I think we have a clear historic choice here. Why is that? If we negotiate with Iran, and let's assume we get a good deal. Even no enrichment, which is the essence of a good nuclear deal. Therefore, they can't produce a nuclear weapon.
Let's say we even got further than that. No ballistic missiles or limited ballistic missiles and no support for proxies. Those two issues I just mentioned likely are not on the table. Let's assume we even got that far. and we have a deal.
What does that do? That extends the life of this regime indefinitely. It's true. Why would we do that, especially when we already pledged support? For the protesters in the street said, Don't hang him.
They didn't. They shot him. thirty to fifty thousand dead.
Now they're rebuilding their nuclear program. They put huge roofs over them, the Natanz building. And nobody thinks they haven't stopped building ballistic missiles, and they threatened to assassinate our president. And they still have an ongoing threat on Mike Pompeo, as well as John Bolton, and I think Brian Hook. Senator Mark Wayne Mo knows all about the danger.
Of Iran, but he also noted that there are so many Gulf states that are allies of ours who don't want us. To attack and take out the Revolutionary Guard. And or the Aatolla. What's the right thing to do? What are we going to do?
Senator Mark Wayne Mullen, welcome back. Thank you. Thanks for having me on, Brian. You know, it's a good question because when you start looking at our options, what we don't want is Iran to become a vacuum for ISIS or Al-Qaeda or the Taliban or even Turkey. Think about the rich reserves that the Iranian people have underneath their feet.
In fact, a lot of people think that Iran has better reserves than even Saudi Arabia, but yet the people are depressed and in great poverty because of the Ayatollah and the stronghold that they have used that money instead of for the people to create terrorism and so terrorism all around the world. And so the Gulf states are saying, wait a second, hold on. What's our option here? What's Plan B? You know, the Ayatollah is, I believe, 86 years old.
His health is in question. Is it better that we wait and let him die of natural causes? And then a leader were to come into place, but they don't know what that leader was? Would there be anybody there calling the shots? And since there's not a presumed leader that's been in place, because remember the Ayatollah has been in place since 1979, and the Shah and the Shaw that left, he's passed away.
Excuse me, the Shah's son is hasn't lived in the country in quite some time, so the people of Iran really don't know him. And so the path forward is either one, to contain them, knowing that they can't get a nuclear weapon, or two, we have the options to remove the Ayatollah and then look at the Arab states to help stabilize it.
Well, here's the thing, the Wall Street Journal and the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post both say, Mr. President, you said you're going to support the protesters. You can't, you're going to look like Obama in 2009 when he did absolutely nothing or when he did Syria says there's a red line of use chemical weapons. And they used chemical weapons and then nothing happened. We never well, the Obama administration was never able to reestablish credibility.
Do you see credibility being an issue if we don't do anything? No, no one in the region believes that President Trump is weak on his words. It's just that his timing is when he will decide to strike. I mean, he was very clear that he wouldn't allow them to build a nuclear weapon. He showed the strength of the American power through air superiority and the ability to be able to take down their defense systems in the 12-day war.
And then he also warned the Ayatollah and the rest of the leaders: we know where you're at. We're choosing not to take you out. If we knew where they were at then, we most definitely know where they're at today, too. It's just that we don't want to create another Arab Spring like they did underneath Obama and the Secretary at that time, Secretary Hillary Clinton, because we see the region has been greatly destabilized because of it. Look at Libya, look at Syria, look at even what's happened in the different regions because of that destabilization.
We've got to be cautious as we move forward, but the option to remove the leadership is still there. We just want to work in, we don't want to have, we're not there for regime change. We're there to support the people, but there's not a leader that's raised, in my opinion, that has risen to the top to say, hey, I'm able to take over like maybe President Al-Sharari has in Syria. Right.
So.
So far, we're watching Iran do what they always do. They'll go ahead and they start talks, and they want to drag out talks, and they did five or six rounds of talks, and now Turkey is going to host the talks. I don't know what Steve Witkoff even if he says, hey, they want to get rid of their ballistic missiles, they're going to stop with their nuclear program, and they're going to stop funding Hezbollah and Hamas.
