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by Rod D. Martin
June 30, 2026
I appeared on NTD Good Morning with Stefania Cox to discuss the latest in the Iran war.
We discuss:
This weekend’s hostilities and the prospects for the peace talks
The growing split in Iran’s government
Short- and long-term oil prices, and how Trump is making Hormuz irrelevant
How the U.S. is using the war to reshape the global economic order
What happens if the regime falls, or if it doesn’t
How Trump’s Lebanese peace deal gets us toward a general Middle East peace
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:
Stefania Cox: Joining us to discuss the latest in U.S.-Iran negotiations is Rod D. Martin, geopolitical analyst and CEO of Martin Capital. Good to have you with us, Rod.
President Trump said this morning, as we just heard, that Iran had requested a new meeting with the U.S. What could Iran bring to the table that would help ensure the ceasefire continues after several days of military exchanges?
Rod D. Martin: Honestly, they really cannot.
This is an incredibly divided government. We had an incident on Saturday in which 63 of 88 members of the so-called Assembly of Experts, the mullahs who pick ayatollahs and the religious body that oversees the government, declared basically a fatwa on Netanyahu and Trump. They called for all Muslims who could possibly get within reach to kill them.
These guys are feeling sold out by the faction of their government that is negotiating with the “Great Satan.” So you have this internal rift that, with every day that passes, Trump is exacerbating. He is making it worse. He is turning these guys against each other.
So what can the Iranians do? They can keep doing dumb things, because the factions aligned with the Assembly of Experts are out there firing on tankers. Then you have the other guys who are actually trying to get a deal because they know the country is being ruined by this bombing. And they are fighting each other.
The main faction technically in control right now is seen as sellouts by the mullahs, and that cannot end well for them.
Stefania Cox: Let us look more closely at what is happening in the Strait of Hormuz and the outpouring of events from there. Oil prices began dropping immediately after the U.S. and Iran signed the 60-day ceasefire agreement about a week and a half ago. Now that the ceasefire seems to be a little more fragile, how could that impact pressure, economic and otherwise, on both sides?
Rod D. Martin: In the short term, there can be some variability. I would not be surprised by that at all.
In the long term, this is one of Trump’s key aims that kind of went unspoken in this war. The Strait of Hormuz has been a pressure point the Iranians could at least threaten for basically your and my whole lifetime. All of a sudden, that is changing.
Within two years, the Strait of Hormuz will be effectively irrelevant. The development of UAE pipeline capacity across Oman to the Arabian Sea, Saudi capacity to the Red Sea, and potentially pipelines to the Mediterranean means no one is going to need the Strait of Hormuz.
So Iran has taken one of its greatest strengths and, through this conflict, turned it into a nothingburger.
Yes, in the short term, you might have some volatility. But the fact that WTI is at $69 a barrel tells you the story. We were supposed to be at $200 or $250, according to Trump’s critics. The truth is, we are now under the price we were at on February 28. It is only going to drop from here.
And the less susceptible we are to attacks on the Strait of Hormuz because of new pipeline construction and because of the U.S. Navy, the more prices are going to drop. That is the risk premium that has been built into the price for the last 35 years, which I have been talking to you about for a long time now. It is beginning to go away.
Stefania Cox: Looking at what you have said, maybe the functionality of continuing these negotiations is the internal destruction of the Iranian regime through its own mechanisms. But beyond that, President Trump may also like to end this conflict as soon as possible.
We were speaking with Captain James Fanell earlier this morning on the Morning Show.
Rod D. Martin: He’s awesome.
Stefania Cox: Yes. He gave his opinions on this topic, saying that Iran may actually fear Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent more than Secretary of War Pete Hegseth. At this point, he suggested using Iranian assets to compensate Gulf allies and ourselves for the expense of the war. What other economic levers does the U.S. now have?
Rod D. Martin: This is a much bigger play than just Iran, as you and I have been discussing for a long time.
The truth of the matter is, this is about drying up cheap, subsidized oil to China from the Russians, the Iranians, and the Venezuelans. This is about creating dollar-swap credit facilities with key allies, including the UAE. The discussions on that are a big part of why the UAE left OPEC.
We are systematically dismembering the mechanisms by which the West was previously held hostage in multiple Arab oil embargoes. And we are simultaneously pegging everybody to the dollar in a way where they are tied to it, and where their opportunities are entirely dependent on good favor in Washington instead of begging the IMF.
It is just a tremendous structure that Scott Bessent has created here, certainly with Donald Trump’s full participation and blessing.
We are going to see a massively strengthened dollar when this is over, which dramatically diminishes Russia and China. We are also going to see much more secure supply.
