't have to worry about collars that flop down and spread out. They stay firm and sharp all day. It's an amazing array of sweaters, quarter zips, pants and outerwear. If you're looking for the performance dress shirt or polo that looks great all day, check out collars and co.com use promo code Brian for 15% off of any purchase of $100 or more. That's promo code BR Trey Inks is
- [01:05]
B
standing by right now, Fox News chief foreign correspondent. He's talking to us on his day off. Yesterday marks a thousand days since October 7th and man, has the world changed since, let alone here politically. Trey, your thoughts about the latest revelations coming out of the strait? And that is the Iranians are insisting that they are in control and you better use their side of the strait, not our side of the strait.
- [01:29]
C
Yeah, it's a dangerous game and it's a game the Iranians are used to playing because they know that ultimately if they have some control of the strait that they have leverage. And they lack a lot of leverage because much of their navy was taken out during Operation Epic Fury. And they also lack leverage because they're in a position now where their economy was suffering so greatly due to the US Naval blockade that they had to make some concessions in order to try and get some sanctions relief for their country and get money flowing back into the banks of Iran. And so it's a situation where the President will have to maintain a certain posture to make sure that the Iranians are a, not tolling the straits, but B, not threatening the shipping vessels that are passing through.
- [02:10]
B
So when we look at what's happening right now, there's a story in the New York Times today which you might not have gotten, but knowing you, you have that the administration was Worried that the Israelis were going to assassinate Ghabarov. I think you say his name better. He is the speaker of the House doing a lot of the negotiating. And the foreign Minister, Agarachi, they were going to kill him. And that they were urging them not to. And that to the point, they were actually warning Pakistan to warn Iran, look out. Again, no one's denying this. I have heard this. You've heard it probably firsthand. And I'm wondering, to me, they're clearly leaking from the White House what's going on here.
- [02:50]
C
Yeah, it may be a messaging campaign and specific leaks to try and send a message to the Iranian delegation. But both the New York Times and the Washington Post are reporting that not only the top negotiator, Mohamed Kalibov, but also Abbas Agarachi, the country's foreign minister, were going to be targeted by the Israelis. And ultimately, these reports indicate, according to U.S. officials, that there was actually a time in which the plane for the negotiators that they were flying on back to Tehran made what you could call an emergency landing along the border because they detected Israeli fighter jets crossing into Iranian territory. And the belief was, according to this report, that the plane was going to be shot down. And so this could be a leak that was purposely provided to reporters to scare the delegation, to keep them at the negotiating table. But as the President has said, he actually told the Iranians. The president told me this on the phone. He said he told the Iranians, when they basically were trying to close the Strait before, that they wouldn't make it back to their effing country if they ultimately closed the Strait of Hormuz. And so this report is not out of nowhere. And we have heard similar reports in the past. And I've talked with officials in the region who say that all officials in Iran remain on the target list for the Israelis. Because the Israelis don't see this as over. They see this as a pause in the fighting. And Israel's Defense Minister, Israel Katz, even said as recently as two days ago that the Israelis have been instructed to prepare independent plans unilaterally to strike Iran and officials there if these talks fail.
- [04:26]
B
Yeah, I saw that, too. So tell me about what you hear about our relationship with Saudi Arabia, that Marco Rubio, evidently the president's angry at the prince, and he's back angry. MBS is angry at us. And that is why when Secretary of State Rubio went over, he did not meet in Saudi Arabia. They were invited to the G7. They did not come. Do you have. Can you Give us an idea what's going on.
- [04:51]
C
What was really interesting today, Brian, is that we saw a delegation from Saudi Arabia in Tehran at the funeral for Iran's late Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Khamenei. And this delegation was led by the Deputy Foreign Minister of Saudi Arabia, which was quite interesting because Saudi Arabia came under direct Iranian attack during Operation Epic Fury, but yet they still sent a delegation to the funeral for the Supreme Leader. And there were these reports during the war that for a period of time, the Saudis actually stopped US jets from using their territory to launch attacks against Iran. But it's an interesting dynamic here because these Gulf countries, including Saudi Arabia, were not the intended targets for the Iranians, at least initially, but yet they decided to attack. And this took everyone from President Trump to, to the Israelis by surprise because this was a war between Israel and the United States against Iran, but yet Iran was lashing out against these Gulf countries. And they're still sending delegations to Tehran for this funeral. And it speaks to the politics behind the scenes and sort of the messaging that a lot of these Gulf countries want to have. They are not seen even by the Iranians as neutral parties anymore, but yet they're trying to maintain relations and even, according to some reports, create back channels that could circumvent the U.S. delegation and the Israelis to deal with the Iranians directly. And it raises real questions about the future because these countries are on the front lines of this war if it does resume.
