Watters: THIS is the problem for America

Fox News alert, the president says it's a big day for world peace after the Iranians cried uncle. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said they were on their knees.

President Trump had the power to cripple Iran's entire economy in minutes, but he chose mercy. He spared those targets because Iran accepted the ceasefire under overwhelming pressure. The new Iranian regime understood that a deal was far better than the fate that awaited them.

24 hours in and real money likes what it sees. The Dow closed up 1300 points. It's the best day in a year. Oil collapsed 12% back into the 90s. The Pentagon says we crushed him.

On February 28th, the president United States ordered the Joint Force to execute Operation Epic Fury with the direct direction to accomplish three distinct military objectives destroy Iran's ballistic

missile and drone drone capabilities. Destroy the Iranian Navy and destroy their defense industrial base to ensure that Iran cannot reconstitute the ability to project power outside their borders over the course of 38

days of major combat operation, the joint force achieved the military

objectives as defined by the president. Their drone missile and naval production plants wiped out. We struck 80% of Iran's air defense systems, almost 100% of their navy's gone. And we hit them in their Persian purses. Their steel plants and petrochemical factories are rubble. But are we actually finished?

That's up to Iran. For now, we're keeping an eye on them.

We'll be hanging around. We're not going anywhere. We're gonna make sure Iran complies with this ceasefire and then ultimately comes to the table and makes a deal. So we'll stay put, stay ready, stay vigilant. As the chairman laid out, our troops are prepared to defend, prepared to go on offense, prepared to restart at a moment's notice with whatever target package would be needed in order to comply, come ensure that Iran complies.

For the mullahs, this is an opportunity. Show the world that you're not a terrorist. Here's how it all went down. Axios says the gay Ayatollah woke up from his coma, heard about bridge and power plant day, and told his men to do a deal. Then cardboard Ayatollah got a call from China. Beijing told him to hurry up. Your economy can't last much longer.

J.D. Vance, Whitcoff, and Kushner are headed to Pakistan this weekend for the first round of peace talks. And we know who we're dealing with.

We want Iran to not be able to make a nuclear weapon. We want the nuclear fuel, which is something the president has made very clear. And, again, the way to think about this is, the United States has certain demands and certain things that we want. The Iranians have things they can get out of the negotiation. The more that they're willing to give us, I think the more they're going to get things out of this negotiation. And, frankly, the president has all the cards here. We've got a lot of leverage. We've got a lot of things that we can do. But right now, I think that we're in a good spot.

No nukes means no uranium. And the Secretary of War says no means no.

It's always been non-negotiable that they won't have nuclear capabilities. And so right now it's buried and we're watching it. We know exactly what they have. And they know that. And they will either give it to us, which the president has laid out. They'll give it to us voluntarily. We'll get it.

We'll take it. We'll take it out. Or if we have to do something else ourselves, like we did in Midnight Hammer or something like that, we reserve that opportunity.

The problem for America is, can you trust the Iranians? And if so, which ones can you trust? Because one Iranian told us, sure, here's the yellow cake.

This is on the top of the priority list for the president and his negotiating team as they head into this next round of discussions. And as I said in my opener, that is a red line that the president is not going to back away from. And he's committed to ensuring that takes place. We hope it will be through diplomacy.

Have they given any indication that they would turn it over?

They have.

They have?

Yes.

Well, another Iranian threw us this curveball.

Let me just say this. I actually wonder how good he is at understanding English because there are things that he said that frankly didn't make sense in the context of the negotiations that we've had. He said, we refuse to give up the right to enrichment. And I thought to myself, you know what? My wife has the right to skydive, but she doesn't jump out of an airplane because she

and I have an agreement that she's not going to do that because I don't want my wife jumping

out of an airplane. The Iranians are saying they have the right to enrich the uranium that they can't keep. I hope we have good translators over in Islamabad, because they told us they'd open the strait and today they only let four ships pass. Tomorrow Iran says they'll let 12. Well that's not what they agreed to.

It's still the first 24 hours of the ceasefire. With their command and control knocked out, maybe some rogue guards didn't get the memo.

The deal is a ceasefire, a negotiation, that's what we give. And what they give is that the straits are going to be reopened. If we don't see that happening, the president is not going

to abide by our terms if the Iranians are not abiding by their terms.

So I guess we're going to just allow for a little bit of a grace period. The president says we don't even mind Iran charging tolls as long as we get a 50% cut. He said a joint venture would be a beautiful thing. I'm not sure an Iranian toll booth with tankers even with the US kickback is wise, but I'd rather have the Iranians taxing tankers than bombing them. I'm sure they'll hash it out at their Pakistani peace summit. It's not like we'd pay.

