US should NOT do this until Iran produces nuclear dust, Marc Thiessen stresses

Added: 2026-05-30

[00:00:01]So, wouldn't you like to be a fly on the wall in the situation room where they just wrapped a meeting where President Trump said he would come to a final determination on whether or not there is an acceptable arrangement to come to some sort of agreement with Tyrron at least in the short term uh before the further issues are sort of nailed down here as well. So, uh let's bring in Mark Tissson, Fox News contributor. Um Mark just wrote a piece about really warning about the outcome of these discussions and what to be cautious about as you look and listen to both sides here.

[00:00:36]Iran's side just keeps saying, you know, we don't we don't agree to any of this.

[00:00:39]>> Yeah.

[00:00:40]>> Uh and President Trump has been quite clear on what he wants out of this deal.

[00:00:43]Where do you see it? Well, let's let's let's start by with the positive, which is that the decision to to launch Operation Epic Epic Fury is one of the most courageous decisions that any American president has made in my lifetime. And it has done devastating damage to Iran. So, when people are saying this is just like the JCPOA, no, it's not. 13,500 strikes by the US, 8,000 strikes by the Israelis, 82% of their defense industrial base destroyed, their ability to build uh build missiles, their ability to build drones, their ability to uh build navy, their navy is at the bottom of the uh of the Gulf. Their air force can't fly any sordes. So this is serious serious damage that has been done. Um however uh what Iran has figured out is that they may not have a nuclear weapon, but they have another weapon. and they have the straight of Hormuz and we have not been willing to do what's necessary to to open the straight unilaterally and so therefore they are using that weapon to force us into a deal that we probably wouldn't want to take and that's that's problematic. We don't know the details of the deal yet, but what's being reported uh is that there's going to we're going we're going to lift the blockade in exchange for opening the straight. Uh there's no nuclear, you know, agreement yet. They've agreed to talk for 60 days. Uh but we shouldn't be opening the lifting the blockade until Iran hands over the nuclear dust. We should not be any you know we know what a model looks like of a good deal because in 2003 George W. Bush had a good deal with Libya. Uh we went in planes landed uh in in Libya loaded up the entire Libyan nuclear program onto planes and flew them to including the centrifuges including the uranium hexaflloride everything packed it up and sent it to Oakidge Tennessee where he went and received it and we blew up all their ballistic missiles. If we can get a deal like that out of this, if we can get the Arab countries to join the Abraham Accords, that's one thing. Uh but they haven't agreed to any of that and we're making concessions to them that they haven't earned yet.

[00:02:35]>> Yeah, I I thought that the Arab uh accord issue, the Abraham Accord, excuse me, issue. Very important uh that the president brought that up the other day because it it feels like he's looking for something that shakes up the dynamic, right? because there's a log jam right now that you described perfectly over the straight of Hormuz and our own blockade and wanting to get oil flowing again. Um, is there any indication that those countries which were so close to joining the Abraham Accords before October 7th might now be enter a deal in the middle of all this with Israel?

[00:03:09]>> Well, the interesting thing is it's a very smooth tactical move that President Trump has made because those countries didn't want us to resume the combat.

[00:03:16]That's right. And so he's saying to them, it's like, "Okay, you don't want me to resume the combat, you got to join the Abraham Accords. If you want me to do this, do it this way. This is what you've got to give." And he says, "We're owed it." And he's right. So if he's able to get them to sign on to the Abraham Accords as a result of this, a huge huge accomplishment. Um but but again, we need we've come so far. We have we are he is at the cusp of an opportunity to completely transform the Middle East for a generation. Um, and I just worry that the deal we're doing, even even let's say even he gets a great deal, Martha, it still gives a lifeline to the regime. We're talking about, you know, cutter is we're going to do a wink and a nod and cutter is going to give them $6 billion in in assets. We're talking about some $500 billion reconstruction fund that gives a lifeline to the regime. And the problem is of giving a lifeline to the regime is that all the progress I described when we first started talking about the military strikes about the the damage that it's done is reversible if the regime survives, right? Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not next year, maybe not five years, something like that. But at some point, Donald Trump is not going to be president anymore. We're going to have one day, I hope not soon, but we'll have a weak president like Joe Biden again. And the Iranians will cheat on it. They'll rebuild everything that was destroyed because they are determined to get a weapon because they want to use it, right? It's not like the It's not like the North Koreans who just want to be a hermit kingdom. They want it for a purpose and they're ideologically determined to do it. The only way these these things are irreversible is if the regime changes in Iran. And that and that and that's not where we're headed right now, which is a problem.

[00:04:50]>> I mean, I go back to thinking about what Netanyahu said in the beginning of this that it was to basically break the legs of the table. so that it collapses because he wanted to create an environment through of course obviously the great military of the United States.

[00:05:09]Rise up and take their country back which they had 47 years ago and they want it back. But clearly the hope for them at this point is dimming on that because these guys just hang on like you know some sort of thing that you can't get rid of.

[00:05:22]>> And we and by the way Martha we know how to do this cuz we did it during the Cold War. We funded the Contras. We funded the Angola. We funded the Mujahedin. We supported solidarity.

[00:05:32]>> But Trump doesn't want to arm the Kurds.

[00:05:33]He said that quite clearly. We gave them weapons and they they stole them.

[00:05:37]>> Doesn't have to be the Kurds, but we have muscle memory on how to do this. We liberated 400 million people in the cold war uh by supporting them without going to war. We can do >> and when you look at it, it is like the wall coming down in a way. When you look at Venezuela, you look at Cuba, you look at Iran, you get a trifecta. You have a regional change that looks a lot like what happened when the curtain came down in the Soviet Union, >> but only if we persevere.

[00:05:59]>> Thank you, Mark. Thank you. Always great to talk to you.

[00:06:03]Be sure to like and subscribe for all the Fox News latest on YouTube and catch full shows streaming now on Fox