White House Energy Secretary Chris Wright called President Donald Trump a “creative negotiator” when asked about his threats to “knock out every single” power plant and bridge in Iran.
As peace talks between the United States and Iran appear to be at a stalemate amid a tenuous ceasefire agreement and continued jockeying over control of the Strait of Hormuz, the president demanded Iran accept America’s terms or face his full wrath in a Sunday morning Truth Social post.
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“NO MORE MR. NICE GUY!” Trump declared, calling the US’s diplomatic offer “very fair and reasonable.”
“The president is using every way he can to get leverage over the regime and bring this conflict to an end,” he told host Shannon Bream. “He’s a creative negotiator, he uses pressure in different ways.”
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“He uses uncertainty in different ways and I think as you’ve seen in the last 16 months, generally it leads to good results,” the cabinet member went on. “I don’t think we’ll see any surprises here.”
Wright envisioned reaching a “nice end to this conflict,” which he said would rescue Iran’s regional neighbors from “constant terror” and also guarantee a free “flow of goods” through the Strait of Hormuz.
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“Imagine a nuclear armed Iran, not far away from that reality,” he said. “This is going to put an end to it.”
Wright stuck by his support for Trump’s strategy in a separate Sunday interview on CNN, where host Jake Tapper asked the secretary if he was worried strikes on civilian infrastructure could “constitute a war crime.”
“The president is looking for maximum leverage,” he said, later adding, “No, I’m not worried about that.”
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Earlier this month, Trump triggered international panic with a near-identical ultimatum, telling Iran to “open the fuckin’ Strait” of Hormuz within two days or find themselves “living in hell” via Truth Social.
After upping the ante with a post warning “a whole civilization will die tonight” just hours before his 8pm April 7 deadline, a two-week ceasefire was announced.
The job of vice president is often a thankless one. John Nance Garner, President Franklin Roosevelt’s first vice president, called it “a no man’s land somewhere between the legislative and executive branch,” and reportedly once told Lyndon Johnson, a future vice president, that the office “isn’t worth a pitcher of warm spit.”
That’s something that Vice President JD Vance may have learned over the weekend ― although the circumstances are a bit different than in Garner’s day.
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Over the past week, Vance embarked on his most important foreign policy missions yet. President Donald Trump sent Vance, his most likely successor in 2028, to Hungary to campaign for the besieged autocrat Viktor Orban as he struggled for the first time in the polls in 16 years ahead of Sunday’s election. And then, Vance led the US delegation to negotiate a permanent ceasefire agreement with Iran in Pakistan.
These were two of the most important priorities of the Trump administration and the larger far-right populist movement that it represents. And they both flamed out, rather spectacularly.
Orban lost on Sunday to an opposition coalition led by Peter Magyar, a former member of Orban’s party who defected in reaction to the regime’s corruption and proud illiberalism. Magyar’s coalition didn’t just beat Orban’s Fidesz party, it won a crushing victory with a supermajority of legislative seats capable of repealing Orban’s illiberal constitutional changes.
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In Pakistan, during negotiations over Trump’s war of choice against Iran — which has deeply undermined his core political pitch that America should put American interests first — the US proved unable to assert its national interests. After less than 24 hours of negotiation, the Vance-led team seemingly walked away from the table having reached no deal.
It could be said that the advance of a global right-wing populist movement, the kind that Trump hints to as a mandate for his own administration, hinged on these two events. And Vance, put forward as the American face for them, promptly face-planted.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and Vice President JD Vance during a campaign rally in Budapest ahead of the Hungarian parliamentary election.
Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images
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Trump’s second term is modeled on Orban’s autocratic rule. The Trumpist right has long looked to Orban’s Hungary for what they should do to consolidate power: defund universities, gerrymander legislative districts, fix election rules and take over the media. The Heritage Foundation even partnered with Orban’s Danube Institute to help write the Project 2025 roadmap for Trump’s second term.
“There is an alternative” to the American and European models of government, Vance said on April 8, “and it’s right here in Hungary.”
The war in Iran, meanwhile, greatly threatens the whole right-wing project. This war of choice not only undermined the Trumpian idea that the United States not get bogged down in foreign quagmires, it also threatens every American’s ― and everyone in the world’s ― economic well-being. Six weeks of war have already caused inflation to spike while the full ripple effects of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz have yet not been fully felt. If Trump has any hope of matching Orban’s 16 years of success in instituting a competitive authoritarian regime, he needs to protect his party from heavy losses in the 2026 midterms. It doesn’t help when he causes economic pain for everyone.
