Bessent Floats Lifting Sanctions on Iran as Oil Prices Skyrocket

In response to skyrocketing oil prices as a result of the war with Iran, the Trump administration is considering lifting sanctions on the country it is currently bombing.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Fox Business Thursday morning that “we had a break-the-glass plan across the administration, and at Treasury we unsanctioned Russian oil.”

“In the coming days, we may un-sanction the Iranian oil that’s on the water,” Bessent added, claiming that their oil would amount to about “10 days to two weeks of supply that the Iranians had been pushing out that would have all gone to China.”

Iranian oil has been sanctioned in some form since 1979, and the idea that the Trump administration would consider easing sanctions while starting a war with Iran seems counterintuitive, giving the country an economic lifeline. On Wednesday, the Trump administration lifted sanctions on Venezuelan oil, and last week, it eased sanctions on Russian oil despite the country’s ongoing war with Ukraine.

Does the White House have any long-term plans for its war with Iran? Trump was clearly caught off guard by Iran’s closure and mining of the Strait of Hormuz, a critical choke point in the Persian Gulf where much of the world’s oil flows, and by Iran’s decision to attack oil facilities of U.S. allies in the region.

Last year, the Trump administration chose to decommission several of its anti-mine ships, and also fired oil and gas experts from the State Department. Both moves have backfired, as the ships would be critical to help clear the strait and the experts could have helped prepare for this current oil crisis. Now the White House has been left scrambling to avert an economic crisis.

This story has been updated.

Senator Markwayne Mullin has secured the votes he needed to advance to a final floor vote in the upper chamber, all thanks to Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman.

Fetterman differed from his colleagues in the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee Thursday, voting alongside Republicans to advance Mullin’s nomination to the Senate floor.

The final committee tally was 8–7. Meanwhile, Republican Senator Rand Paul joined Democrats in rejecting Mullin’s appointment.

Fetterman has displayed a penchant for Trumpian politics since he moved to Washington, despite the fact that he ran on the progressive ticket. Since Fetterman entered office in 2023, he has sided with Republicans dozens of times, frequently leveraging his position to advance Donald Trump’s agenda. He also voted to confirm several of Trump’s Cabinet selections, including the last DHS chief, Kristi Noem, who was transferred to work in an unknown section of the government following a string of embarrassing scandals.

“In January, I called on the president to fire Noem—and he did,” Fetterman wrote in an X post Thursday, addressing his vote. “I truly approached the confirmation of my colleague and friend, Senator Mullin, with an open-mind.

“We need a leader at DHS. We must reopen DHS,” he continued. “My AYE is rooted in a strong committed, constructive working relationship with Senator Mullin for our nation’s security.”

Mullin has had his own tumultuous history in the Senate. In 2023, the Oklahoma Republican tried to brawl with International Brotherhood of Teamsters President Sean O’Brien. The hostile exchange was halted by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, but the fallout continued in the days after as Mullin refused to back down from the violence he started. Speaking with podcasters and broadcasters, Mullin invariably escalated the conflict, claiming he would “100 percent” bite and even duel the union boss.

He’s also promoted violence against and attacked his colleagues, spurring accusations that Mullin suffers from severe anger issues.

In a fiery exchange during his committee confirmation hearing Wednesday, Paul raked up Mullin’s reaction to a November 2017 incident in which the Kentucky lawmaker was attacked by his neighbor, leaving him with several broken ribs.

Paul charged that Mullin “went on to brag” that he had “completely understood and approved of the assault,” prompting Mullin to “explain to the American public why they should trust a man with anger issues to set the proper example for ICE and border patrol agents.”

Mullin’s response was that he was simply a blunt person and that he has had to “really pray about my attitude,” chalking his beef with Paul up to “political differences.”

Mullin also stood by a previous comment that he “understood” where Paul’s neighbor was coming from.

This story has been updated.

Per the families’ requests, media access was reportedly restricted during a dignified transfer of six killed service members at Dover Air Force Base Wednesday. But that didn’t stop the White House from turning the ceremony into content for the internet.

The White House shared several photographs across social media, touting Donald Trump’s attendance at the proceedings with all the esteem an American flag and prayer-hands emoji can provide. “Their courage will never be forgotten,” read another post, with a second American flag emoji.

On TikTok, the White House posted a slideshow of photographs with a piano rendition of “Amazing Grace” playing over top. “The service and sacrifice of the six American heroes will never be forgotten,” the caption read, sounding copy-pasted from ChatGPT.

The images included one of Trump saluting a travel case draped with an American flag. The White House also uploaded a batch of 12 photographs to its Flickr account that showed Trump standing beside House Speaker Mike Johnson and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

The ceremony was held to honor six service members who served aboard a KC-135 refueling aircraft that crashed last week in Iraq, while supporting operations in Iran. The U.S. death toll of Operation Epic Fury has risen to 13 service members.

This was the second dignified transfer Trump has attended since launching his war in Iran. But this is the third transfer ceremony of the war so far: Trump skipped the second after he received immense backlash for wearing his own merchandise during the first proceeding.

