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Published On: Sat, Jun 20th, 2026

Jesse Watters: The Only People Saying Iran Lost This War Are Iran And Democrats, Everyone Else Recognizes Reality

Fox News host Jesse Watters discusses impacts of the U.S.-Iran peace agreement, including increased oil transports in the Strait of Hormuz, on ‘Jesse Watters Primetime:’

JESSE WATTERS: Fox News Alert: The Iran deal is now in immediate effect. Both sides have signed. Trump did it over lobster and caviar at Versailles, and the gay Ayatollah had his number two use an autopen. So one day in, how is it looking? (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) JD VANCE: I think the President’s peace plan in Iran is already bearing real fruits for the American people. Last night, 12.5 million barrels of oil went through the Strait of Hormuz. That is a high since the beginning of the conflict. On the military side, the Iranians, for the second night in a row, did not shoot at any ships in the Strait of Hormuz. (END VIDEO CLIP) WATTERS: CENTCOM lifted the blockade, and the first ships to set sail were three Saudi supertankers. The price of oil is now in the 70s, same as it was before the war, and gas just fell under four bucks a gallon. POTUS said, “Told you so.” (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: I just do want to say, though, the stock market just hit a new all-time high, the 401 (k)s just hit a new all-time high, and oil is dropping like a rock. Other than that, it’s another day in paradise. (END VIDEO CLIP) WATTERS: It could be paradise for Iran, too, just without divergence. If they behave and follow through on the deal, we’ll open Iran for business. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) VANCE: There is a great desire from the Arab world and from outside the Arab world to actually get involved in Iran if they behave properly. If you behave, and if the Emiratis themselves want to build a power plant, then we will do the sanctions relief necessary to make that possible. A world where the Gulf Coast coalition has greater leverage into the Iranian economy is a world where the Iranians are going to be heavily prevented from misbehaving. (END VIDEO CLIP) WATTERS: There’s a big brouhaha brewing in Washington over Iran getting money. Remember, we control the money. They’re like a kid, if they screw around, they don’t get an allowance. It’s the exact opposite of the Obama deal, where we paid them to build missiles and enrich. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) VANCE: The Obama nuclear deal allowed enrichment, ours will not. The Obama deal allowed the accumulation of stockpiled weapons grade material, ours is actually leading to the destruction of that stockpile of enriched material. So, there are many differences. The Obama deal gave them over a billion dollars of American money. This deal gives them zero dollars of American money. (END VIDEO CLIP) WATTERS: The way the deal is structured is if Iran holds up their end of the bargain, they don’t get American money, they get Arab money, and we decide what they can build with it, and we can see what they’re doing with it after they get it, but they don’t get anything until they blow up the dust. And this just in, Witkoff just briefed Congress that Iran is inviting the International Atomic Energy Agency to come inspect its nuclear sites and uncover the enriched material. This is big! The Iranians have also agreed that U.S. nuclear inspectors would be allowed into the country. That’s huge! On day one, we’re already getting somewhere, hopefully. These are good signs, but it’s not about words, it’s about action. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) VANCE: I’ve seen skeptics of the deal. People say the Iranians will never change their behavior. Well, maybe that’s true. If so, they don’t get any of the benefits of the bargain, but isn’t it worth trying? Isn’t it worth seeing whether this incredibly weakened position that the President of the United States has put the Iranians under, whether that motivates them to change their behavior. (END VIDEO CLIP) WATTERS: The Iranians are dealing with a trillion dollars of damage. We sunk their Navy, Air Force, and 50 leaders, and we wiped out thousands of factories, and they are in a deep, deep depression. They have to rebuild their country before they can even think about rebuilding a nuke program, and if they start rebuilding their nuke program, they won’t get any money to rebuild their country. If Space Force even sees a man on a camel wander anywhere near one of their three nuke sites, sanctions back, and a love tap. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) VANCE: Let’s say two years down the road, they’ve done what we need to see on the nuclear program, and we release the sanctions as the deal contemplates. Then they decide they’re going to start rebuilding the nuclear program. Then, of course, those sanctions are going to come back on, and that’s why it’s really kind of like a dial. As they dial up their good behavior, we can dial up the economic relief. If they dial down their good behavior, we can turn it off. (END VIDEO CLIP) WATTERS: People are all saying, “Well, what about the Strait?” In 60 days, the deal leaves it open for Iran to toll. J.D. says wrong again. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) VANCE: When you say it leaves it open, it doesn’t really leave it open, except in the sense that, of course, the final negotiation is going to set the terms of what comes afterwards. The Omanis, the Iranians, and the Gulf Coast coalition together will figure out a proper security framework for the Straits in the future. And what I mean by that is that we don’t ever want this to happen again. That’s not about tolling, that’s about ensuring that the Straits are never used as a choke point for the global economy ever again. (END VIDEO CLIP) WATTERS: The deal won’t allow tolls. If some Persian swashbuckler shows up rattling a tin can, the Navy rolls up and we close their banks. