Donald Trump Previews Week Five on The Five

After a month into the war to end Iran’s war with the United States and Israel, it’s hard to overstate how strong a hand President Donald Trump still has to play, and how weak a hand it is for whatever is left of the Iranian regime. The stats do not lie. 

Four weeks ago, Ali Khamenei, the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Supreme Leader, and one of the most evil people the world has seen in the last half century, was quietly reading in his office. 

⚡️⭕️ A few minutes before martyrdom…

‌This is the last image captured by the CCTV camera at the office of the martyred Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei. pic.twitter.com/KbTP37eabW

— Middle East Observer (@ME_Observer_) March 26, 2026

Until he wasn’t. Beginning with a barrage of ordnance up the Supreme Leader’s tailpipe, and now extending to over 10,000 targets destroyed in Operation Epic Fury – large and small, from underground missile bays down to the corner penthouse suite of an IRGC commander – the losing streak for the regime continued Thursday with the announcement that the commander of the IRGC Navy, or what’s left of it, began standing in line for his 72 virgins. It is now a line longer than Hartfield-Jackson Atlanta’s TSA checkpoint center on Tuesday. 

Donald Trump has not been kidding when he says the first tier, second tier, and in many cases, third tier of senior Iranians have been eliminated, largely due to Israeli intelligence and air strikes working in perfect harmony with the Americans. This is just one of several collages of ex-Iranian threats going around. 

Thank you Mossad. pic.twitter.com/PjDXGYSLN9

— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) March 26, 2026

But the disposing of Alireza Tangsiri, the commander of the IRGC Navy, is especially gratifying. If you were looking for the person responsible for keeping the Strait of Hormuz essentially closed to cargo ships and oil tankers, and who has been harassing international commerce for nearly a decade in the Persian Gulf, Tangsiri was your man. Now? He’s another face card of dead Iranians to add to the growing deck. 

Jack of hearts ❤️ has joined the Ace of spades ♠️ pic.twitter.com/D9V4BNJNnH

— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) March 26, 2026

The killing of Tangsiri was notable enough that Centcom Commander Brad Cooper weighed in to explain the importance of taking him off the board.

Statement from Adm. Brad Cooper, CENTCOM commander: pic.twitter.com/oVqhVjgIDL

— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) March 26, 2026

Last Saturday, the price of poker between the U.S. and Iran was raised significantly when Donald Trump issued a Truth Social post which reverbated around the world on cable outlets, podcasts, and social media, warning those people he’s identified as the ones in charge to make a deal in the next 48 hours or he’d plunge the country into darkness by destroying their power plants. 

The President’s attention-getter had the desired effect, because by Monday morning, Trump signaled that there was a deal in the works with someone in the regime that could possibly become in Iran what Delcy Rodriguez has turned out to be in Venezuela. On the tarmac in Palm Beach, about to depart for a crime summit in Memphis, the President teased this development.

The President ruled out Cardboard Mojtaba, Khamenei 2.0, as the person to whom he was negotiating. As to the identity of the person in charge, Trump was very vague. 

Never Trump, Inc., and in this case, CNN, reported on Kaitlan Collins’ The Source that CNN’s sources, meaning the Iranian regime, denied any negotiations were taking place. CNN was suggesting that the President was lying – making this up in order to manipulate the oil and stock markets, which, to be fair, welcomed the news that there might be an end to this conflict sooner rather than later. 

The President said that because the negotiations were ongoing in good faith, he turned his 48-hour red line into a five-day red line, which meant that if nothing was agreed to, Iran would look to a satellite like North Korea by tomorrow night. 

But then, on Tuesday, another nugget of information was released by the President in the Oval Office while presiding over the swearing-in of Markwayne Mullin as Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. There was a gift, a present – a gesture of goodwill to show the Americans they’ve reached the right person to make a deal. 

What on earth might this gift be? The President was not about to say…then. It wasn’t the right timing.

The entire Trump-hating media/political complex has drunk its own Kool-Aid, convincing itself that Donald Trump is a simpleton, a charlatan, someone who does not have the foggiest idea what he’s doing on foreign policy or geopolitics. They project him as someone winging it with bravado and bragadocio, believing that the only thing Trump understands is the angle in it that makes him or his family money. 

That’s not at all the way I see the week’s developments. It’s very obvious that Trump is in his “Art of the Deal” zone. He’s got someone on the hook he believes he can work with, and he’s doing exactly what he thinks is best for the country in the long run by pursuing this contact. 

One theory about what the gift might have been wasn’t so much a ‘what’ as it was a ‘where’. With the markets in turmoil because of the Strait of Hormuz being impassable safely to cargo ships and oil tankers, perhaps as an indication that this Iranian Trump is talking to trully is in charge, the gift might have been intelligence like targeting opportunities along Iran’s southern coast. Taking out the IRGC naval commander, Tangsiri, a day-and-a-half later, certainly could be viewed as supporting evidence to that theory.

