Iran officials are 'idiots' if they don't show up in Pakistan, political expert says

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]Mark Thiessen and Guy Benson. Guy is host of the Guy Benson Show.

[00:00:04]Always great to have both of you with us. Thank you for for joining me. Mark, let me start with you. A couple things strike me.

[00:00:10]You hear that sort of harder line from the foreign minister Araqchi and it comes a day after one of the IRGC voices on social media called him an idiot.

[00:00:21]So you're seeing this dynamic play out in the tensions on the Iranian side and you know, from what we know, this is such a splintered leadership. It's even I think a stretch to call it leadership.

[00:00:32]They're all over the place. And also in that time frame, we have boarded and seized a huge Iranian tanker that had cargo on it from China. So where do you think we are right now, Mark?

[00:00:47]Well, they're idiots if they don't show up in Islamabad because they can either resume the negotiations or we can resume bombing. Those are the choices that they face right now. And the reality is is that they were getting pummeled before this before this operation before the ceasefire took place. If you just look at General Keane and the list of how many targets we've taken out something like 80% of their military capacity and we can take out the we need another 10 to 12 days to take out 100% or at least 99. All right. So General Admiral Cooper can do that very very easily. And so and then on top of that you have the blockade where we have completely shut down there we're shutting down their economy. They they not only can they not only export oil, they can't import anything. So so you know, there was this whole controversy. Should they will they take Kharg Island? You know, well, there's a risk because you put US military on forces they they might be they might be targets. We've shut down we've effectively taken Kharg Island by shutting down the entire they're shutting down all their ports with the blockade. So they're in a world of hurt right now and they need to and they need to get serious and and sit down with the United States because the alternative to to negotiating is an end to the ceasefire and that's something they don't want.

[00:01:57]>> Yeah, you know, it's interesting guy. I I hear from people who are you know, watching the Iranian side of this who are very supportive of just leaving the blockade in place longer and longer and you hear the president say that time is on their side. What's your take on where we are with this?

[00:02:17]Well, the regime is in shambles, Martha.

[00:02:20]You have a new supreme leader quote and quote who's incapacitated or dead.

[00:02:25]His predecessor, his father, is dead.

[00:02:29]You have of the top leadership dead and you have the new leadership bickering really nastily amongst themselves, right? They are bitterly at odds reportedly within their own ranks. In fact, the Pakistanis reportedly who were supposed to be sort of looking over this whole thing and mediating the conversations on their territory between the US and Iran, they spend a lot of their time just trying to break up effectively fights within the Iranian camp itself because you have the hardliners, some of them, who evidently want to cry uncle and come to some conclusion and get this over with because they're getting crushed.

[00:03:09]Then you have the harder liners, IRGC and others who want no part of a deal and I guess want to fight to the very end. So that's a big mess that they've got on their side, which then raises the question, what can we realistically achieve right now if they're that splintered? Can we strike a deal with half of the regime if the guys with the guns don't agree to it? That's an open question. Yeah, I I mean terrorism is their backbone, Mark. It's what they've done for 47 years. The the more conventional warfare setup which we've watched for the last 6 weeks, they just got completely wiped off the table in that way. But when you look at what's going on with the So the president obviously, you know, you could hold this blockade for a long time. But the problem with that is that oil prices are going to go up. He's looking at the midterm period. He wants to get this solved. What about that part of the equation, Mark?

[00:04:05]Yeah, so first of all, the the Iranians need a deal much more than Donald Trump does because he can achieve all of his objectives without a deal. You know, what are his objectives? To completely disarm the Iranians, to to shut down to use the economy to to get them to capitulate, to get the nuclear dust. We can do all those to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. We can do all those things militarily. Admiral Cooper, if he's given the order within 2 days he has the he has the Strait of Hormuz open. And then the only ships that are going in and out, the whole world's economy is going to be functioning. All the ships will be going in and out with a US escort. The only ships that won't be going in and out are Iranian ones. So and we we could theoretically it's a it's a difficult operation as Jack Keane has pointed out on this air, but we can take the nuclear dust. We can carry out an operation just as we got our pilot out, we can get the nuclear dust out if we have to. It's a very complex operation, but it can be done. So they have they have no cards.

[00:04:57]We have all the cards.

[00:04:58]>> Let me quickly ask you guys about what's happening on the US side because it seems like you know, people on the left side of the of the ledger just they cannot find one thing that they like about this to the point where Chris Murphy and I know what he said online is getting a lot of attention, but I keep going back to what he said in Barcelona, Spain.

[00:05:17]While he was overseas, here's what he said. Watch this. Senator. I want to bring you greetings as well from a nation that is in crisis.

[00:05:27]I'm not going to sugarcoat the gravity of what we face right now in the United States. This is the most significant threat to American democracy since the Civil War.

[00:05:37]Donald Trump in our country is trying to end our democracy.

[00:05:41]We're We are not on the verge of a of a totalitarian takeover. We are in the middle of it.

[00:05:49]In Spain where they refused to meet the NATO measure of GDP investment in their own defense, Guy?

[00:05:59]Yeah, he said that at this global confab of socialists and communists hosted by a government or a country in Spain that is a complete deadbeat in NATO, is obsessed with hating the Jewish state, is actively undermining US interests as we're trying to take out the death to America regime, that is struggling economically, and that is just giving amnesty to hundreds of thousands of migrants, illegal immigrants in that country. That's where one of our US senators and Governor Walls went there also by the way from Minnesota to trash Trump, trash the United States in front of that crowd overseas. One of several bad looks this week for Chris Murphy.

[00:06:38]Yeah, several bad looks indeed. Guy, Mark, thank you very much. Be sure to like and subscribe for all the Fox News latest on YouTube and catch full shows streaming now on Fox 1.