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But Trump has reportedly gotten tired of the war he started and has been looking for off-ramps.
“[Trump] is getting a little bored with Iran,” a White House official told MSNOW. “Not that he regrets it or something — he’s just bored and wants to move on.”
That means someone else has to step in and clean up the mess. And that person is Vance, who has hitched himself to a massive loss for right-wing populists and, despite reports that he was opposed to the War in Iran, is left holding the bag for the war’s potentially catastrophic economic impacts as the face of the failed negotiations.
As Vance, who has no diplomatic or foreign policy experience, announced that Iran has “chosen not to accept our terms,” which he characterised as “our final and best offer,” Trump sat octagon-side at a UFC cage match with Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Oil futures jumped back above $100 after falling to the low-90s after the April 7 announcement of a 10-day ceasefire.
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Mohammad Javad Zarif, the former Iranian foreign minister who reached the 2015 nuclear deal with the Obama administration that Trump tore up, pointed to Vance’s words as the exact reason why Iran could not trust the US position.
“No negotiations – at least with Iran – will succeed based on ‘our/your terms,’” Zarif posted on social media. “The US must learn: you can’t dictate terms to Iran.”
There were other signs this weekend that Vance’s political clout is under strain. Vance, who has spoken often and publicly about his Catholic faith (he has an upcoming memoir about his conversion), has been conspicuously silent since Trump attempted to pick a fight with Pope Leo XIV on social media on Sunday.
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Vance’s inability to smooth the way with the pontiff has been a point of embarrassment before. Earlier this year, the American-born Leo apparently declined an invitation, delivered by Vance, to visit the United States for the nation’s 250th anniversary. The Vatican announced he will instead visit a Mediterranean site known for migrant crossings. And Leo’s predecessor, Pope Francis, actively condemned Vance’s religious-tinged political rhetoric around migrants in a 2025 letter to U.S. bishops. Vance was one of the last official visitors to Francis before he died in April 2025.
Trump’s Truth Social tirade against Leo was, ironically, over the pope’s criticisms of the war with Iran. Now, with the Vance-led peace talks stalled and the vice president apparently unable to soften the blow as his boss escalates a new feud with the Vatican, it seems to leave Vance 0/3 on attempts to influence the world stage.
Vance’s forays into foreign affairs are representative of how the modern vice presidency has changed from when Garner called it a no man’s land. The office has become either a power of its own, as when more seasoned political veterans like Dick Cheney and Joe Biden occupied the office, or, more frequently, a stepping stone for a successor, as with vice presidents Al Gore and Kamala Harris. (Perhaps Mike Pence would be included here if he had the courage.)
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And Vance clearly sees himself as the heir to Trump’s Republican Party ahead of 2028. But he seems to have been set up to fail. His assignments are beginning to look like President Joe Biden’s decision to put Harris in charge of diplomacy to stem migration from Central America in 2021 ― a thankless job on an issue that wasn’t working for Democrats at the time.
It may well turn out that Vance’s vice presidency ― thanks to the new added responsibilities ― is still not worth a pitcher of warm spit.
Subscribe to Commons People, the podcast that makes politics easy. Every week, Kevin Schofield and Kate Nicholson unpack the week’s biggest stories to keep you informed. Join us for straightforward analysis of what’s going on at Westminster.
“I don’t want a Pope who criticizes the President of the United States because I’m doing exactly what I was elected, IN A LANDSLIDE, to do, setting Record Low Numbers in Crime, and creating the Greatest Stock Market in History.”
Trump also took credit for the Chicago-born pope’s election, claiming the College of Cardinals selected the first-ever American pontiff last year because “they thought that would be the best way to deal with President Donald J. Trump.”
President Donald Trump railed against Pope Leo while speaking with reporters at Joint Base Andrews on Sunday night.
AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson
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He repeated his grievances a little later when he spoke to reporters as he returned to Washington from Miami on Sunday night.
“I don’t think he’s doing a very good job,” Trump said. “He likes crime, I guess.”
He also called the pontiff “a very liberal person” and “a man that doesn’t believe in stopping crime.”
“I’m not a fan of Pope Leo,” he added.
Trump’s attack came after the pope repeatedly called for peace amid the ongoing war with Iran.
He did so again on Saturday.
“Enough of the idolatry of self and money!” Leo said during an evening prayer service, according to The Associated Press. “Enough of the display of power! Enough of war!”
