‘This Makes Absolutely No Sense’: Fox’s Brian Kilmeade Torches Trump’s Iran Deal

Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade ripped the Memorandum of Understanding between the United States and Iran during a Wednesday morning interview with the Hudson Institute’s Rebeccah Heinrichs.

“Rebeccah, can we just start on the Israeli portion of it? Israel has to, I guess, stop fighting back against Hezbollah, who’s lobbing missiles at the northern part of their country,” began Kilmeade. “This makes absolutely no sense.”

“It makes no sense. And we also know, Brian, that there have been diplomatic attempts over and over and over again since the early 2000s to try to get Hezbollah to disarm. They will not disarm, it has never worked through negotiations and diplomacy. At this point, if this is tied to this deal, the United States would essentially be restraining Israel, our greatest ally in the region and the reason that we had such success in [Operation] Epic Fury,” replied Heinrichs.

“Yeah, you can’t blame [Benjamin] Netanyahu for this. They’re defending themselves. They just happen to be very good at defending themselves. It’s not their fault that they’re this strong and this devastating, and Syria is not equipped to take out Hezbollah, even though they’d love to. They have no missile defense, Hezbollah has got rockets,” agreed Kilmeade, shooting down Trump’s suggestion that Israel allow Syria to take out Hezbollah.

“Let’s talk about the deal. What concerns you most about what we now know about this deal as we wait two days for the formal reading of the deal?” he followed up.

“Well, first of all, Brian, I just want to say, I mean, Epic Fury was so successful and Economic Fury is so successful, and President Trump was right to initiate it. And we really have the Iranians in a vice, which is why I’m concerned that we would permit the Iranians access to their oil as we relieve this blockade. They would essentially have billions of dollars back into the IRGC coffers. I know the vice president continues to say this will be conditions-based, but as far I can tell this, isn’t even gonna be put in escrow accounts to trap it to make sure that the IRGC complies. We have no reason to believe that they will, so they will be flooded with cash almost immediately,” answered Heinrichs. “My second big concern is that the deal does recognize Iranian governance with other Gulf States over the Strait of Hormuz. Now, the Iranians will say they just want to collect environmental tolls. They’re not going to call it tolls, they’ll call it fees. That’s tolls! Brian, that’s worse than before Epic Fury. The United States cannot permit Iran to have coercive control over the Strait of Hormuz. And so to me, those are the two big ones tied with, I think., the fact that once you relieve sanctions, you really lose your leverage to enforce what we want on removing and dismantling Iran’s nuclear program.”

“And what we’re gonna do is they have frozen funds. So it’ll be 300 billion. It looks like they get it up front. It looks they’re gonna be selling oil right up front, and it looks like after 60 days they charge tolls with Oman. There’s no way, because that’s gonna set a precedent for international waters and waterways around the world. So that every big and small power does not want this to be a new trend,” mused Kilmeade. “That’ll blow everybody’s budget, correct?”

The pair went on to express concern over the leverage the agreement might lend the Chinese as well as the United States’ role in helping Iran secure the $300 billion in investments. Kilmeade openly wondered “if the people that negotiated this have informed the president about what’s in the page-and-a-half he’s going to read publicly on Friday.”

“I would just say: we were in a much better place before we saw the details of this MOU. And unless President Trump can change this at the last minute and get good deals here, I would say that this Memorandum of Understanding is worse than not having it,” concluded Heinrichs.

“Right, next 24 hours he could go in and do that. I hope he does,” concurred Kilmeade.

Watch above via Fox News.

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