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Welcome to the Beat. I'm Ari Melber. We begin with news that actually broke exactly 24 hours ago. In our hour, this ceasefire and possible de escalation in Donald Trump's war that he started with Iran. The US Is pulling back from the brink. Trump announcing that two week ceasefire after extreme, unusual and quite possibly criminal threats to literally annihilate. Annihilate, I should say, the civilization of Iran. The agreement's also an open question here. This would be day one. Trump and Hegseth have been trying to spin it, but we're going to go through exactly what the facts are here. We don't have a lot to show for the agreement yet
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with our Israeli partners. America's military achieved every single objective on
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plan, on schedule, exactly as laid out from day one. No, and very few people actually believe that. There's a lot of facts here that get in the way of those kind of claims. The war's not obviously over. There's no permanent victory on the energy issues or even the long term capabilities and weapons systems in Iran. This is a ceasefire of sorts and a lot of folks think that's better than the alternative. Whether that was continuing this war the way it was going or worse. If you took anything Donald Trump posted and said at face value, having the US go into this war crimes assault. Now when you look at the actual terms, there are some big sticking points today. Israel has resumed attacks on Lebanon. Iran has invoked that or claimed that as a violation of the ceasefire. There are reports that they have closed the strait in response to those very attacks. This is the AP reporting Iran also accusing the US of violating the truce, which could bring into doubt these hastily scheduled upcoming talks. And then there's the question of what the US strength and leverage is here, because the talks could start as soon as this Friday. The Iranian navy this morning was reportedly trying to still restrict the traffic at the strait. Now, nobody's trying to rush to count against progress, if there were progress. But it would seem that on day one, Iran is not exactly doing what Trump claimed they would do 24 hours ago. The Journal reporting this recording that was played to ships in the region there in that area, saying you must receive permission from the Iranian navy from passing through the strait. If a vessel tries to transit without permission, they will be destroyed. Iran's government signaling its intention to continue asserting influence over the waterway, the Journal reports, and noting that as of this report, which was just a few hours ago, today, most ships aren't moving. At a minimum, that is less than what Trump promised. At a maximum, it would suggest that Iran continues to do some of what it wants to do. Mind you, they've been bombed and attacked and hurt, but they are wielding huge geostrategic and energy power. And if they're spending today restricting those ships and tankers, then they're continuing to do that. Prices that have been rising since the beginning of the war did fall, we should note, below $100 a barrel because of the announced reopening of the strait. But to move on from day trading, that still raises the question of whether the straight will be meaningfully reopened on a long term basis. Otherwise the day trading can go back up. There's also been the erotic, erratic, shifting deadlines and then the caving from Trump in March. Remember, 48 hours, 5 days, 10 days. On Easter Sunday, we got this very extreme threat, which understandably drew a lot of concern across the Middle east and a lot of attention. But that didn't mean that people thought it would happen. That was the two weeks or face war crimes. Politico reporting that Iran's leadership structure is intact since, of course, the decapitation. So the Trump attacks did kill Iran's leaders, but they have been replaced with a hardline government and those hardliners have control. Some sanctions have been lifted, the enriched uranium is in Iran. So we have the full force, the American military, which as we've reported and experts have mentioned, has done what it has been asked to do. But that doesn't mean it can prevent Iran from turning one of the world's most important shipping lanes into, as Politico puts it, a de facto parking lot. Now, you could look at all this and say, oh, maybe it's bad news, maybe it's not perfect, but is everyone just out to criticize Trump? And by the way, he earned his share of criticism in threatening war crimes and attacking civilian population. The very things that the Western world and the United States and our allies have long bemoaned about dictatorships and terrorists. Remember, the big thing that divides us and terrorists, we say and have said for years, is that they target civilians. We don't. Except the president was now take that all together in his criticism and you can still say, but is this just a habit of this discourse? Or if you talk to people in the White House, they will tell you the media just starts out negative. Well, even take a look at how the agreement was received at Fox News. We have not reached any of those objectives. There are serious questions about the future of this agreement, this matter, all major nuclear facilities. That has not happened.