Brian Kilmeade spent the last week telling Fox News viewers Trump's Iran deal was too vague to trust.
Now a Republican senator went on Kilmeade's own network and told him exactly why he was wrong.
Hawley didn't just defend the deal – he delivered a verdict so blunt it stopped Kilmeade cold.
Kilmeade Had Been Leading the Fox Skeptic Chorus All Week
Kilmeade didn't hold back when the Memorandum of Understanding dropped.
He called the deal "very vague and concerning."
He said it "doesn't look like Iran has been brought to its knees."
He told viewers Trump "will end up pretty frustrated when he finds out they don't live up to anything they agreed to."
He even tried to hang the whole thing on JD Vance – "This is his deal," Kilmeade said on air.
That's a remarkable posture for a Fox News host whose audience overwhelmingly supports the president who just ended a war.
So when Kilmeade interviewed Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) on The Ingraham Angle Wednesday night and tried the same skeptical framing – asking whether anything in the MOU makes him believe Iran's behavior had changed – Hawley didn't take the bait.
He torched it.
Hawley Delivered the Verdict Kilmeade Didn't Want to Hear
"Well, Brian, I haven't seen the final text yet," Hawley said, "but I'll tell you what I like for sure what I've heard reported."
And then he laid it out, point by point.
The Strait of Hormuz reopens – great for the American economy, great for gas prices, great for fertilizer prices in Missouri.
Trump secured a ceasefire that holds.
"And I like the fact that their nuclear program, Iran's, is buried under 1,000 feet of rubble, and it's not going anywhere, Brian."
That last line was aimed directly at Kilmeade's week-long campaign of doubt.
Hawley wasn't finished.
"I mean, the president made sure that it is buried. I believe it is buried for good. Those are all good things."
What "Buried Under 1,000 Feet of Rubble" Actually Means
This isn't political spin.
On June 22, 2025, Operation Midnight Hammer sent seven B-2 Spirit stealth bombers over Iran carrying 30,000-pound Massive Ordnance Penetrators – bunker-buster bombs designed specifically to destroy facilities buried deep underground.
It was the first time those bombs had ever been used in combat.
They dropped fourteen of them on Fordow and Natanz, Iran's two operational enrichment facilities.
Gen. Dan Caine, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said all three sites – Natanz, Fordow, and Isfahan – sustained "extremely severe damage and destruction."
The IAEA said the sites "suffered enormous damage."
A year later, CSIS reported that Iran had done nothing to rebuild any of those facilities.
That's what Hawley was talking about.
The Fordow facility was built inside a mountain specifically to survive conventional bombing.
Trump used the only weapon capable of destroying it.
Iran walked into the MOU negotiations without a functioning nuclear program.
https://x.com/MichaelARothman/status/2067755606677823866“>https://x.com/MichaelARothman/status/2067755606677823866
Kilmeade Was Asking the Wrong Question
Kilmeade's framing treats the MOU as the primary achievement.
It isn't.
The achievement happened twelve months earlier when B-2 bombers carved through a mountain in northwestern Iran and reduced the centrifuge halls to rubble.
The 14-point MOU reopens the Strait of Hormuz and launches a 60-day negotiation framework.
Trump announced the agreement on Truth Social with the kind of confident bluntness his base recognizes immediately: "The Deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran is now complete. Ships of the World, start your engines. Let the oil flow!"
That's a man describing a fait accompli – not a negotiation he's hoping works out.
Conservative critics fixating on imprecise MOU language – the agreement requires Iran to use its "best efforts" for safe passage of ships – are reading ceasefire terms as if they were a final treaty.
They aren't.
They're the conditions under which a beaten adversary stops the bleeding while the harder questions get resolved in the next round of talks.
The Real Story Is What Iran Brought to the Table
Iran entered these negotiations with its nuclear program in ruins, its proxy network shredded by Operation Epic Fury, and its economy cut off by the American naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.
They signed because they had nothing left to bargain with.
Hawley named the three wins that matter: cheaper gas, a ceasefire, and a nuclear program buried permanently under a mountain.
Those aren't spin points.
They're the result of Trump doing in one year what Obama couldn't do in eight – and what the establishment foreign policy crowd said couldn't be done at all.
Kilmeade's doubt was always the wrong read.
They know who was right.
Sources:
- Jeff Poor, "Hawley: Iran's Nuclear Program 'Buried Under 1,000 Feet of Rubble,' 'Not Going Anywhere'," Breitbart, June 18, 2026.
- "Trump Personally Signs Iran Agreement at Versailles, Memorandum in Effect," Breitbart, June 17, 2026.
- "Trump the Peacemaker: POTUS's Efforts on Iran, Ukraine Dominated G7," Breitbart, June 19, 2026.
- "Operation Epic Fury and the Remnants of Iran's Nuclear Program," CSIS, March 2026.
- "What Operation Midnight Hammer Means for the Future of Iran's Nuclear Ambitions," CSIS, August 2025.
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