November 13th, 2026: Trump Makes a Major Shift in His Iran War Strategy  & Black Sea Shipping Attacks

Mike Baker (0:12)

It's Friday, the 13th of November. Welcome to The President's Daily Brief. I'm Mike Baker, your eyes and ears on the world stage. Look at that, Friday the 13th. Now I am not particularly superstitious, but if you are, well, take care today. Also, how about dropping me a line to tell us about your strangest superstition? What is your oddest superstition that you hold on to? Just send us a note at pdb at thefirsttv.com. And before we start, let's take a quick look at the Jensen Huang Extramarital Affairs scoreboard. As of yesterday afternoon, the running tally was one alleged Chinese intelligence asset and two NVIDIA employees. Huang, of course, has resigned as NVIDIA's CEO and I suspect that the tech world will learn that no one is indispensable. All right, let's get briefed. First up, President Trump backs away from peace talks with Iran, betting that prolonged economic pressure will force Tehran to make concessions without another major military offensive. Of course, the Iranian regime leadership did mention just the other day that there were no negotiations currently between the US and Iran, so we are backing away from non-existent negotiations. Later in the show, the world's deadliest shipping route turns out not to be the Strait of Hormuz. It's the Black Sea, where hundreds of attacks are taking a deadly toll on commercial vessels. Plus, thousands of schools across Europe are hit with bomb threats as authorities investigate a wave of hoaxes disrupting daily life across the continent. This follows a recent spate of bomb threats directed at airlines in Europe. And in today's Back of the Brief, Ukraine says renewed disruption to its American satellite communications network are crippling critical drone operations, but SpaceX denies making any changes.

First up, today's PDB Spotlight.

It's been a whirlwind week for the Trump administration's Iran policy, with the White House moving from the possibility of renewed military strikes to potential peace negotiations, and now to a strategy of prolonged economic warfare. Although, to be fair, the entire conflict has been marked by on-again-off-again negotiations and on-again-off-again military strikes.

On Thursday, President Trump was declaring that America no longer needed a peace agreement with Tehran, effectively pulling the plug on a diplomatic effort, that Vice President JD. Vance had been preparing to lead. According to The Wall Street Journal, Vance had been exploring direct negotiations with Mohsen Rizai, the former Revolutionary Guard Corps commander, IRGC commander, who now heads Iran's Supreme National Security Council. The Vice President had already reached out to Rizai, who, by the way, has lots of blood on his hands, and American and Middle Eastern officials were discussing a possible meeting in Qatar. Trump had reportedly authorized Vance to pursue those negotiations, although no meeting had been scheduled. The objective was to find a settlement of sorts that could end the conflict, reopen the Strait of Hormuz, and impose restrictions on Iran's nuclear program. At least, that was the wish list. But Tehran was demanding substantial concessions before negotiations could even begin. Those included lifting the American naval blockade, releasing frozen Iranian assets, and easing sanctions on Iranian oil exports. Secretary of State Marco Rubio described those conditions or demands as unrealistic. And while Vance was exploring a diplomatic opening, other senior administration officials were making the case that Washington should simply continue applying economic pressure. Which brings us to Tuesday. According to Axios, Rubio met with his G7 counterparts in Paris and explained that Trump had been considering three approaches to Iran. The first was to resume major military operations. The second was to negotiate a settlement of some sort. And the third was to maintain the naval blockade, expand sanctions, and continue squeezing the Iranian economy without committing to either another major offensive or a peace settlement. Rubio told the foreign ministers that Trump had selected the third option. According to the report, Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Besant, CIA Director John Radcliffe and Jared Kushner had all advocated for that approach. Their argument was that American economic pressure was already doing considerable damage to Iran, and there was no reason to rush into another military confrontation or accept an unfavorable deal. In fact, the administration is preparing to tighten that pressure further. Rubio outlined the new operation. Does it have a name? Of course it does. It's not an operation without a cool name. It's called Iron Gate, which we reported on earlier this week. That operation is intended to restrict the land routes that Iran uses to obtain advanced weapons, technology, and to bypass sanctions. Iron Gate builds on Treasury's existing operation, known as Economic Outcast, which has targeted Iran's banking relationships, oil revenues, transportation networks, and sanctions evasion operations.

And according to an internal Treasury assessment obtained by Axios last month, the campaign has been taking a considerable toll. The report said Iran's currency had lost roughly a quarter of its value since August, while annual inflation had reached 90 percent. That's nine zero, 90 percent. Treasury also claimed that Iran had been unable to load oil at the tankers since late August, depriving the government, of course, of a critical, their most important, source of revenue. Those are the administration's assessments, and they do help explain the thinking behind its strategy. Washington believes that the longer the economic pressure continues, the more difficult it becomes for Tehran to finance its military, rebuild damaged infrastructure, pay its security forces. That's an important one, and sustain the government itself. And then came Thursday of this week, when Trump appeared to close the door on JD. Vance's latest diplomatic initiative. In a post on Truth Social, the president declared, quote, we don't need a deal with Iran. Those days have long since passed. End quote. He added that America controlled Iran's money and the Strait of Hormuz, and announced that he wanted Vance concentrating on investigations into alleged crime and corruption in Democratic-led American cities and states. The statement raised questions about whether Washington was abandoning negotiations altogether. An administration official subsequently indicated that Vance remains involved in Iran policy and could return to negotiations if circumstances change. And what's the likelihood of that? So diplomacy hasn't necessarily been ruled out permanently, but for the moment, the administration appears content to maintain the economic pressure and wait for the Iranian regime to reconsider its position. Of course, there is a major risk to that calculation. Damaging Iran's economy doesn't necessarily mean that its leadership is going to surrender. The regime has endured decades of sanctions, of course, and its security establishment may conclude that making major concessions to the US would threaten its survival more than continued economic hardship. And the senior leadership and IRGC personnel, they're also more than happy to pass the economic hardship down to the Iranian people. Iran also retains the ability to attack regional targets and disrupt commercial shipping as we've seen, even after months of damage to its conventional military forces.