Cabot Phillips

However, he did say that if a deal is not reached and the Strait of Hormuz is not opened very soon, quote, we will conclude our lovely stay in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating all of their electric generating plants, oil wells and Karg Island and possibly all desalinization plants, which we have purposely not yet touched.

A huge one.

Well, they continue to maintain that no direct talks have taken place and that they're not interested in a deal.

Iran's Speaker of the Parliament went as far as issuing a statement implying President Trump's claims of peace talks were...

were little more than a ruse to give markets a boost.

And to that point, it is true that stocks have typically jumped whenever Trump makes a post about peace talks.

But the White House said Monday that despite their public defiance, behind closed doors, the Iranians are much more receptive to a deal.

Have a listen.

And we also heard yesterday from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who in a fiery interview responded to critics claiming that President Trump does not have a clear set of objectives for this conflict.

And if you listen closely there, you'll see that notably absent from that list was regime change.

Remember, when he announced that this bombing campaign had begun last month, the president said that once the military operation was complete, the Iranian people should, quote, take over your government.

It will be yours to take.

But to this point, we've not seen really any indicators that such an uprising is brewing or even imminent.

I spoke to Benin Ben Taliblu from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Here's what he had to say.

And on that topic, according to Axios, President Trump even rebuffed Benjamin Netanyahu on a phone call last week when Netanyahu suggested that the White House urge demonstrators to get out in protest.

Trump reportedly said, quote, why the hell should we tell people to take to the streets when they'll just get mowed down?

But for his part, publicly at least, President Trump is now saying that a so-called regime change has already taken place just because of how many top officials have been killed.

In his words, quote, the one regime was decimated.

They're all dead.