Someone like you, Senator, knows you can't believe one thing they're saying. And to verify, you know, money flows to Hezbollah, that doesn't just go into a checking account. There's got to be ways to unwind that.
So I just am wondering if this is just one of those things where the President's getting his missile shield in place before he goes forward. Um and it looks like other our other allies are going to be involved in those talks. You know, I think the definition of insanity is doing the same thing, expecting different results. We know what the Ayatollah and his murderous regime is about. You can't trust a word they say.
And we have to trust but verify Turkey and Erdogan's motivation in this thing, too. And so I think the president is just waiting for the right time. And he's positioning our assets in a place that the people of Iran, which keep in mind, we love the Iranian people. Prior to the overthrow of the Shah and the Ayatollah coming out of power in 1979, we had a lot of business relationships inside Iran. In fact, Iran, in some cases, was more westernized than the United States.
They had more women elected to public office than the United States did. They had more women working in the professional setting than the United States did. And it was very similar to looking to what the United States had, but it was obviously in the Middle East. And so that group of people are the same age as my parents, right? That's not, there's still a large sector of the people that remember what Iran could be.
And what we are saying is that we are there to support you. We have assets in place to support you. If it comes to it, we will use the strength of the United States. But we'd really like to see the Iranian people take over their country like they did in, you know, when the Shah got everybody, not the Shah, but the Ayatollah got everybody stirred up against the Shah, and they overthrew the country. We believe they can do that now.
And sometimes they just need to know that the United States is there. But there's a big difference between supporting the Iranian people. Against a murderous regime and removing the murderous regime without leadership in place to take it. We are really, really concerned about a huge vacuum, and that's what the Arab states around there are, about the huge vacuum that it could take. And I want to reiterate this, Brian, the wealth.
that is in Iran. Is is tremendous and it could it could destabilize that entire region.
Now, as far as the Ayatollah going out there and saying, you know, if the Americans attack, it'll cause a regional war. Yeah. I there is no way that Iran can fight a regional war. I haven't been successful in fighting a war I don't even know if they were successful then in the 80s. I got toraq, who was draw.
Yeah, and so they don't they talk large and have it's they have a large they have a large Bark and no dog to back it up. Except for they killed thousands or at least hundreds of their own people innocent on guard in Iraq. Working through their militias in the middle. That's right. And if you look to so many of their problems, they are a planter's wart in the region, the Houthis, Hezbollah, and Hamas.
That's a good example. This is Ainsley Earhart. Thank you for joining me for the 52-episode podcast series, The Life of Jesus. A listening experience that will provide hope, comfort, and understanding of the greatest story ever told. Listen and follow now at FoxnewsPodcasts.com or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Some really good news. It looks as though Donald Trump picked up the phone in September, said happy birthday to President Modi of India. They broke the ice, and now yesterday they broke a deal. It looks like we have got a trade deal with India framed out. We're no longer charging them 25 to 50 percent on tariffs.
It's down to 18 percent. They're going to open up their markets to a degree to American oil and American products. It seems to be both sides are happy. And according to President Trump, not backed up by Modi yet, they stopped, they will stop buying Russian oil. That would be beyond great.
Uh what does this mean for the economy?
Well, once one, it allows us to align with one of the largest democracies outside the United States in India. And we have a lot of partnerships, a lot of good friends that are in India, a lot of individuals that we are friends with right inside the United States that came from India and their families in India.
So we wanted this partnership. The biggest question is: what this means for the United States, it opens up a tremendous opportunity. But what it really means is the pressure is putting on Russia. The president is doing an end around on Russia right now. By taking out these ghost ships that Russia and Venezuela was using to ship crude oil on the black market, the president's put a heavy boot on Putin's neck.