Media, however, still wasn’t having any of it. Back on CNN, and it’s worth reminding that CNN is the only cable outlet with a media presence inside of Iran, specifically with the expressed permission and editorial approval of the Iranian regime, Wolf Blitzer trotted out to correct the record from Kaitlan Collins only a day prior. Technically, yes, CNN is learning that there are negotiations, Blitzer reported, but only because Donald Trump knows he’s in real trouble and is begging for an off-ramp. It was Trump initiating the contact, not the Iranians contacting Trump first. CNN is still maintaining the illusion that Trump has the weaker hand here and is attempting to get out from under the war. 

That is simply not supported by anything that has developed this week. In fact, it only took another day of speculation before the truth came out about the “gift”. In Thursday’s Cabinet meeting, the President made another disclosure to signal talks were indeed progressing despite what the media, and for that matter, rogue elements inside Iran, were saying to the contrary. 

The gift? Oil. Lots of it. 

Let’s run the numbers, shall we? Originally eight ships, with another two as an apology for the ugliness of what Iranians like Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and others were saying publicly. So ten ships in total. 

Empty, depending upon the age of the boats, that’s about $110 million each, or $1.1 billion. But these gift-wrapped tankers were not empty now, were they? Nope. They were full of oil straight from Kharg Island. At today’s market price of just under $100 a barrel, we’re talking somewhere in the neighborhood of $3.1 billion dollars. The left will call that a bribe. They may even believe it’s all fiction – something that never happened. 

Here’s what you have to know about Iran in its current political state. It’s fractured badly, and it’s by design going back to Khamenei – the really dead one, not the peg-legged, Village People-YMCA loving, cardboard one. Khamenei the elder had a doomsday plan in place just in case we did what he feared – kill them all. It gave the remnants of the IRGC independent control to launch whatever was left, whenever they could. We certainly have seen that happen. Simultaneously, there is at least one, maybe more, people that are part of the regime who, upon further review, aren’t really sold on the whole Hidden Imam-72 virgins-death cult thing. These are people with the power to release $3 billion dollars’ worth of oil revenue to their purported mortal enemy in an attempt not to die by Saturday when Trump’s five-day deadline expires. 

The IRGC, decimated of virtually all of its current commanders, is now raiding the Skilled Nursing Facility for Retired IRGC Psychopaths. These are hard-liners going back decades, many of whom have built corrupt financial nest eggs they want to protect dearly by keeping the military junta going for a while longer. One of those old guard killers is Hossein Nejat. He’s not running the country, but whoever is, is worried about these types of characters running around as the internal power struggle for a country falling apart at the seams in all directions continues.

But what did Nejat do on Thursday that was of note? He inadvertently confirmed Trump’s not lying about the gift of ships loaded with oil. Remember when disclosing the ten ships being presented to him, the President stated they were Pakistani-flagged?

Pakistan has gone even beyond its limits.
This is a clear betrayal by Pakistan: it transports oil through the Strait of Hormuz under Pakistan’s name and then sells it to our enemies.
We trusted Pakistan because it is a Muslim country, but they betrayed us. pic.twitter.com/RckaYgdeG0

— سردار حسین نجات (@HosseinNejat1) March 26, 2026

He’s spinning it, obviously, but he’s not contradicting the fact that there’s a deal underway. He’s adding Pakistan to the list of every other country in the region that is now dead to Iran. Good luck with that, being that Pakistan is a nuclear state and Iran isn’t, and won’t be anytime soon. As far as the gift, whether or not the ten tankers of oil are what the President claims they are, one thing can be stated with absolute certainty. That $3-plus billion dollars of Iranian crude? It’s not going to the Chinese Communist Party. 

Week four of Donald Trump’s Middle East excursion ended with an unlikely appearance and with more interesting information to digest and analyze. On Thursday afternoon, the President phoned into the set of Fox News’ The Five to join Jesse Watters, Dana Perino, Greg Gutfeld, Kayleigh McEnany, and Kennedy. It was not a quick call. He spent a lot of time going back and forth, and it was clear he wanted to make a few points about his decision to extend his five-day deadline for an additional ten days. 

.@POTUS: “They said to me, very nicely, through my people, ‘could we have more time?’… and if they don’t do what they have to do, I will knock out their power plants… and so, I gave them a 10-day period.” https://t.co/T17OXDhYF0 pic.twitter.com/6B6Si08bC1

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) March 26, 2026

Again, to Trump detractors, who are both legion and very predictable, you can use their performance over the last month to write the script for what they’ll say now. Another delay offered by Trump? Trump always chickens out. He’s caving. He’s not going to see this through. 

Possible? Sure. Almost anything is possible. Is it likely? I don’t believe that for a minute. Here’s what is more likely to take place over the next week and a half.

Scenario One: Trump has found a player inside the regime who’s willing to play ball in order to survive this war. What the President has, in essence, done by resetting the clock to ten days from now is he’s turned Tehran into Westeros. This is going to be Game of Thrones – the Iranian mini-series. Donald Trump is Winter, and winter is definitely coming. While the specter of the big punch to come remains out there on the horizon, nothing else changes while Trump accedes to the time request of whoever is seeking it. Targets are still being identified and destroyed systematically by either our military or Israel’s. This is just a sample of Iran’s Thursday night. 

