Talks With Iran While The U.S. Expands Military Presence In Region

In 2024, a truck crashed into Canaw in Moresque, where I work.

146 of our dogs needed homes fast.

We asked for help on Facebook.

Our stories spread through WhatsApp messages and Instagram reposts.

Immediately, people stepped up.

And just six hours later, every dog was fostered.

I'll never forget how our community showed up for us.

Learn how over 3.5 billion people connect to what matters with meta

at meta.com slash community.

That's pure automotive joy.

I'm Peter, the owner of Muscle Car Junior.

It started as a hobby.

Then I started posting about it.

Before I knew it, I built a business for storing muscle cars

on Facebook marketplace.

And the community of car lovers on Instagram.

Today, new customers send me what's app messages from all over.

Not bad for a hobby.

Learn how meta helps over 35 million American businesses

like Peter's grow at meta.com slash community.

I'm Abby Hornacek.

I'm Ben Dominic.

I'm Dana Perino.

And this is the Fox News rundown.

Tuesday, March 24th, 2026, I'm Evan Brown.

The war against Iran is demonstrably going well,

even if oil shipments through the straight of hormones

are for the moment impacted with respect to hormones.

I mean, I was kind of interested in people saying

that there was no plan for this contingency

because this has been one of the most

planned for contingencies that I can think of.

I mean, it's everybody has talked about this

for decades of hormones.

I mean, I've participated in a war game

where the scenario was the closure of the streets of hormones.

This is the Fox News rundown Operation Epic Fury.

President Trump is still hoping that whoever with he says

his team is negotiating on behalf of Iran,

he hopes they capitulate that they should surrender,

give up nuclear weapons, give up missile procurement,

give up terrorism, and give up their control of the country

of Iran while ending their attempts to restrict oil

shipping through the straight of hormones.

Certain Iranian leaders and we're no longer sure

of who really leads what or for how long

are claiming to not be negotiating with the president's on voice.

Meanwhile, the clock ticks before President Trump

starts striking Iran's energy infrastructure,

what exactly he would order targeted remains unknown,

but there are probably only three days left

in his five-day ultimatum.

In the meantime, oil shipments are not stopped,

but slowed.

That drives up the speculative price of oil

around the world, and now there are concerns

that the president didn't account for that,

though those with some experience say that just isn't true.

And the Hormuz matter and the war in its entirety,

including the coordination with Israel,

are being very well conducted.

It's extraordinarily different than the Iraq campaign.

I mean, when you talk about the air campaign that preceded that,

it was all preparation for what was going to come,

which was this massive ground invasion.

James Robin spent a career at the Pentagon

worked under Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld,

and he's now dean of the Institute of World Politics

in Washington, DC.

Here, the air campaign is the thing.

It's everything that we're doing,

in terms of taking out their nuclear capability,

their missile capability,

taking out their leadership nodes,

if you want to call it that,

taking out their government.

This is the campaign, and the hope here

in the long run is that the Iranian people will rise up.

They'll have a new revolution.

They'll replace the government that's in place.

But in the meantime, if we only do the degradation part,

destroying their nuclear program once and for all,

making sure that they won't be able to reconstitute their missiles

in the same way, these kinds of things.

Those are the objectives, and that's what we're reaching.

I'd give it very high grade in terms of what we're doing

with the thousands of sorties, the precision bombing.

You don't see a lot about civilian casualties happening with this.

There have been a few that school that was accidentally hit,

which was placed right next to a legitimate target I might add.

But other than that, none of our planes have been shot down.

It's really quite incredible how well this has been conducted.

Let's talk a bit more about that because

anytime we, meaning the US or even the Israelis who have been a 50-50 partner,

it feels like in this, none of this has happened stance.

This is carefully orchestrated, carefully executed with people who,

for instance, those fighter pilots, those flying those F-35s,

that's like a second skin to them.

That's amazing how talented they are.

But talk about what would have gone into making something like this happen,

because this hasn't been planned for over 10 years.

This was President Trump saying we got to get this done.

So that's a testament, I think, to the structure and the systems of the military.

