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by Rod D. Martin
July 9, 2026
I appeared on NTD Newsroom with Don Ma to discuss President Trump’s declared end to the Iran MOU and ceasefire, the resumption of hostilities, and what comes next.
We discuss:
How Trump used the negotiations to fragment the Iranian regime
The state of Iran’s military and why Hormuz is becoming irrelevant
Iran’s centrality to every Middle East conflict and Trump’s plans for a general Middle East peace
Why a nuclear Iran would not act “rationally” in the manner of other powers
Will Trump occupy Kharg Island?
It’s 12 minutes that quickly explain the latest developments and where we go from here. Watch the interview, and pass it along!
Here’s our full discussion:
Don Ma: President Trump says, as far as he’s concerned, the memorandum of understanding with Iran is over. Joining us now to discuss more is Rod Martin, geopolitical analyst and CEO of Martin Capital. Thank you for joining us today.
Trump says he thinks it’s a waste of time to be talking with Iranian leaders. What’s your reaction at this moment, after everything that’s happened?
Rod D. Martin: That just tells us that he has used the time he bought with the ceasefire to do whatever it is he’s setting up, which may include training key people inside Iran, arming them, any number of things.
This president has negotiated some of the biggest deals in the history of the world. He always knew that these people could not really be dealt with. And it’s not just that. It’s that he has managed through this process to get them to fight each other.
We have seen assassinations and counter-assassinations between the mullah faction and the IRGC faction. We have seen all kinds of splits again and again. A couple weekends ago, the Assembly of Experts, which is the mullahs who elect the new ayatollah, voted three to one against a key initiative of the IRGC and then had to say, “Oops, our bad, we didn’t mean that.”
He has them pitted against each other. They were never going to make a deal.
But on the other hand, this is Donald Trump, so he always leaves himself multiple ways to win. One of those, of course, is, at least in theory, negotiation. But the Iranians have proven that they cannot really be negotiated with.
They have proven it to the Gulf Arab states, which obviously have been a little bit slow on the uptake about that, because the Iranians keep attacking them when they aren’t attacking Iran. At the end of the day, you’re going to have a much more solid coalition against Iran than ever before, and we’re going to get to the end of this.
Don Ma: What is Iran’s guiding ideology here? Because it seems like, from what you’re describing, they’re making more enemies than friends.
Rod D. Martin: They absolutely are, and it’s just shocking to watch.
If you’re Iran, why on earth do you want to hit Kuwait or Bahrain or Qatar or the UAE or Saudi Arabia? Why do you want to do that? Don’t you want to look like the reasonable player that is showing Muslim solidarity against the Great Satan in North America?
But no, that hasn’t been their take from the first. From the first, they have taken out their wrath more on the Gulf Arab states, really, than anybody else, even Israel. It’s just an amazing thing to watch.
Now, some of that is the factionalization. We talked about this quite a bit back in March, about their much-vaunted Mosaic Defense, which decentralizes command into 31 separate regions across the country. That was always a recipe for factionalization. Some of these guys just go and do things without actually having direction from the center.
But the center is fractured too, and we’ve been seeing that since the first Islamabad talks. These guys hate each other. The ayatollah, if he is even alive, hasn’t been seen in public, was kept away from his father’s funeral. They will not let him come out in public. That tells you everything you need to know.
The fight is over internal control. Some of these people are, in answer to your question, motivated heavily by Twelver Shia Islam, a subset of a subset of Islam with a particularly militant bent. Some of these people are just motivated by power or by staying alive. Those cross-currents are playing out in Tehran as we speak.
And now they’ve poked the bear one time too many.
Don Ma: If you’re saying some of these people are motivated by power or staying alive, and you’re saying there are fractures at the center, when you hear the statement, and I saw this today, when Iranian officials say that the U.S. must recognize the new Iranian order in the Strait of Hormuz, how would you interpret that? Is it an empty statement, given everything you just described?
Rod D. Martin: That is possibly the emptiest statement in human history.
Iran does not have a navy. They have some speedboats that can go harass shipping. They have some missiles left that we’re probably about to finish off. They have spent the last 60 days moving things around the country that perhaps we had not found in March and April, and now we know exactly where they put them. So we’re just going to blow all those up too.
Also, the U.S. Navy hasn’t moved. We’re in the same spot we were. We can clamp down with the blockade instantly, which I assume is probably what the president is about to do.