At the same time, taking away India's Appetite for Russian oil, it puts another heavy boot on Putin's neck. And the president thought that the easiest war to end was going to be in Ukraine, and it hasn't happened. He mentions that multiple times. But hitting them financially, where the biggest majority of Putin's resources come from is oil and gas reserves. This is a huge hit, and it could put a tremendous amount of pressure on Russia's economy by saying we need to find a solution to ending this because Putin has no desire.
He's like trying to, Putin's trying to is like negotiating with Ayatollah right now, looking for peace. Putin doesn't have any real desire for peace, neither does the Ayatollah. But when you hit them financially, they do. The only reason why the Ayatollah is in a position he's in is because the president hit him with sanctions. The only reason why Russia is going to be in this position is because the president is doing an end around and slowly choking the head of the snake out, which is Putin and their oil economy that they've been shipping in.
and delivering on in the black market. Is he going to sign off on your sanctions in the Senate, bipartisan, eighty-five votes, I think, in the Senate that would put tariffs on anyone buying Russian oil, and that's India, Turkey, Brazil and China? Yeah, once we move in the Senate with this, the White House has said that the President would support it. What we're trying not to do is, Brian, is get in front of the President. The President is doing a phenomenal job on foreign affairs, and we want to give him a lot of leeway, not back him into a corner.
And we don't want there to be any daylight between the Republican senators and the White House. And so when we decide to move with it, it'll be a decision moved with the President of the United States, and there'll be no question he'll go to his desk and get signed.
So tell me the latest on avoiding a shutdown or coming out of the shutdown. It looks as though the House, used to belong there, is going to pass a rule and is going to be voting on what you guys handed them, and that was funding the government and the DHS for two weeks and at some point talk about some type of bipartisan reforms. What could you tell us? Yeah, so the House, I was with the House this morning and talking to a lot of my friends over there, trying to figure out where they're moving. It looks like we're going to fund 97% of the government today.
The only thing we're not going to be able to do completely is DHS, which is roughly 3% of our overall budget.
Now, even if we stay in the CR with them, it's kind of a bad move for the Democrats because the funding level is actually higher with the CR than it is with the actual appropriation bill, which was a bipartisan bill we negotiated. They body cameras for $20 million is actually in the appropriation bill, not in the CR. It puts the Democrats really in a hard place to negotiate because for them to say they want to defund DHS is fine. But the one big beautiful bill had billions of dollars put in place to bill to fund border agents and ICE.
So the border agents and ICE, they're continuing to get fund. What shuts down with DHS, if the Democrats decide to shut down DH, DHS, DHS funding would be our FEMA programs and the FEMA employees. It'd be the Secret Service, which would be detrimental to a lot of people that require that type of service. It would be, you shut down the National Guard, you shut down TSA agents, and a portion of air traffic control. Senator, here's what I worry about.
I worry that Democrats will say, well, I'm standing up for the anti-ICERs freezing in Minneapolis, but they know they have a political advantage if they could slow down the president's economy. Like they cost us billions of dollars. I'm talking about Americans, billions of dollars in the fall. Do you think on some level political operatives are urging them for another shutdown to slow down this economy, growing at over 4%? It's a great point, Brian, but it wouldn't really shut us down.
The president would be able to deem them essential employees. We'd be able to take money that was appropriated for DHS for border agents and ICE agents. We'd be able to string it over to TSA agents, and it would be able to continue to move forward.
So they would accomplish nothing. Even Patty Murray, who is the ranking chair on appropriations for the Democrats, which is what I said on the appropriations committee, even came out publicly and said shutting down DHS does nothing except hurt FEMA. And so she was very open about that. But to hurt our economy, we don't want to do it. We want to avoid any type of shutdown at all.
But 97% of the government will be open. We'll be able to reappropriate funds if we had to for emergency purposes because the president's authority increases during a shutdown, and the country wouldn't even know we were in a shutdown. All right, Senator Markway Moan, you got your hands full. In Washington, and it was great talking to you today. Senator Mark Wayne Mullen of Oklahoma.
Appreciate it.
