President Trump told NBC’s Kristen Welker in an interview that he is very close to a deal with Iran, that the Iranians have conceded they will not develop nuclear weapons, that he pushed further to include language prohibiting purchase or acquisition of nuclear weapons as well as development, and that if a deal cannot be reached he will blow the hell out of them and it will be easy. He bristled at the characterization that he broke a campaign promise by going to war, saying he never promised not to use force and that what he promised was an end to endless wars, and that one hundred days of operations against a state sponsor of terror that has been killing Americans for forty-seven years is not an endless war.
Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, co-founder of the Muslim Reform Movement, former US Navy Lieutenant Commander, and Republican congressional candidate in Arizona’s Fourth District, joined Dan Proft on Chicago’s Morning Answer to assess where the Iran campaign stands and respond to proposed legislation from Texas Congressman Brandon Gill that would ban all Muslim immigration.
Jasser said there is no question based on Secretary Rubio’s recent Senate testimony and the current state of negotiations that things are on the table that have never been discussed before, including the possibility of a third country like Kazakhstan taking custody of Iran’s enriched nuclear material. He said the over-the-horizon strategy that drove six weeks of operations systematically dismantled Iran’s navy, army, and key military infrastructure while beginning to create an opening for the Iranian people internally. He said the increased kinetic activity on Israel’s borders from Hezbollah and the Houthis should be understood as IRGC proxy arms acting out because they see a possible fissure between Trump and Netanyahu and are trying to exploit it, not as evidence that the broader strategy is failing.
He said the Trump-Netanyahu tension is largely performative and the two remain strategically and ideologically aligned, but acknowledged the difference in their situations. America is executing an over-the-horizon strategy against a threat that is geographically distant. Israel has 2,500 missiles coming out of a country on its border, an existential threat in a way that is qualitatively different from what America faces. He compared it to asking Americans to have the same patience they are urging on Israel if Mexico were launching thousands of missiles into the continental United States. He said the historical parallel to Syria is instructive: Israel took two to three weeks to decimate Hezbollah’s capacity in Syria and remove Assad after fourteen years of failed revolution managed to accomplish that. Israel has not yet had that same concentrated operational opportunity on Lebanon.
On the likelihood of a deal, Jasser said the IRGC is a death cult and he doubts they will agree to anything substantive without being given cash, which he hopes and prays the Trump administration is not weighing. He framed the fundamental challenge as surrender management: whether the regime is willing to surrender transparency on nuclear material, on reconstruction of missile capabilities, and on regional proxy operations. He said the internet reopening inside Iran, which occurred because the IRGC could not move money internally with it shut down, is producing renewed street protests in the thousands, which weakens the regime further. He predicted that with the clarity Trump and Rubio have maintained, two more weeks of kinetic operations will probably be needed to bring the Iranians to actual surrender terms.
On Congressman Gill’s proposed ban on all Muslim immigration, Jasser said the concerns Gill is raising about Islamist infiltration of American institutions are legitimate and the failure of vetting under Obama and Biden was real. He said Gill is right that Washington’s immigration policies over the past two decades brought people into the country without adequate ideological screening and that this created the conditions for the anti-Western, pro-Islamist sentiment now visible in American politics and institutions. But he said a blanket Muslim ban is the wrong strategy and will ultimately fuel radical movements by turning every Muslim into a victim rather than a potential asset against political Islam.
His framework, which he said he hopes is one of his legacies, is that the correct distinction is not between Muslims and non-Muslims but between Muslims who accept secular liberal democracy, constitutional governance, and the separation of mosque and state, and Islamists who are theocrats pursuing a sharia-based political agenda. He said America fought the Cold War by separating Russians from Soviets and the Marxist ideology that drove Soviet aggression. The same logic applies here: the enemy is political Islam and theocracy, not the 1,447-year-old faith of Islam as such. He directed listeners to claritycoalition.org, a coalition he described as the twenty-first century equivalent of the Committee on the Present Danger, bringing together Muslims, former Muslims, Jews, Christians, Hindus, and others including Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Daniel Pipes, and the Hudson Institute in a public-private coalition against radical political Islam. He said the reason Europe is being destroyed is that European nations have only racially based democratic frameworks with no ideological tool to distinguish between Muslims who share Western liberal values and those who are working to undermine them. Americanism, grounded in religious liberty and the establishment clause, provides the correct framework, and embracing Muslims who are in the streets of Iran fighting the theocrats is both more effective and more consistent with American founding principles than a categorical ban that abandons the strategic distinction entirely.