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The pope did not mention Trump by name as he described the “delusion of omnipotence” as a threat to global stability, but the comments apparently triggered the president.
I doubt Pope Leo XIV will lose any sleep over this, before he begins his pilgrimage to Africa tomorrow. But the rest of us should. Because it is unhinged, uncharitable and unchristian. Is there no bottom to this moral squalor? pic.twitter.com/XRr9lpv4ZF
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Is there no bottom to this moral squalor? pic.twitter.com/XRr9lpv4ZF— James Martin, SJ (@JamesMartinSJ) April 13, 2026\n\n\n","options":{"_hide_media":{"label":"Hide photos, videos, and cards","value":false},"_maxwidth":{"label":"Adjust width","placeholder":"220-550, in px","value":""},"_theme":{"value":"","values":{"dark":"Use dark theme"}}},"provider_name":"Twitter","thumbnail_height":1067,"thumbnail_url":"https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HFwCKWYWgAEeU8k.jpg:large","thumbnail_width":926,"title":"James Martin, SJ on Twitter / 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I doubt Pope Leo XIV will lose any sleep over this, before he begins his pilgrimage to Africa tomorrow. But the rest of us should. Because it is unhinged, uncharitable and unchristian. Is there no bottom to this moral squalor? pic.twitter.com/XRr9lpv4ZF
Hey @GOP, you good with your guy directly attacking the Pope now?
We know the leadership of the Republican Party is on their knees (not praying!) but if anyone over there still has a spine, this is an easy one! https://t.co/lSsZHk6tvQ
— Governor Newsom Press Office (@GovPressOffice) April 13, 2026
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Hey @GOP, you good with your guy directly attacking the Pope now?
We know the leadership of the Republican Party is on their knees (not praying!) but if anyone over there still has a spine, this is an easy one! https://t.co/lSsZHk6tvQ
— Governor Newsom Press Office (@GovPressOffice) April 13, 2026
As a Catholic, I find it abhorrent that the President of the United States would publicly attack the Successor of St. Peter. Donald Trump is flailing. His war in Iran has led to the death and injury of American servicemembers and the death of Iranian children. He will attack… pic.twitter.com/fl5d1G2QVP
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As a Catholic, I find it abhorrent that the President of the United States would publicly attack the Successor of St. Peter. Donald Trump is flailing. His war in Iran has led to the death and injury of American servicemembers and the death of Iranian children. He will attack… pic.twitter.com/fl5d1G2QVP
I try and focus on policy and ignore all the grotesque nonsense Trump spews on a daily basis but as a Catholic I can’t stay silent. This must be condemned by every Catholic, every Christian, indeed by everyone who follows any faith. Trump is an abomination https://t.co/XtxrFuNxMC
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I try and focus on policy and ignore all the grotesque nonsense Trump spews on a daily basis but as a Catholic I can’t stay silent. This must be condemned by every Catholic, every Christian, indeed by everyone who follows any faith. Trump is an abomination https://t.co/XtxrFuNxMC
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POTUS arguing about having the “greatest stock market” versus a Pope and wondering why Republicans are on path for the worst midterms ever… https://t.co/Oxyk7F19p5
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POTUS arguing about having the “greatest stock market” versus a Pope and wondering why Republicans are on path for the worst midterms ever… https://t.co/Oxyk7F19p5
Trump doesn’t realize what an absolute shitstorm he’s unleashing by acting so unhinged toward the Pope.
More then a few Catholics have obvious disagreements and dissentions from the Church, but just like when a nation or family is attacked by an outsider, a lot of us are going… https://t.co/Jgxt4j1ZRH
","type":"rich","meta":{"author":"Robert Kearney","author_url":"https://twitter.com/Robkearney1981","cache_age":86400,"description":"Trump doesn’t realize what an absolute shitstorm he’s unleashing by acting so unhinged toward the Pope. More then a few Catholics have obvious disagreements and dissentions from the Church, but just like when a nation or family is attacked by an outsider, a lot of us are going… https://t.co/Jgxt4j1ZRH— Robert Kearney (@Robkearney1981) April 13, 2026\n\n\n","options":{"_hide_media":{"label":"Hide photos, videos, and cards","value":false},"_maxwidth":{"label":"Adjust width","placeholder":"220-550, in px","value":""},"_theme":{"value":"","values":{"dark":"Use dark theme"}}},"provider_name":"Twitter","title":"Robert Kearney on Twitter / 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Trump doesn’t realize what an absolute shitstorm he’s unleashing by acting so unhinged toward the Pope.