We don't get oil from the strait. It's a small premium for peace in the Middle East.

UAE, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and of course the Chinese in Singapore and Japan, they'll all pay. And if it's five or six billion dollars a month, it's nothing compared to the value of stability in getting 21% of the world's oil through that strait. I like this outcome. I don't like war.

But this tells me the region's coming back big. Because if you can get peace in the Middle East, it's one of the fastest growing regions on Earth.

Making money's better than making war. The president says they can have their own golden age if they behave. The question is, can they keep their rogue generals from going on a shooting spree? In the last 24 hours, Israel got hit by missiles and a Saudi oil pipeline got hit by drones. The Secretary of War says, just wait. Iran would be wise to find a way to get the carrier pigeon to their troops out in remote locations to know not to shoot. The Israelis have been

tearing up Lebanon in the meantime, rooting out Hezbollah for good. The White House says Lebanon isn't a part of the deal and the Jews can whack proxies but Iran threw a hissy fit.

If Iran wants to let this negotiation fall apart in a conflict where they were getting hammered over Lebanon, which has nothing to do with them and which the United States never once said was part of the ceasefire, that's ultimately their choice. We think that would be dumb, but that's their choice.

What's the one thing we learned from Iran during the war? The economy is the pressure point. They're in a depression, and if this war goes much longer, they'll never recover. And Beijing can't let that happen. The Chinese have a lot of money tied up in Iran. Bridges and plants are their kryptonite.

A deal might be closer than it looks.

He said that there are a few points of disagreement before the negotiation. Well, that must mean that there's a lot of points of agreement because there's a 15-point plan floating around, there's a 10-point plan floating around. If he's frustrated about three issues, that actually means that there's a lot of agreement.

Vance said the Iranians are better negotiators than fighters. They've strung along presidents for 47 years, and have gotten stronger and stronger until Operation Epic Fury. They've felt the full power of the American military for the first time.

And they're a lot weaker than what they put out publicly. Every time we hear from them, they sound like Baghdad Bob. But at the negotiating table, the president has a lot of leverage.

I know this. President Trump is not going to make a bad deal. He knows these guys. He's negotiated with them more than any previous president has. And he knows they're full of BS at times. They're going to obfuscate. They're going to promote lies. And our team obviously has to be aware of all of that going into it. I'm assuming that they they understand that. The backstop we have here is the president himself.

He's not going to take a bad deal.

That doesn't mean we walk away. That just means power plant bridge day gets postponed. I'm not convinced yet that the war is over. The next two weeks will tell us if the cardboard ayatollahs serious. Central Command is still locked and loaded.

If Iran did not come to the table and make a deal yesterday by the deadline, was the president really prepared to wipe out Iran entirely?

Like I said, we had a target set locked and loaded of infrastructure, bridges, power plants. Remember, this is a terror regime. The military regime used all of these things for dual use to fund their military, to fund their terror campaigns. We had a lot of legitimate targets. They knew exactly the scope of what we were capable of.

The president's full of surprises. He's captured and killed leaders in the middle of negotiations. He's an opportunist. When he sees an opening, he'll take it. If they let their guard down in Karg Island, big mistake. In the next two weeks, commanders could be crawling out of their caves for some fresh air. We'll have eyes on them.

The ceasefire works to our advantage. It gives us an opportunity to rest, reset, rearm, and reposition. The USS Boxer will be in theater soon, so we'll have more Marines in the region. And we're still flying over Iranian airspace, monitoring the situation. A ceasefire is a release valve for the stock market. It's already almost rallied all the way back to where it was at the start of the war.

Oil prices have already tapered off and every day we don't drop bombs, prices drop. If we go back in, it'll be a quick one too and the markets won't overreact. We hold the cards and the military is ready for everything.

This is gritty and unforgiving business. It's chaotic, it's hot, it's dark, it's unpredictable, and there's always unknowns. And our people proudly walked into those unknowns and continued forward. And through it all, the joint force has demonstrated the unwavering resolve that the nation demands of us. And today we have, while be ready should that peace break, which we hope it is not. And we remain ready.

If the truce holds, think about it like this. We crushed their military and their factories so they can't rearm. They can't sail, fly, and their leaders are all dead. We did it without putting any boots on the ground, recovered two airmen that got shot down without any casualties. And we did it within the president's timeline. We're in a grace period in the straight and the uranium's

And we did it within the president's timeline. We're in a grace period in the straight and the uranium's up for grabs. Not too bad for 38 days.