He’s talking about seizing Kharg Island. Well, that’s 90 percent of Iran’s exports, even if we don’t obstruct them. And by the way, 90 percent of Iran’s exports go to China. So the Chinese aren’t thrilled about what’s happening here. This is going to significantly increase prices there and put pressure on their domestic situation, as it was back during the hostilities in March.
None of this is good for Iran. But there is a fanaticism among the mullah faction in particular about their religious position. There is a fanaticism among the IRGC, partly about theology but mostly about their own power. They’re just not dislodgable. They’re going to continue to fight until we kill them. And my guess is Donald Trump is ready for that.
Don Ma: If we fight until they’re defeated, does that mean you’re thinking military action will likely resume? As we’ve seen, Iran doesn’t really behave like, or have the rational thinking of, a normal country. Does that essentially mean war or military action is the only way, the only path forward?
Rod D. Martin: Look, Donald Trump can pull a rabbit out of a hat sometimes. So maybe you get to some kind of settlement.
But yes, I think the answer is military. I don’t think there’s any way around it.
Dealing with Iran is a centerpiece, not the only centerpiece, but a centerpiece of the Trump foreign policy, not because of Iran itself, but because Iran has been for much of the last several decades the centerpiece of all conflict in the Middle East.
If you’re talking about the Houthis, if you’re talking about Hamas, if you’re talking about Hezbollah, if you’re talking about Syria, if you’re talking about the Shia militias in Iraq, anywhere you look where there is a conflict, it is armed, directed, and funded from Tehran.
We are rolling all that up on the ground. Even in Iraq, the new Iraqi government is arresting key Shia militia leaders and disarming those militias, which is really the final nail in the coffin of the external Iranian empire, such as it has been.
But you still have to deal with the head of the snake. There’s just no getting around the fact that if they’re given time, they will reconstitute. They will start funding all those conflicts again. They’ll create some new ones we haven’t heard of.
But your assessment is exactly right on another point. This is why you can’t ever let them have a nuclear weapon, because they don’t deal with the world like rational countries.
If the Russians have nuclear weapons, you have a pretty good idea of exactly what would deter their use. If the Chinese have nuclear weapons, you have a very good understanding of what they will and will not do with them, and you can act against it.
With the Iranians, they want to burn the world down. It doesn’t matter how irrational it seems to us. It makes sense from their theological and political point of view, and that’s the only point of view they’re interested in.
So the president was right to start this, and the president’s going to be right to finish it. He’s probably going to have to finish it militarily. I really don’t see another good option.
Don Ma: It seems like Iran is not looking for anything practical, because when it agreed to this memorandum of understanding, it was getting so many benefits from the U.S. We removed the blockade of Iranian ports. That was one. And we removed sanctions. So Iran was standing to benefit from this, and now these actions that it’s taking just make you wonder if it wants anything practical.
Let me ask you one last question here, Rod. President Trump suggested potentially, in the future, maybe the U.S. might take over Kharg Island. What do you think about this strategy?
Rod D. Martin: I think there’s a decent chance that happens now.
The president was very clear that he intends for this to take very little time. Now, what is very little time? I don’t know. Depending on your point of view, World War II was three years or six. Depending on your point of view, the Vietnam War was eight years or 30 years.
So, in terms of warfare, “a very short time” might be six months. I don’t know what he means. Maybe he means six days.
But the truth of the matter is, if you want to end it quickly, cutting off the Iranian regime’s ability to earn foreign cash is essential. It was essential to our victory in the Cold War. It’s essential to what’s happening to Russia right now, as the Ukrainians are increasingly hitting, for example, their largest oil refinery in Omsk the other day, a city even Hitler wasn’t able to strike.
We’re drying up their hard currency. We’re making it very, very difficult for them to continue prosecuting their war. And of course, that’s essential here.
The Iranians have a unique vulnerability in putting all their eggs in one basket at Kharg Island. Honestly, that’s an incredibly easy operation for us if we just want to deploy a Marine force, or however they want to go about it. There’s not a thing in the world the Iranians can do about it.
Moreover, if they were to attack Kharg Island in the pursuit of getting it back, they destroy the infrastructure that they have to have to rebuild.
So yes, I think that’s probably high on the menu. I don’t know if the president will actually do it, but if I were in his position, I would certainly give it serious consideration.
Don Ma: Great points you made today, Rod. Thank you for speaking with us.
Rod D. Martin: Thank you.
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