More then a few Catholics have obvious disagreements and dissentions from the Church, but just like when a nation or family is attacked by an outsider, a lot of us are going… https://t.co/Jgxt4j1ZRH
Subscribe to Commons People, the podcast that makes politics easy. Every week, Kevin Schofield and Kate Nicholson unpack the week’s biggest stories to keep you informed. Join us for straightforward analysis of what’s going on at Westminster.
Less than two hours before the deadline he imposed, Donald Trump announced he is holding off on his threat to destroy Iran’s “whole civilisation” for two weeks.
His statement, which came with the caveat that Iran must reopen the Strait of Hormuz, also said Iran presented a “10-point proposal” that is “workable.”
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The Strait of Hormuz, a waterway between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman that serves as a channel for transporting oil and gas, is controlled by Iran and is integral to the global economy.
“This will be a double sided CEASEFIRE! The reason for doing so is that we have already met and exceeded all Military objectives, and are very far along with a definitive Agreement concerning Longterm PEACE with Iran, and PEACE in the Middle East,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post.
“Almost all of the various points of past contention have been agreed to between the United States and Iran, but a two week period will allow the Agreement to be finalized and consummated.”
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel also backed the ceasefire, but noted that the deal doesn’t apply to its conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon, according to The Associated Press and Reuters.
“Israel supports President Trump’s decision to suspend strikes against Iran for two weeks subject to Iran immediately opening the straits and stopping all attacks on the US, Israel and countries in the region,” the Israeli prime minister’s account shared on X.
Shortly after Trump’s announcement, Iran’s Supreme National Security Council confirmed it had agreed to the two-week ceasefire.
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“It is emphasized that this does not signify the termination of the war,” Iran’s statement said. “Our hands remain upon the trigger, and should the slightest error be committed by the enemy, it shall be met with full force.”
Iran Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi said in a statement that “safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz will be possible via coordination with Iran’s Armed Forces and with due consideration of technical limitations” for two weeks.
Yet soon thereafter, missiles were detected by Israel, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Kuwait.
Iran’s Supreme National Security Council also detailed alleged provisions of a 10-point plan in a statement, NBC News and The Associated Press reported.
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Its characterisation included the “withdrawal of US combat forces from all bases and positions in the region” and “controlled passage through the Strait of Hormuz coordinated with Iran’s armed forces”.
“In the version released in Farsi, Iran included the phrase ‘acceptance of enrichment’ for its nuclear programme. But for reasons that remain unclear, that phrase was missing in English versions shared by Iranian diplomats to journalists,” AP noted.
The news of the two-week ceasefire was announced after Trump made a jarring threat against Iran earlier in the day.
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“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will,” Trump posted Tuesday on Truth Social, essentially threatening genocide if the Strait of Hormuz wasn’t open.
On February 28, the US and Israel began Operation Epic Fury, relentlessly bombarding Iran. Though contradictory or nonsensical statements from Trump are nothing new, the president has made numerous conflicting remarks about the war and the US’s objectives in Iran.
He has also backtracked on the deadlines he has imposed and the threats he has made multiple times. Experts have said that destroying Iran’s civilian infrastructure, as Trump has threatened to do, would be a war crime.
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“Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah,” Trump wrote on social media on Sunday.
Trump made a similar threat on March 21, demanding that the Strait be “FULLY OPEN” in 48 hours, or the U.S. would “obliterate their various POWER PLANTS, STARTING WITH THE BIGGEST ONE FIRST!”
But on March 23, Trump shelved those plans, saying the US had “had productive” discussions with Iran. He announced another 10-day postponement, “pausing the period of Energy Plant destruction” beginning on March 26, after the stock market dropped.
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On April 1, Trump said the strait needed to be “open, free and clear” for a ceasefire to be implemented. “Until then, we are blasting Iran into oblivion or, as they say, back to the Stone Ages!!!
The US Congress, which is on Easter recess, has largely remained quiet on the war and Trump’s recent genocidal threat.
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Subscribe to Commons People, the podcast that makes politics easy. Every week, Kevin Schofield and Kate Nicholson unpack the week’s biggest stories to keep you informed. Join us for straightforward analysis of what’s going on at Westminster.
The economic pain at home and civilian death in the Middle East wrought by President Donald Trump’s war on Iran could hit new levels in the coming days if he follows through on an oft-repeated threat to destroy Iran’s entire electrical infrastructure.