Of course, the most secure energy supply of all, and this helps the entire global economy dramatically, is U.S. supply. The more we can supply from the Gulf of America instead of the Persian Gulf, the more people can count on that supply. They do not have to worry about somebody shooting at tankers. They do not have to pay a risk premium. And by the way, they can stop enriching their enemies.
Why is Europe buying energy from Russia or even Qatar? That is crazy. They should be buying it from Louisiana.
And now they are going to, under the trade deal the EU finally got around to ratifying last week, which is just glorious. They are going to buy nearly a trillion dollars in U.S. energy. They are going to cut their tariffs on industrial goods and other key products to about zero. There are a few things that will still have tariffs, and the U.S. has a 15 percent tariff on them to compensate for the trade barriers they are not reducing.
All of that makes Europe more secure, makes NATO more secure, and therefore makes us not only more secure but actually richer. So that is all good, too.
Stefania Cox: Wow. There is a lot to unpack there. On China, you have mentioned that we know it has been a player behind the scenes, being a big customer of Iranian oil traditionally. Given China’s economic and other partnership with Iran, what likeness, if any, do you see between the two regimes? And what lessons from that could the U.S. take to its negotiations with Iran?
Rod D. Martin: They are both totalitarian, and they are both completely disloyal.
The Chinese have done virtually nothing for the Iranians during the 12-day war last year or during this conflict. If anything, they have been obstructive in a lot of key ways for the Iranians, because they are dependent on that oil. They are the world’s largest importer, and they cannot not be the world’s largest importer. They have to have a free flow of oil more than they have to have their buddies in Tehran in good shape.
They have done the same thing with the Iranians, in some ways, that they have done with the Russians. It has been an entirely predatory relationship. They are draining the Russian treasury of gold in exchange for energy they are paying a fraction of the legitimate market price for, because of course it is illegally sanctioned. The Chinese cannot buy this legitimately, but they are buying huge amounts of it.
Trump disrupting the shadow fleet and interdicting those tankers changes all of that. If the Chinese are forced to compete more evenly, then they are paying the same price for energy everybody else is. If they are prevented from dumping in the United States, and hopefully soon in Europe as well, the Chinese are in a much, much worse position economically than they were before this started.
Stefania Cox: Rod, as a philosopher capitalist, as you are sometimes known, what do you see as the keys to rebuilding Iran if a deal can be reached and nuclear developments curtailed, or however it comes to the point of rebuilding?
Rod D. Martin: The most important thing is that Iran be free.
If Iran is free, it can become a First World country in a generation. It can be an economic and global powerhouse in countless ways if it is not suffocated under this tyrannical, totalitarian nightmare, which functions economically as a socialist regime no different from Venezuela or Cuba.
That is the key. If the mullahs stay in power, and I really do not think they will, Iran does not have a lot of a future. If they are overthrown and there is actually a free Iran, and those are two different things, because one does not necessarily result in the other, then Iran is going to be the greatest investment opportunity of the 2030s.
One of the ways you get there, and this is so important, and the president accomplished this last week in part, is that the Arab Gulf states understand that.
They do not really want the Iranian regime gone, because the Iranian regime is keeping Iran from being the biggest power in the region by being stupid, by running their economy so badly. If you had a free Iran, first of all, that might actually encourage people to want freedom in Arab countries as well. But the bigger thing is that Iran would become a First World country.
If you achieve that, you have changed the landscape.
What the president did last week that is transformative is this Lebanese peace deal. The Arabs have used the Palestinians as an excuse, even though they will not accept Palestinians into their countries. They know every time they do that, the Palestinians try to overthrow the government wherever they are let in.
They do not like the Palestinians, but they are emotionally wedded to the cause. The same thing is true to a degree with Hezbollah. And Trump is systematically taking away the Arab excuses to oppose Israel, which results in a generalized peace at some point.
Lebanon has been in an effective state of civil war since 1975. Most of your viewers were not even born then. It is largely because of outside forces, primarily Iranian through Hezbollah, which is a non-state actor in control of about a third of Lebanon’s sovereign territory.
Lebanon is also in a state of war with Israel by its own choosing since 1948. They recognized Israeli sovereignty and territorial integrity last week in a signing ceremony presided over by Marco Rubio.
This is an earthquake. In other news cycles, it would be the dominating news. And what it does is take away another one of those excuses for a broad regional peace.
Stefania Cox: Wow. So much to talk about here. Great to have you on. Unfortunately, that is all we have time for. Thank you so much again, Rod D. Martin.
Rod D. Martin: Great to be here.
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