Conservative media host Megyn Kelly pulled no punches in her assessment of President Donald Trump‘s two-week ceasefire with Iran, telling Piers Morgan on his Uncensored program that the deal amounted to backing down.
Megyn Kelly said Trump’s two-week ceasefire deal “sounds very much like surrender” to her — but she was still happy about it. Kelly told Morgan, “I mean, great. We — this needed to end. Ugly or any other way. It needed to end. It was folly to begin with. It was folly throughout. It remains folly.”
Kelly made clear her support for the ceasefire was not a defense of how the war was conducted. Instead, she framed the end of hostilities as relief after what she described as a costly and avoidable conflict.
The ceasefire that prompted Kelly’s remarks
Trump said he agreed to suspend planned attacks on Iranian infrastructure for two weeks, backing off threats to imminently order the destruction of Iran’s “whole civilization.”
Trump credited Pakistan for mediating the settlement, writing on Truth Social, “Based on conversations with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Field Marshal Asim Munir, of Pakistan and wherein they requested that I hold off the destructive force being sent tonight to Iran and subject to the Islamic Republic of Iran agreeing to the COMPLETE, IMMEDIATE and SAFE OPENING of the Strait of Hormuz, I agree to suspend the bombing and attack of Iran for a period of two weeks.”
Trump said the U.S. had agreed to halt its planned attacks because “we have already met and exceeded all Military objectives and are very far along with a definitive Agreement concerning Longterm PEACE with Iran and PEACE in the Middle East.” He added, “We received a 10-point proposal from Iran and believe it is a workable basis on which to negotiate.”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt called it “a victory for the United States that President Trump and our incredible military made happen,” saying the operation had created “maximum leverage” for diplomatic negotiations.
Kelly disputed the ‘regime change’ claim
Despite the White House’s framing, Kelly pushed back on one of Trump’s central assertions — that the conflict had achieved regime change in Iran. She criticized Trump for claiming “regime change” had been accomplished following the killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and other leaders.
Shortly after Khamenei’s death, his 56-year-old son was chosen as his successor. Kelly noted that “it looks like the Iranian Revolutionary Guard is in control now, which is far more radical.”
Foreign policy experts echoed that skepticism. Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a former adviser on the Middle East to Republican and Democratic secretaries of state, said, “If the war stopped tomorrow, this constitutes a historic strategic defeat for the U.S., especially when this was a war of choice.”
Iran’s strategic leverage
A central part of Kelly’s critique focused on Iran’s control over one of the world’s most critical waterways. Kelly said on the program, “The Iranians proved to be tough. And they realized they had something far more powerful than a nuclear bomb: control over the Strait of Hormuz. Trump was warned prior to getting involved in this conflict by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs that they were not likely to collapse easily and that they probably would maintain control of the strait and could cause a global economic panic. And he didn’t listen.”
Kelly A. Grieco, a senior fellow at The Stimson Center, reinforced this assessment, saying, “Even with the ceasefire, Iran has effectively established itself as gatekeeper of the strait. That’s a fundamentally different status quo than existed before the conflict. It also gives Tehran a durable form of economic leverage.”
The closure of the Strait of Hormuz caused the biggest oil supply shock on record, choking off roughly 12 to 15 million barrels of crude oil a day. Oil prices surged during the conflict before dropping as much as 16% after the ceasefire announcement.
Kelly accused Trump of being deceived by Netanyahu
One of Kelly’s sharpest arguments on Uncensored was that Trump had been drawn into the conflict by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. She said the president had fallen “hook, line and sinker” for Netanyahu’s claims and asked: “What led Trump, at 79 years old, to sit in there, in that situation room, where Bibi Netanyahu was seated as an equal? Trump didn’t even sit at the head of the table. Trump sat at the side of the table and Bibi was across from him as an equal in the American situation room.”
Kelly added that Trump had been told “the next day by our own top advisers — from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs to the Secretary of State to the Vice President — that these are lies and that these objectives are not going to be attainable. Don’t believe him. We might be able to wipe out the Ayatollah. Not regime change. Ayatollah.”
Earlier in March, Kelly wrote that Operation Epic Fury “feels very much to me like it is Israel’s war,” citing a Washington Post report that Secretary of State Marco Rubio told the Gang of Eight the mission’s timing and goals “were shaped by the fact that Israel was going to attack with or without the United States.”