Strikes on the headquarters of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Aerospace Forces are seen from the Chitgar area toward Kuhak in western Tehran, Iran. – Vahid Online pic.twitter.com/g19Mxb0QCJ

— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) March 27, 2026

Heavy and intense airstrikes on Tehran tonight. pic.twitter.com/fIgJxgsAee

— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) March 26, 2026

US–Israeli strikes on Kashan, Isfahan Province, central Iran. pic.twitter.com/r8Nwq9OUDr

— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) March 26, 2026

Iran’s regime infrastructure continues to weaken daily. Trump’s hand only gets stronger in the meantime. There are at least two Marine Expeditionary Units en route to the region, and there are reports that Delta, SEALs, and the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, the Night Stalkers, are setting up shop as well. Whether reluctantly or not, the EU is sending ships to the Gulf, which will be combined with Sunni Arab state ships from the Middle East to help restore safe navigation through the Strait of Hormuz. And while all this is going on, Israel is very methodically pushing Hezbollah back beyond the Litani River, a much more defensible line for Israel, and a move that always had to be taken if the terror threat to the north were to be dealt with once and for all. Hezbollah assets, both human and missiles, continue to be destroyed around the clock. 

Trump has set up a 10-day window for the fight for Tehran’s Iron Throne. If the faction Trump prefers does prevail, the one that gifted him oil, one way they’ll do so is to either turn on the IRGC remnants, including the retired commanders, and conduct their own version of a red wedding scene. Or, they could provide targeting information to the Americans and Israelis, and the junta faction could be dealt with that way. I wouldn’t be remotely surprised if at some point before the new deadline, Iran announces that Cardboard Mojtaba is just as dead as the rest of the world believes he’s been since the first day of the war. All sorts of signs and signals could emanate from the power struggle now on the clock. At the end of the 10 days, if the regime faction triumphs, I could easily see a speech given to the Iranian population that a new dawn has arisen over Persia, and reforms will follow very soon. 

Scenario Two: The hard-liners from the IRGC are victorious, and the crackdown on anyone perceived to have conspired with the Great or Little Satan are purged, and the ten days lapse. The President shrugs his shoulders, says we tried, but the regime is too evil to be saved, and delivers the knockout punch that American and Israeli forces are preparing for and staging right now. When the lights go out and the infrastructure is destroyed, people finally take to the streets and have fun storming the castle. Except this time, should the Israelis or we so choose, we can provide air cover for the masses in the pockets where the regime tries to quash the resistance, just to even the odds. 

In that scenario, there’s not enough manpower or control left for the junta to hold power for very long. Certainly not when reports like this are circulating that the IRGC is drafting 12-year-olds to be cannon fodder…I mean, freedom fighters. Nothing says regime strength like great-grandpa terrorists and pre-teens linking arms together, at gunpoint in some cases, to save a nation. 

Iran reportedly lowers minimum age for war roles to 12. Children are now being drawn into patrols, checkpoints, and military logistics.@alinejadmasih pic.twitter.com/dPlPWYMEzp

— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) March 26, 2026

Scenario Three: Trump authorizes a limited operation to liberate Kharg Island from Iranian control. They’ll also need to commandeer nearby Larak Island, which is being used by the Iranian junta as a toll booth to extract a $2 million fee for safe passage through the Strait. 

This is not 1945, and this is not Iwo Jima we’re talking about here. We have precision weaponry and aircraft capabilities that would make short work of anything Iran has left to offer in defending the islands. And remember, their naval commander for the last eight years, and his intelligence advisor, were just whacked two days ago. 

The wild card, as always, is the Iranian people. There are roughly 93 million of them. How many are brainwashed regimists? How many of them will fight to the death for freedom? How many will see which way the political wind is blowing and become a force multiplier for whatever direction the mob goes? That’s anybody’s guess. 

But in none of these three scenarios does the U.S. not hold the upper hand. The neatest, cleanest way, for our part, would be for Trump’s Iranian interlocutor to use this week-and-a-half wisely, and deliver concrete steps, and perhaps concrete shoes for the IRGC old guard lingering about, that indicate their intentions. A sudden case of terminal stage fright for Abbas Araghchi would be such a sign.  

And if you need one more piece of data to demonstrate the position Donald Trump is in, listen to the beginning of this clip from his appearance on The Five.

 
Just in case the person inside the regime vying for the throne is harboring thoughts of double-crossing the President, don’t be misled. We know where every important member of the regime that remains is. We know who they are and where they are. We not only can turn off the country’s lights in Week Six, but we can turn off their individual lights, too. 

Continued prayers for our troops, their military and civilian commanders, and for our Israeli allies. 

To our friends camped out on the other side of whatever side Trump takes, keep being you. It makes for wonderful show prep. 

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