But talk about putting something like this together, because it's not easy.

Oh, not easy at all.

This would begin with a massive intelligence preparation,

finding the targets, knowing what we want to target,

knowing where the people are that we might want to target, things like that.

So there was an, would be an incredible amount of planning in something like this

on that basis.

And constantly evolving planning, I mean, as things change, as things move around.

But the United States and also Israel have remarkable abilities

in terms of this intelligence collection, in terms of being able to find things,

whether we're using satellites to spot things.

We're using communications intercepts.

We're using human intelligence.

I mean, the Israelis said that all of their targeting information came from people on the ground

who are Iranians who are feeding them information.

So all of this would go into a synthesis of this intelligence information,

which would then inform the targeting.

And then when it gets down to the actual operation,

there are distinct phases of how you want to approach this,

like taking out the anti-aircraft capabilities of Iran,

interrupting their communications, disrupting their leadership,

their ability to be able to respond, and then going after a variety of targets.

I mean, the surprising thing to me, not only the timing, which was meant to be a surprise,

because we didn't hit when we usually hit, which was all part of the plan,

but was the fact that the, well, the Israelis, but with our cooperation,

immediately went for the decapitation kill,

immediately went for the top of government.

There was no kind of like, you know, going, working up to that.

It was day one, minute one, take them out.

And that was new.

That was really interesting and surprising.

It's surprising, certainly, to yourself.

I would imagine surprising to the Iranian regime folks.

We're operating in ways we've never operated before.

We're not following our usual script.

That's a strategy, isn't it?

Absolutely. And, you know, if you look at the case of Venezuela, for example,

we went in, we took out their leader, we, you know, did an extraordinary rendition.

I mean, essentially, we just, you know, went and got him.

Because we had to find him as a narco terrorist.

So that's the legal framework that was established to be able to do that.

So, I mean, in the past, you wouldn't necessarily want to target ahead of state.

That's just not something that we would generally do.

But if you redefine them as terrorists, that opens up a whole world of possibilities.

And so we saw that in Venezuela.

Same thing in Iran.

We had to find that as a terrorist regime.

So it's just, it's like counterterrorism.

You know, we would take out bin Laden.

You would take out Zawahari, you know, any kind of terrorist leader.

And so here's a terrorist leader.

So take him out.

The other half of this is, you know, it's one thing to decapitate the regime to,

to degrade their ability to wage war, they're conventionally or unconventionally.

But there's also the other aspect of they still have some call them factions or remnants that are

doing, that are fighting their fight, and they have impacted the ability of oil transiting

out of the state of Hormuz.

That's kind of now, I think, what a lot of things have started focusing on,

especially on the American side, the Israelis are conducting their counterterrorism operations

and in there, and of course in Southern Lebanon.

But the United States has now made the state of Hormuz sort of an issue right now

to reopen it, to get that oil to flow.

How do you handle that from a military tactic perspective?

It's one thing again, to decapitate the head of the snake, the top of the regime.

But if you've got people who are willing to shoot guns in their name at ships going

through the state of Hormuz, you have another problem.

Well, yeah, Iran is, they're fighting the war that they can fight, which is, you know, attacking

all of their neighbors, indiscriminate attacks on civilian areas and Israel using cluster bombs,

and attacking neutral shipping, doing all of this stuff.

A lot of it's illegal, but it doesn't matter because to them, that's the only war that they

can fight right now. So with respect to Hormuz, I mean, I was kind of interested in people saying

that there was no plan for this contingency because this has been one of the most

planned for contingencies that I can think of.

I mean, everybody has talked about this for decades of Hormuz.

I mean, I've participated in a war game where the scenario was the closure of the

streets of Hormuz. I mean, it's not new to us. So the way we're dealing with it may be new

because of new technology and new weapons, but the concept of it is not new.

And we do have contingency plans for it, and we're seeing those unfold as our units are striking

the various missile depots and things there on the Iranian shoreline.

