Why is Elon Musk Negotiating With Iran?

Elon Musk is apparently trying to broker some kind of agreement between the United States and Iran.

The tech mogul and world’s richest man met with Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations in New York on Monday, The New York Times reports, citing two anonymous Iranian officials. The meeting, held in a secret location, reportedly focused on how to defuse tensions between the two countries and lasted for over an hour.

The two officials said the meeting was “positive” and “good news,” according to the Times. Neither Donald Trump’s campaign nor Musk commented on the meeting. In the past week, Musk has been spending a lot of time with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate, and also traveled to Washington with him.

This raises the question of whether Musk was meeting with Iranian officials on Trump’s orders. According to the Times, Musk requested the meeting and the ambassador picked the location. The president-elect included the tech CEO on a phone call last week with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy only hours after Trump won the election, so it wouldn’t be Musk’s first dip into Trump’s foreign policy communications.

Musk has reportedly engaged in secret talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to a Wall Street Journal report last month, and Russia is allied with Iran. Trump also has a worrying relationship with Putin and Russia, which raises questions about whether Musk’s Monday meeting also has to do with Russia.

The meeting could also signal a change in tone between Iran and the United States. Relations between the two countries have not been positive since Trump’s first term, when he infamously dissolved the nuclear deal with Iran negotiated by the Obama administration and approved the assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani in 2020. U.S. support for Israel’s brutal war against Gaza and Lebanon under the Biden administration has not helped matters either, especially since Iran backs the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, the stated target of Israeli bombing.

Trump has been a staunch supporter of Israel’s war and attacked President Biden for insufficient support of the country, which considers Iran its top enemy. A Washington Post report Wednesday said that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was seeking to give Trump an inauguration gift of a cease-fire with Lebanon. Maybe Trump hopes to make a grand show of “good deals” in the Middle East to start off his presidency. Or, as was the case in his first presidential term’s foreign policy efforts, his overtures may end up going nowhere.

It looks like there is at least one person who is happy about Matt Gaetz’s nomination to be the next attorney general: Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who said she was hopeful Gaetz would prosecute vaccine “crimes against humanity,” whatever that means.

The Georgia Republican, with a penchant for regurgitating extremist conspiracy theories, unleashed a diatribe of vaccine misinformation during a congressional meeting Thursday titled, “Preparing for the Next Pandemic: Lessons Learned and the Path Forward.”

“I think one of the greatest lessons that has been learned here is that the government and its powerful agencies should never use the American people’s hard earned tax dollars to create viruses that can be unleashed on the world, like Covid-19 was,” Greene said.

Greene claimed that Dr. Anthony Fauci “lied to the American people, abusing his power and position and role, a very powerful role paid for by the American tax people.” She suggested that the United States had been behind the deadly disease, just to sell Americans an even more horrific medicine.

“People that perpetuated and continue to perpetuate these crimes need to be prosecuted, and that needs to be starting in the next administration, and I’m pretty sure our next attorney general will do that, and I look forward to seeing that happen,” she said.

Greene, who bragged about being unvaccinated, also suggested that vaccines should be further “investigated” and linked them to a supposed “rise in autism” and neurological disorders—something that has also been suggested by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who Trump announced Thursday will be his nominee for secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.

“This has literally been a war on people’s health,” Greene said, misusing the word “literally” and describing lifesaving vaccines as a “war.”

“Preparing for the next pandemic is actually recognizing that the last pandemic resulted in crimes against humanity,” Greene continued.

Will Gaetz be interested in prosecuting Fauci over his efforts to pull America out of a global pandemic? It’s unclear.

Gaetz claimed in 2021 that the best way to prevent yourself from getting Covid-19 was … to get Covid-19. “The best vaccine we’ve found is mother nature’s vaccine,” Gaetz told the right-wing One America News Network.

When CNN asked whether he had been vaccinated, Gaetz cut the interviewer off. “That’s very nosy of you,” he said.

“I think we should be talking more about freeing Britney,” he added.

Elon Musk’s Tesla stock is falling on Thursday after Reuters reported that the Trump transition team plans on axing Biden-era tax credits on electric vehicle purchases.

The president-elect wants to kill the $7,500 tax credit along with a larger tax reorganization. This will likely do damage to the E.V. industry and cause prices to spike. E.V. companies Rivian and Lucid, along with Tesla, have each taken hits on the stock market. Rivian fell by over 12 percent, Lucid fell by 3 percent, and Tesla fell by 5 percent.

