Newsmax host: “There's an argument to be made, and I think it is a point to be made, that the ceasefire has given Iran a much needed break, time to come up for air in the middle of all this”
Published
Citation
From the April 8, 2026, edition of Newsmax's Rob Schmitt Tonight
ROB SCHMITT (HOST): Is — one thing that's the hardest thing to figure out — is the Strait of Hormuz open? Does anybody actually know that? Because it depends on where you read and who you ask.
REBECCA HEINRICH (GUEST): So it is open, except that the Iranians can just merely threaten to terrorize it. And that threat is enough to cause insurance companies, as you know, to increase prices. And then you don't have companies that want to go through the strait. But if the United States continues to successfully completely degrade Iran's capacity to threaten the strait, then they don't have the ability to make good on their threat. We've already significantly degraded their ability to do that. So when President Trump says to our allies, now is the time for you to go get your oil, now is the time to escort these ships through the strait, he's being serious. Now is the time, especially during the ceasefire. This is whenever I would really try to get an international coalition together, Rob, to get that oil moving again.
SCHMITT: You know, there's an argument to be made, and I think it is a point to be made, that the ceasefire has given Iran a much needed break, time to come up for air in the middle of all this. And some would say that's — this break is is a win for the regime. Do you think that there is a chance that this tattered regime is authentically seeking a deal that we would ever agree to?
HEINRICH: Not at this point. And I'm not really worried about them coming up for air. I mean, we essentially have our boot at their throat. I mean, the Israelis have so thoroughly penetrated their government. We have eliminated more than a thousand of their senior IRGC and besieged leaders. We have taken out their nuclear scientists. So, I mean, at this point, it's like, you know, what are they going to do with a couple of weeks? I mean, they can barely communicate with one another. So I'm not worried that this is going to give the Iranians any sort of necessary oxygen they need to regroup.
SCHMITT: What do you what do you think the end of this is? Because, you know, I think it will be a pretty fair criticism if this ends up being just us mowing the lawn, which is kind of — what, you know, that's how they've always described it in Israel. We're going to go knock them down, knock down their progress, but leaving the regime in place. If this ends up just being a really big mowing of the lawn in Iran, is that a failure?
HEINRICH: I don't think it's a failure. I'm already happy. I also — I already think that the United States is so much safer than we were four weeks ago. But I still want the total victory, the win. And I think a win would constitute the United States ensuring that Iran cannot have access to a nuclear weapon entirely, whether it's by removing all their nuclear material or having some mechanism, international force, to see that inside the country. And the United States and our allies have to be the ones controlling the Strait of Hormuz. There cannot be a scenario in which Iran can threaten the Strait of Hormuz credibly, because, of course, we know that the Chinese back Iran. So that would be a big geopolitical, I think, mistake for the United States to permit that to happen.