We have the two marine expeditionary units moving into position, and it's unclassified for me

to say that in the past scenarios I was on, it involved Marines going in there and taking care of

business. So we may yet see that happen, although there may be some other solution to it that is

unfolding, but opening up the street is really important, obviously, to give stability to oil

markets. To me, what's interesting is the fact that the Iranians haven't completely closed it,

you know, they're allowing ships to go through if they like them, you know, if they're

Iranian or friends or something. And we're more than happy for that to happen because we want to

keep that going and keep the oil flowing. So it's this strange kind of limited war scenario

where Iran says, well, some oil can get out, but not all the oil can get out. And we're saying,

that's fantastic, you know, and, you know, the Treasury Secretary was describing how we're going

to let that oil be sold and then freeze it, you know, freeze the accounts so that Iran doesn't profit

from it. I mean, this is a fantastic war. Dean Robbins is the dean of the Institute of World

Politics in Washington. He spent a whole career at the Pentagon. He's now our guest on the Fox

News rundown Operation Epic Fury. Please like, subscribe, share this podcast, and we will have

more straight ahead. Fantastic war. I mean, this is a lot of different things. Yeah, exactly.

You just mentioned the words marine expeditionary forces, which for a lot of people's going to

translate to that, that that scary phrase boots on the ground. I hate that phrase. You hate the

phrase boots on the ground. There's enough people who are certainly have a bad taste in their

mouth because of how things evolved in Iraq and Afghanistan and being there for so long and

having so many of our troops there. And in some cases, not necessarily knowing what they're supposed

to do in terms of a goal and being to becoming targets. And I've had to, you know, respond with,

we just had boots on the ground in Venezuela for a whopping 40 minutes and the job was done.

So there's a real spectrum as to what boots on the ground could really mean here. And of

course, President Trump, I think in his, in a smart move, he said, I'm not going to rule anything

out because why would I ever do that? Why would I tie my own hands behind my back? But for someone

who would know what boots on the ground looks like in all sorts of scenarios, when is it good,

when is it not good? Right. You see, that's that spectrum that you mentioned is why I really don't

like this expression because it sets an arbitrary political, not military, but a political boundary

whether either is a boot or there's not a boot. And what counts as a boot? Is it some special

operations teams that are doing stuff inside Iran, you know, covertly CIA paramilitaries? Do they

count as a boot on the ground? You know, is it a security detail spotters? I mean, there are a lot

of things that could count as a boot. And then people say, oh my god, there are boots on the ground.

As opposed to 300,000 troops from many countries, you know, doing a land invasion of Iran. To me,

that's boots on the ground. It's not an expeditionary force going into secure passage or something small

scale, but because that political distinction exists of, you know, yes or no to boots, then people

will, that's when you get the critics going crazy saying, oh my god, it's boots on the ground.

And those kind of political limitations really get in the way of the execution of our military

operations and attaining those objectives. I mean, I've written on Vietnam and how, you know,

in the Vietnam war, a lot of political things got in the way of military operations. Well,

you see the same thing even more so now where people are critiquing what's going on, just based

on nothing, just based on vibes, it seems like like Politico had a headline that Iran has holds all

the cards. Are you kidding me? I don't know. It's hard to imagine that right now, clinging to survival.

That's their card. Okay. It's been a few weeks and there's been, I guess, a lot of discourse saying

this will only take a few weeks, but although, again, his credit president Trump has not actually

said that, I don't think. And again, that would be, that would be putting a limit on himself that

he doesn't want to put. At what point do we say we've, we've done enough or we've, we've

met the objective. And the objective has been to eliminate a threat. Does that threat, does

eliminating that threat mean regime change in whatever sense that that term means? You know,

because again, some of these terms are so nebulous sometimes. It's hard to, it's hard to have a

real conversation, but, but you know, at what point do we say we've done what we've come to do?

Well, yeah, with respect to regime change, the president said that's already occurred because,

you know, all the people are dead. So they have new people and that counts as regime change.

Well, you could say that. That's not my definition, but you can say that.

You know, if your objective is just to degrade Iran, well, we've achieved that. They're

pretty degraded right now. So if that's your metric, you could declare victory and go home.

You know, I don't think that's a great metric, but you could do that.