And while this move does seem contradictory to his interests, the richest man on earth remains bullish. His aides parroted earlier points he made about this move, calling it “devastating” for his competitors, while Tesla would only take a small blow.

Smoother sailing was expected for Musk and his companies given his proximity to Trump this campaign cycle. The billionaire was a constant presence on the trail and has been with the president-elect constantly since his win, even joining Trump on diplomatic phone calls. Trump also placed Musk, along with Vivek Ramaswamy, in charge of the Department of Government Efficiency, a position that little is known about at this time.

Two former staffers from Donald Trump’s first presidential term are now vying to be his deputy national security adviser. 

Politico reports that Sebastian Gorka and Michael Anton are top contenders for the post, which would not require Senate confirmation. On Monday, Trump asked Florida Republican Representative Mike Waltz to be his national security adviser.

Both Gorka and Anton would be controversial picks. Gorka reportedly believes that violence is inherently part of Islam, and vehemently supported Trump’s Muslim ban. Born in London to Hungarian parents, Gorka lived in Hungary from 1992 to 2008, and at one point had an arrest warrant on gun charges in the country. 

In 2016, while also a consultant for Trump’s first presidential campaign, Gorka worked for the FBI, but was fired for his anti-Muslim diatribes. Gorka also was accused of having ties to a Nazi-allied organization in Hungary, Vitzi Rend, a charge he denies, although he has been photographed wearing a medal from the antisemitic group.  

From January 2017 until August of that year, Gorka worked in the Trump administration as a strategist and deputy assistant to the president and was supposed to work on national security issues. However, he was unable to obtain a security clearance, raising questions about what he was actually doing in the White House. Even Gorka’s academic credentials have been called into question, as he claims to have a doctorate, which experts say was awarded on weak standards.  

Anton worked as a speechwriter for conservative figures including Rudy Giuliani, Condoleezza Rice, and Rupert Murdoch before joining the Trump administration as a deputy assistant to the president for strategic communications in 2017. He has also espoused anti-Muslim views, criticized the Black Lives Matter movement, and even claimed in 2020 that George Soros was planning a coup with the help of the Democratic Party. He is arguably best known as the author of “The Flight 93 Election,” a 2016 manifesto that urged conservatives to support Trump. 

Of the two, Anton is more likely to get the post, according to one of Politico’s sources. But if either gets the job, they will have access to vital national security information, will craft policy, and will likely also target American citizens they disagree with. That’s a scary prospect, especially with a president who has repeatedly threatened to use the military against “the enemy within.”  

Donald Trump tapped Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services on Thursday, effectively handing the reins of the nation’s health policies to a renowned conspiracy theorist and vaccine skeptic who has admitted to having brain-eating worms in his head.

“I am thrilled to announce Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as The United States Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS),” Trump announced on X. “For too long, Americans have been crushed by the industrial food complex and drug companies who have engaged in deception, misinformation, and disinformation.”

Kennedy’s nomination was always on the horizon, despite the insistence of Trump’s transition co-chair that it would not be the case.

In his first speech after being declared the winner of the 2024 election, Trump promised that Kennedy would take on a role in his second administration that would “help make America healthy again.”

“He’s a great guy, he really means it, he wants to do some things and we’re going to let him go to it,” Trump said.

During an interview with NBC News’s Dasha Burns earlier this month, Trump refused to promise that he wouldn’t ban vaccines, instead outlining his intentions to talk to Kennedy and “talk to other people” and make a decision. “He’s a very talented guy and has strong views,” Trump said of Kennedy.

During the same interview, Trump signaled that he would be open to RFK Jr.’s recommendation to remove fluoride from all public water systems—a 1945 public health decision that has reduced cavities and tooth decay in adults and children by as much as 25 percent, according to the American Dental Association.

The choice will likely draw the ire of medical professionals across the nation, as Kennedy reportedly has plans to strip even long-standing vaccines from the market.

Vaccines have proven to be one of the greatest accomplishments of modern medicine. The jabs are so effective at preventing illness that they have practically eradicated some of the worst diseases from our collective culture, from rabies to polio and smallpox, a fact that has possibly fooled some into believing that the viruses and their complications aren’t a significant threat for the average, health-conscious individual.

This story has been updated.