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) HEGSETH: When the blockade opens fully, we’ll step back and allow commerce to flow, but if Iran doesn’t comply, then we’re more than able to reimpose an ironclad blockade. (END VIDEO CLIP) WATTERS: Remember, Iran suffered a painful and humiliating defeat. They’ve been living underground and under a blockade. They don’t want to go back to that. The only reason we didn’t kill more of their leaders is because we needed someone to sign a deal. They know that. Trump knows where the gay Ayatollah sleeps. If they’re stupid, we’re violent, bottom line. They’re already praising Allah that Trump is letting them sell oil again. The V.P. says that’s not even a concession. They’ve been selling oil for decades. Even though it was sanctioned, they were still making money, but we couldn’t see the whole shadow fleet or the Black market trades. Now with the sanctions off the oil sales, we can see exactly who is buying and what Iran is doing with the money, so if they’re funding Hezbollah or paying for centrifuges with the oil revenue, boom! Economic Fury. The deal requires Iran to put their proxies on a leash, that means Israel needs to chill. Vance thinks Netanyahu has been a little too trigger happy. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) VANCE: We seem to be right on the cusp of a major breakthrough in the agreement, and then all of a sudden there’s a major explosion that goes off in a civilian population center in Beirut, and a lot of people who have nothing to do with Hezbollah lose their lives. That’s not acceptable. (END VIDEO CLIP) WATTERS: Vance sent a warning to the Jews. He said, watch out, Trump’s your daddy too. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) VANCE: You’ve seen people within Bibi’s Cabinet who have come out and attacked the deal, and in some ways very personally attacked the President of the United States. And I guess my message to them would be twofold: Number one, Donald J. Trump is the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this moment in time. Two- thirds of the defensive weapons that have protected your homeland have been built by American hands and paid for by American tax dollars. The problem for Israel is not Donald J. Trump. (END VIDEO CLIP) WATTERS: This isn’t Israel’s deal. They wanted regime change, which I completely understand, but hard to do without ground troops. Trump didn’t want to use ground troops. Lot of people said he would, but he didn’t. They told us it’d be a quagmire, it wasn’t. They said he would cause World War III, didn’t. They predicted oil would hit $ 200.00 a barrel, we’d be rocked by deadly domestic terror attacks. We had no strategy to open the Strait, we’d be in a recession, the stock market would crash, and the same people who said all these things are now saying the deal is dumb. Now we’re not Nostradamus, we just covered it. Trump could have easily done nothing on Iran, let them keep building missiles, drones, terrorizing the neighborhood, nuking up deeper and deeper underground. That might have been smarter politically to do nothing, but Trump is not a politician, he is a leader and leaders have to do the hard things, so that life can be easier in the long run, and if it pays off, and so far so good, he’ll have fundamentally changed the middle Have to do the hard things, so that life can be easier in the long run, and if it pays off, and so far so good, he will have fundamentally changed the Middle East, a place that sucked America dry for 50 years. The people in that desert who have the most to lose, here’s what they say – – (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) VANCE: The Gulf Coast Coalition loves this deal because they think that it makes Iran weaker. They hated the Obama deal because they thought that it made Iran stronger. They know more about this, and they have more to lose than anybody, including the United States of America. So, I trust their judgment. (END VIDEO CLIP) WATTERS: The only people saying America lost this, Iran and the Democrats. Everybody else recognizes the reality. We buried their leaders, their military, and their dust. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) VANCE: Number one, their nuclear program has been completely destroyed. Their capacity for enrichment, the facilities at which they were using to develop enrichment and develop a potential nuclear weapon, those facilities are still destroyed. Their conventional military is still destroyed. (END VIDEO CLIP) WATTERS: We did in three months, with no ground troops, 13 casualties, God bless their souls, cracked open the Strait, took over the world oil market, and aren’t sending the mullahs a dime. We blocked China’s Belt and Road and made them think twice about taking Taiwan. Kicked Russia out of the region, they’ve been kicked out of Venezuela, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and we brought the Jews and the Arab Muslims closer together. Even if the deal goes south, which it very well could, Iran is financially and militarily crippled, and their nuke program is dead and buried. But if this thing holds, and hopefully it does, Kushner, Witkoff, Rubio, Hegseth, and Vance deserve a lot of credit. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) VANCE: Now, I have seen some progressive criticisms of me personally saying, what experience does the Vice President of the United States have with hostile, high-stakes negotiations, and I would point those progressive critics to the fact that just two days ago I spent over an hour on “The View,” I mean, look, Joy Behar is way tougher than the Iranians, and she and I are best friends now, so we’re going to get to a good place. (END VIDEO CLIP)

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