Trump says an attack, which would almost certainly be a war crime, will come if Iran does not agree to a “deal” by Tuesday night. That country’s leaders will likely hit back in kind against Gulf states that are helping the United States, according to military and Iran experts.
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“Iran’s only retaliatory capability is to target America’s immediate allies in the Gulf, and Israel, if possible,” said Ray Takeyh of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Iran has, since the war began, struck military targets used by US forces in Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. It has also targeted civilian infrastructure, but attacks on its own civilian infrastructure are likely to prompt further escalation. One especially life-threatening possibility is attacks on the Gulf states’ water desalination plants, which are even more critical to those predominantly desert countries than the ones in Iran.
“Iran has already demonstrated both its willingness and ability to retaliate in kind should the US and Israel escalate strikes on Iranian civilian infrastructure,” said Mona Yacoubian, an analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
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“Bahrain and the UAE are among the likely countries to be hit. Israeli targets may prove more challenging, but Iran will certainly attempt to lash out at Israel as well.”
Such retaliation would dramatically increase the human suffering Trump’s war has already brought to the region, particularly if the damage to desalination plants reduces critical drinking water supply for residents.
Thirteen US service members have died in the war, with hundreds more injured. US and Israeli strikes in Iran have also killed at least 1,500 civilians, according to a human-rights group, including 175 at a girls school in the first hours of the attack.
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Iran is also likely to hit more oil production and distribution facilities in the region, which could further inflame the world’s oil market. Crude oil prices have increased about 50% since Trump launched the war, with petrol prices up more than a dollar a gallon in America.
Industry executive Matt Randolph, though, points out that it could get even worse if Iran, with its Houthi allies in Yemen, chooses to close the entrance to the Red Sea as it has already done at Hormuz, the entrance to the Persian Gulf.
“If the response by Iran is to close the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, and I believe they will, then oil prices jump a lot,” he said. “They did it briefly in 2024 just for fun. Just to see if they could.”
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The Houthis attacked commercial shipping that year in retaliation for Israel’s total war approach in Gaza that wound up killing many tens of thousands of civilians there. Red Sea traffic was reduced dramatically for a period.
These possibilities did not appear to concern Trump on Monday. Speaking to reporters at the annual White House Easter Egg Roll, he said Iran was not ready to accede to his demands to end the war.
“They just don’t want to say ‘uncle.’ They don’t want to cry, as the expression goes, ‘uncle,’ but they will. And if they don’t, they’ll have no bridges, they’ll have no power plants, they’ll have no anything. I won’t ― I won’t go further, because there are other things that are worse than those two,” he said.
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Hours later at a White House news conference he called to celebrate the recovery of two Air Force crew members whose F-15 fighter plane was shot down in Iran late last week, Trump repeated that his deadline for Iran to capitulate was just over a day away.
“We’re giving them till tomorrow, eight o’clock eastern time, and after that they’re going to have no bridges, they’re going to have no power plants. Stone Ages. Yeah, Stone Ages,” he said.
Asked whether that level of destruction would not necessarily harm civilians, Trump claimed that everyday Iranians want to be attacked.
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“They would be willing to ― they would be willing ― and it’s suffering. They would be willing to suffer that in order to have freedom. The Iranians have ― and we’ve had numerous intercepts: ‘Please keep bombing,’ bombs that are dropping near their homes, ‘Please keep bombing, do it.’ And these are people that are living where the bombs are exploding,” he said. “And when we leave and we’re not hitting those areas, they’re saying, ‘Please come back, come back, come back.’ These are the people.”
What precisely he wants from Iran, however, remains unclear. On several occasions since he began his air attack on February 28, Trump demanded regime change in Iran, but on Monday he said the regime has already changed. He continues to insist that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon while also saying that their programme to make one was “obliterated” in last June’s attacks.
And on Monday, he would not even say that reopening the Strait of Hormuz to unfettered oil tanker traffic was an absolute must ― which was the subject of his Easter demand that Iran “Open the Fuckin’ Strait” – because Iran could effectively close the strait merely by claiming to have laid mines in it.
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“They’re very good bullshit artists,” he said.
Trump also again refused to lay out what plan he has, if any, to conclude the war. “I have the best plan of all, but I’m not going to tell you what my plan is,” he said.
He also waxed poetic about an era when larger countries could steal natural resources from smaller ones — known as “pillaging” and defined as a war crime by the Geneva Conventions — and wished he could “take” Iran’s oil.