- [06:20]
B
So trade. You think they're worried because they got hit and their missile defense did not stop all the drones and rockets from hitting targets?
- [06:29]
C
Certainly. And we also have to consider Iranian proxies in the region that threaten countries like Saudi Arabia. You have the Houthis that weren't so directly involved in the war, but they have the ability to launch missiles and drones. They've done it targeting Israel in the past and even a few times during the war, but not as directly as some had had thought they might. But that is one factor at play here. There's a lot of proxy fighting that takes place in Yemen, for example, and the Saudis are on one side of that proxy fighting. But then you have this question of the future. And again, this is considered a 60 day window. The President has indicated this is a ceasefire. This is an opportunity to see if the Iranians are willing to make serious nuclear concessions. And while at least initially, it does appear that some of the cracks in their public propaganda and messaging are starting to show we're a long way away from actually Having the Iranians give up their highly enriched uranium to stop expanding their ballistic missile program and to act as a good faith country in the region to keep the strand of Hormuz open and stop threatening regional countries along with US forces. Cheers to America's 250th birthday. Get 20% off your first purchase at foxnewswineshop.com with code FNRADIO20. 20% discount excludes wine club offers and cannot be combined with any other promotion. Expires July 31, 2026. Must be 21 or older to order. Please drink responsibly.
- [07:45]
B
So you wrote, you saw the Wall Street Journal story that the president had serious talks over the weekend about what a full scale back to war would look like. What do you think it would look like? And how. And we've talked to military people. How frustrated are they? They weren't able to finish the job which they wanted was at least two more weeks of bombing.
- [08:03]
C
This is a great question because the broad consensus here is that if there is another bombing campaign against the Iranian regime, if the targets are the same as before, the outcome will be the same as before. And the President talked about bridges and power plants, these things that would actually take the Iranians back even further than they already are. And the question is, is what ultimately the president would target if he ordered strikes against Iran again. And there's a lot of different targets on the table. One thing that the president has ruled out, at least in the conversations that I've had with him, are the desalinization plants. He feels that these would affect the civilian population too much. But again, the bridges and the power plants and these other things that were largely off limits is maybe not the right term, but were decidedly not targeted during the campaign, could be hit. There are other military targets, these production lines. And I think if we just look at the past three to four weeks, it shows that the Iranians still have the ability to rebuild, whether it's their missile capabilities, the drones that they use to threaten the shipping lanes, or even their air defense systems and radar sites. The question that many in the region have, how many radar, coastal radar sites do they have? Because every time CENTCOM announces that they're conducting these counter strikes as a result of the Iranians threatening shipping vessels, they say they hit coastal radar systems. And I did ask the President about this. I've asked other officials and they say, look, the Iranians had some things in storage. They do have the ability during the cease fire to rebuild in some capacity. But it does raise questions about what those targets would be. I think more broadly, when we look at what comes next, what didn't happen. And you remember in the early days of the war, it was day one or day two of Operation Epic Fury. The president came out and he addressed the Iranian people directly, and he said, take over your government institutions, keep records, and ultimately people will be brought to justice. Well, that didn't work. And that is the reality of the situation. This is not a campaign that can be concluded from the air. If the goal is regime change now for the Americans, the goal is not regime change. The goal is weakening the ballistic missile program. It is taking out the officials who are unwilling to negotiate, and it's keeping the Strait of Hormuz open. The Israelis have a different agenda. They have a different goal here because they are in the neighborhood and they are more directly threatened by the regime. And also Iranian proxies like Hezbollah. And so that is part of the reason that we've seen the divide, actually, from President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, because while they have some similar objectives, they have other objectives that don't actually align. And the president wants to give diplomacy a chance here to see if the Iranians will make these concessions before he decides to return to war.
- [10:31]
B
I want you to hear Rebecca Heinrichs, who really knows the region, what she said the Iran is up to. Cut 45. Cut 44. Cut 44.
- [10:39]
D
We should expect the Iranians to make the MOU very not only difficult for the United States, but difficult for President Trump politically. They're not going to make this easy for him as they go into this election. The other thing I would just flag is that we are going to now witness the funeral for the supreme leader that the Iranians have not done yet. That begins Friday. So Americans are now going to escape. See? Death to America. Death to Israel. All of these signs reminding Americans who this regime really is, which is a regime committed to our destruction and the destruction of our allies in the region.
- [11:09]
B
What have you seen at the funeral, Trey?
