Ben Rhodes

He also restated his plan to take Karg Island in an interview with the Financial Times.

And I have not been in high stakes international negotiations, Ben.

I know that you have.

It seems to me like a little bit of a counterproductive strategy.

Yes.

If you're trying to negotiate with someone.

But the Iranians, meanwhile, they still don't acknowledge that any talks are even happening.

Abbas Arigachi, Iran's foreign minister, said today in an interview with Al Jazeera that he had received a direct message from Steve Witkoff.

That's President Trump's special envoy, but he denied that the countries were negotiating at all.

And so then that's how we come back to this week.

Trump wrote on Truth Social on Monday that the talks with the new and the more reasonable regime were going great.

But that if for any reason a deal is not shortly reached, which it probably will be, I'm reading verbatim here from his truth, and if the Hormuz Strait is not immediately, quote unquote, open for business, we will conclude our lovely, quote unquote, stay in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating all of their electric generating plants, oil wells, and Karg Island, and possibly desalinization plants, which we have purposefully not yet touched.

And then, as we previewed at the top of this section, by Tuesday morning, the story changed.

The Strait of Hormuz is apparently not our problem anymore.

President Trump truthed, all of those countries that can't get jet fuel because of the Strait of Hormuz, like the United Kingdom, which refused to get involved in the decapitation of Iran, I have a suggestion for you.

Number one, buy from the U.S.

We have plenty.

And number two, build up some delayed courage, go to the Strait, and just take it.

You'll have to start learning how to fight for yourself.

The USA won't be there to help you anymore.