This time, he left his gaudy $55, gold-embroidered “USA” baseball cap at home. The White House also previously used a photograph from a dignified transfer earlier this month to illustrate a fundraising email that offered to sell “private national security briefings.”

The White House’s flagrant flouting of the families’ plea for privacy demonstrates that it hasn’t learned anything. Trump is continuing to use dignified transfers for his own political purposes. If not for ads, then for propaganda.

Iran has not gotten anywhere close to developing nuclear weapons over the last year, according to ex-counterterrorism director Joe Kent.

Kent blindsided the Trump administration earlier this week when he suddenly resigned from his post as the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, citing the war with Iran—and his assessment that Iran “posed no imminent threat” to the U.S.—as the primary cause for his departure.

In a sit-down interview Wednesday night with Tucker Carlson, Kent explained that Iran’s nuclear program was basically defunct.

“Was Iran on the verge of getting a nuclear weapon?” asked Carlson.

“No, they weren’t three weeks ago when this started, and they weren’t in June, either,” Kent said. “I mean, the Iranians have had a religious ruling—a fatwa—against actually developing a nuclear weapon since 2004. That’s been in place since 2004. That’s available in the public sphere.

“But then also, we had no intelligence to indicate that that fatwa was being disobeyed or it was on the cusp of being lifted,” he noted.

Kent’s resignation sparked a maelstrom across Washington, where top Republicans and Trump officials spent the better part of Tuesday disparaging Kent and his work, branding the Trump appointee as a “crazed egomaniac.” The size and scope of the MAGA reaction was a message to other Trump officials, warning them of the fallout if they publicly criticize the war.

The repercussions continued into Thursday, when Representative Elise Stefanik referred to Kent’s letter as “inappropriate” and National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard told Congress that Kent’s decision to blame Israel for the ongoing war was concerning.

In the same interview with Carlson, Kent claimed that U.S. officials had entered a “complacent mode” when dealing with Israel and its shared intelligence, warning that that intelligence could be shared to influence the U.S. administration just as much as it is shared to inform the administration.

“We trust a lot of what they have to say, not keeping in the back of our mind that they have their own agenda and we have our own agenda at the end of the day,” Kent said, noting that the U.S. and Israel’s missions are frequently aligned, though he did not believe this was the case with regard to the Iran.

“I don’t believe our objective has been clearly defined,” Kent said, citing America’s and Israel’s varied approaches to forced regime change in Iran.

Kent also offered some conspiratorial views on Charlie Kirk’s assassination, suggesting that Israel could have been involved in the political operative’s death since Kirk was a vocal opponent of U.S. involvement in Iran.

It’s worth noting that Kent is a known extremist with neo-Nazi ties. He has had to disavow a past interview with Nazi sympathizer Greyson Arnold and interactions with Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes. Even his resignation letter included “ugly antisemitic tropes” and “really nasty rhetoric,” Emily Horne, a former National Security Council official under Joe Biden, told The New Republic earlier this week.

So far, 13 U.S. soldiers have been killed in the conflict, as have more than 20 Iranian officials, including Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. More than 1,400 Iranian civilians have been killed, including dozens of children at a girls’ school in the country’s south. Some 3.2 million people have been displaced, as the U.S.-Israeli strikes have damaged more than 42,000 civilian sites—such as homes, hospitals, and schools—across Iran, according to Iranian government spokesperson Fatemeh Mohajerani.

The Trump administration is requesting more than $200 billion to fund the war with Iran, and Democrats are outraged.

The Washington Post reported Wednesday night that the Department of Defense had asked the White House for the hefty sum. Reactions were swift and negative. On X, Democratic Senator Ruben Gallego pointed out the Iraq War of the early 2000s was less expensive.

“At the height of combat the Iraq War cost around $140 Billion per year,” Gallego posted. “If the Pentagon is asking for $200 billion they are asking for a long war. The answer is a simple no.”

Senator Chris Van Hollen was more blunt.

“This should be an absolute nonstarter,” Van Hollen wrote. “The best way to end this war, protect our troops, save civilian lives, and rein in a lawless administration is to cut off funding. I’m a hell no.”

The request would come on top of President Trump’s request to Congress in January, before the war, to boost the defense budget from $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion, a record high.* And the first six days of the Iran war cost taxpayers more than $11.3 billion. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth defended the additional $200 billion to reporters Thursday, saying that it “takes money to kill bad guys.”

“So we’re going back to Congress and our folks there to ensure that we’re properly funded for what’s been done, for what we may have to do in the future, ensure that our ammunition—everything’s refilled, and not just refilled, but above and beyond,” Hegseth said.

This budget request is not going to sail through Congress, especially if the administration deploys ground troops. Since most Democrats in the Senate oppose the additional funding, Republicans would have to use the budget reconciliation process to pass it. We’ll see if any vulnerable Republicans balk.

* This story has been updated with the correct defense budget request.