“I’ve said, why don’t we use it — ‘To the victor, go the spoils’ — and we don’t have that. We haven’t had that in this country probably in 100 years, because even the Second World War, you look at the Second World War, we didn’t have it with the Second World,” he said, before adding that he is good at languages and can probably get elected president of Venezuela after he leaves the White House.
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Trump has not ruled out using troops for a ground assault, but has not assembled anywhere near the size of a force necessary to seize and hold Iran’s oil production infrastructure.
When asked specifically whether he was trying to wind the war down or ramp it up, Trump responded: “I can’t tell you. I don’t know.”
Subscribe to Commons People, the podcast that makes politics easy. Every week, Kevin Schofield and Kate Nicholson unpack the week’s biggest stories to keep you informed. Join us for straightforward analysis of what’s going on at Westminster.
National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent resigned abruptly on Tuesday in protest of President Donald Trump’s war in Iran, now in its third week, accusing Israel of repeatedly luring the United States into conflicts.
“I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby,” Kent said in his resignation letter to Trump.
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He criticised Israel in harsh and at times feverish terms, bizarrely accusing the country of also being responsible for US involvement in the 2003 Iraq War and of “manufacturing” the Syrian civil war.
A political appointee who was confirmed last summer, Kent served under Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, a longtime critic of overseas military entanglements who has nonetheless been silent on Trump’s decision to start another war in the Middle East.
Trump has struggled to explain why he agreed to attack Iran when he did, alluding to vague threats the nation posed to US interests, as Americans start seeing higher costs at home. Thirteen US service members have been killed and around 200 injured in the conflict so far.
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Kent said in his letter that he supported “the values and foreign policies” that Trump campaigned on in his past three presidential campaigns. Trump went so far as to dub himself the “President of Peace” in the last election cycle.
Kent believes, however, that “high-ranking Israeli officials and influential members of the American media deployed a misinformation campaign that wholly undermined” Trump’s platform and “sowed pro-war sentiments to encourage a war with Iran.”
He went on, delving deeper into the supposed conspiracy: “This echo chamber was used to deceive you into believing that Iran posed an imminent threat to the United States, and that should you strike now, there was a clear path to a swift victory. This was a lie and is the same tactic the Israelis used to draw us into the disastrous Iraq war that cost our nation the lives of thousands of our best men and women.”
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Joseph Kent, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, is sworn in during a House Homeland Security Committee hearing on Dec. 11, 2025.
Bloomberg via Getty Images
“You can reverse course and chart a new path for our nation, or you can allow us to slip further toward decline and chaos,” Kent wrote. “You hold the cards.”
Kent is a military veteran with 11 combat deployments under his belt. His wife, Shannon, was working in Navy intelligence when she was killed in Syria in 2019.
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He mentioned both of these facts in his letter, saying that he “cannot support sending the next generation off to fight and die in a war that serves no benefit to the American people nor justifies the cost of American lives.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson pushed back on the letter’s contents.
“I don’t know where Joe Kent is getting his information,” Johnson told reporters.
He said that he attended national security meetings with other Gang of Eight lawmakers — top Republicans and Democrats in both chambers of Congress — and that the group was shown evidence of an imminent threat.
But Democratic Senator Mark Warner, who was also in the meetings, has said that was not the case.
Taylor Budowich, a former deputy chief of staff in the Trump White House, smeared Kent as a “crazed egomaniac who was often at the centre of national security leaks, while rarely (never?) producing any actual work.”
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“This isn’t some principled resignation — he just wanted to make a splash before getting canned. What a loser,” Budowich said on X.
After much reflection, I have decided to resign from my position as Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, effective today.
I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this… pic.twitter.com/prtu86DpEr
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Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this… pic.twitter.com/prtu86DpEr— Joe Kent (@joekent16jan19) March 17, 2026\n\n\n","options":{"_hide_media":{"label":"Hide photos, videos, and cards","value":false},"_maxwidth":{"label":"Adjust width","placeholder":"220-550, in px","value":""},"_theme":{"value":"","values":{"dark":"Use dark theme"}}},"provider_name":"Twitter","thumbnail_height":1600,"thumbnail_url":"https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HDnawxTW8AAUAMR.jpg:large","thumbnail_width":1236,"title":"Joe Kent on Twitter / 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After much reflection, I have decided to resign from my position as Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, effective today.
I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this… pic.twitter.com/prtu86DpEr