It's not definitive enough, in my opinion. And people will criticize it. People would say,

oh, Trump is defeated. I mean, we've already seen that or people saying that like the

war is over, US is defeated. Again, I don't know what were they're looking at.

But, but they will be aided by the Iranians, trumpeting, you know, hey, we won.

Like Saddam Hussein in 1991, when after he was pushed out of Kuwait and then, you know,

the United States and, you know, went away, Saddam Hussein said, see, I won.

I endured it. Yeah, right. Yeah, victory. Okay. So the Iranians are going to say victory no matter

what if they if they live, they're going to declare victory. So it really comes down to how

definitive a political victory we want to have, whether this ends in an agreement, you know,

because then you can say, okay, the two sides got together and signed something. So that's

that's it. You could use that. You could use a revolution. My favorite one. I want to see a

revolution in Iran. You know, that would really settle things. But it really comes down to whether

the president decides how far he wants to go. If he wants to, you know, keep doing this, then

don't keep doing it. And the Israelis have a have a vote in this as well, because they've already

said it's not going to end any, you know, in the next few weeks. So if they just keep doing what

they're doing, the war will continue. And I seriously doubt the United States would just sort of

abandon the field and leave Israel doing stuff. You bring up something that a number of people

have talked about. Even the defense, excuse me, the Secretary of War has said himself about how

impressive the Israelis have been here. That I think there was one quote and I forget where I read

it. And I forget to whom it's attributed. But the quote was, we knew the Israelis were good. We

didn't know they were this good. And they are the stars, I think, in this show without a doubt.

I spoke with former ambassador Michael Herzog yesterday who said that this is as close as we

would ever going to get to have like a D day invasion type force in terms of our cooperation,

in terms of really working not just side by side, but integrating. Again, as a career defense war

or a person official, you have to be amazed by this. This is again, something that's new and

different, but impressive. Yeah, this is the first time that we've coordinated operations with

Israel like this. Or as the Israelis say, this is the first war to be fought in English,

you know, in terms of the coordination. I mean, Israel is good because they have to be good.

I mean, the extremely small country, as the Iranians say, it's a one bomb country. If they had a

nuclear weapon, you know, that that doesn't help Iran's argument that they're not a threat, by the

way. And so, I mean, the Israelis over the years, you know, when you look at their history and the

wars they fought, and the times when Israel's been like on the brink of annihilation, I mean,

they're serious. I mean, they have to be, they live in a much tougher neighborhood than we do.

And they're a lot weaker than we are, but in their region, they're very strong. So

in terms of their intelligence, in terms of their targeting and just the things that they

you know, are doing, it's just amazing. And you can go back to October 7th on this one and the,

you know, the Hamas attack as the point, the inflection point, when everything started to go

wrong for Iran, because after that, you know, Hamas is getting whacked. Has Bala and the beepers,

and remember the beeper operation, people should never forget how cool that was.

Cool is a good word to describe that. Cool is a great word to describe that. I mean,

that was James Bond level stuff. I mean, that was astonishing. If the more you dig into that,

in terms of what publicly available, the more you'll be impressed, because even not only were

those beepers, booby trapped, but Has Bala was testing them to see if they were booby trapped and failed.

I mean, just the whole story of how they did that whole thing. Anyway,

and yeah, I mean, but again, Has Bala's training comes from you and funding and operations all

come from Iran. So it does all factor back there. Right. So yeah, Hamas, Has Bala, and then Syria,

about the, you know, regime fell, which was the major ally of Iran in the region. And so,

peace by peace, Iran was losing all of its clients. And then in this war, they attack every one

of their neighbors, just undoing 40 years of diplomacy. So, you know, for the Iranians, I mean,

this whole, you know, arch of instability, the Shiite crescent, whatever you want to call it,

that they had constructed, is now destroyed. And they're kind of left alone,

hunkered down and caved somewhere. All right, James Robbins. You're a former defense official.

I guess we would say Department of War official in today's parlance. You're also the dean of

the Institute of World Politics in Washington. Thank you so much for being with us on the Fox News

rundown. Oh, thank you, Evan. My pleasure.