- [11:12]
C
The funeral is a massive display of Iranian propaganda. There are posters and flags. It is a country that is mourning, and the 90 million people there do not have an option whether or not to participate. There are estimates that say 20 million people will actually be participating in funeral processions and events across Iran. What we've seen today, which again is quite interesting, is so many Gulf countries, many of whom actually came under Iranian fire, sending delegations to Tehran to participate, whether it's Saudi Arabia or Oman, to see these officials there. It raises questions about the actual situation in the region because you have these officials who are there mourning the Supreme Leader who was taken out in the first strike campaign of the war. But these are countries that were commander attack from Iran. So at least today that is what the focus is. The images that we've seen from Tehran show mourners in the streets. They show people with flags, they show banners. And even on social media, some of the journalists who actually arrived there to cover showed these black flags in the airport in Tehran. The rest of the funeral will actually also be quite, quite big. There are going to be personalized floats that were made to carry the coffin of the Supreme Leader. There are going to be all of these funeral processions taking place and it's actually not supposed to end until July 9th. This is a five day funeral procession and it speaks again to how important Iran's Supreme Leader was to that country and his son Most Tala Khamenei. Again, we've not yet seen him since he has taken power and there are questions about his state and if he is critically injured following the US and Israeli strikes that took place against Iran.
- [13:00]
B
Yeah, the President thinks he's alive but banged up. No question about it. It's a target rich environment, isn't it? And that's why I believe that we're pretty safe on July 4th, because if they decide to disrupt our birthday, we'll disrupt their little funeral.
- [13:16]
C
The timing is quite interesting, the fact that the fourth of July celebrations in the United States will be taking place and on a split screen there will be funeral processions going on for Iran's Supreme Leader taken out in US And Israeli strikes on the first day of the war. Again, it speaks to the reality in the region right now. This is a cease fire. The war is still there in the background. And again, the President maintains, he says, the ability to use both military force and diplomacy moving forward if this doesn't lead to a changed regime.
- [13:45]
B
You covered both wars, Iran as well as Ukraine. I really believe we need another delegation. If you have somebody working on Iran, Witkoff and Kushner, somebody else got to do Ukraine, just don't leave it. There are other people there. It looks like the Russians are in, are in hell right now. They can't even. They've lost a third of their refineries, 30% of all their refineries. And so many of their cities are now in the crosshairs of Ukraine because of their missile technology. In fact, they hit Siberia, which is 1500 miles away. Here's Dan Hoffman, CIA guy who was stationed in Moscow cut 47. I think Putin is stuck in this war. He sees no way out. And again, these most recent barbaric attacks on Ukrainian civilians just reflect his desperation. Do you get the sense from people that the Russians never expected to be in this place?
- [14:36]
C
Yeah, the Ukrainians have increased their ability to counterattack and they've been targeting refineries just outside of Moscow. Some of the imagery is quite striking. You just see these massive fires as a result of the Iranian drones that are being used across the border to hit the Russians. And it's something that the Russians did not expect. Remember, the Russians thought they were going to take the Ukrainian capital of Kiev in three days. We were there on the ground the night the Russians invaded and there was a real tension across the city in Kiev because there was concern that the city could fall in a matter of days. Well, years later, the Ukrainians are still fighting for the sovereignty of their country. But the Russians continue to target not military installations in Ukraine. They launched these missile and drone attacks, but civilians earlier this week. In one night, Brian, there were 70 missiles and 501 way attack drones launched at Ukrainian cities. The majority of them targeted the capital of Kiev, a city of 3 million people in Europe. Eighteen people were killed, dozens injured. And according to President zelensky, there were 20 different impact sites in Kyiv alone. And that's not to mention the eastern part of Ukraine in the Donbas region and Luhans and done yet. These eastern provinces where the Russians continuously are losing thousands of forces in order to take sometimes just a few hundred feet of territory. And recent reports from the ground, I've been talking with people there indicate that the lines that the Russians actually say they hold don't reflect reality. Sometimes they're 10 miles off because they'll send these individual soldiers or groups of one or two soldiers to the front, they'll plant a flag, take a photo with a drone to say that they hold this territory and then immediately get taken out by the Ukrainians. In this game of cat and mouth that takes place on the eastern front lines, it speaks to the Russian effort to try and show that they are winning in a real war of attrition. The Ukrainians have defended their territory for years now and their cities are getting hit hard because they need assistance, they need air defense. And the Russians are targeting the capital of Kyiv where there are Western embassies, there are American diplomats and there are civilians who are trying to survive. And as this war continues, the Russians continue to ramp up their attacks against the civilian population because they realize they are not winning. Yeah.
- [16:53]
B
I mean, they got to up the sanctions and they got to get them more Patriots. I know we don't have a ton of. But you give them the Thaad missile system, the Patriots, they flat out can win and could finish them off. Trey, thanks for what you do, joining us on a day off and your great reports through the week. This story is not going away, sadly, because the MOU is such a document that's up for interpretation three weeks after it was released. Thanks, Trey.
- [17:17]
C
Thank you.