The Trump administration pulled a handful of conservative media figures into a private briefing on the state of Iran negotiations Saturday, deploying them to make the public case that a deal is close, and that critics on the right should hold their fire.
Salem Radio Network host Scott Jennings, Fox News host Kayleigh McEnany, Daily Caller Editorial Director Vince Coglianese, and Turning Point USA's Andrew Kolvet all posted on X after what they described as a session with a "senior administration official." The move came as prominent Republicans, including Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, voiced open concern about the shape of any agreement with Tehran.
The briefing's core message, as Coglianese reported on X, boiled down to a four-word phrase: "NO DUST, NO DOLLARS." Iran gets nothing, the official said, unless it delivers verifiable results on its nuclear stockpile.
The unnamed senior official told the group that Iranian negotiators had shifted their posture in a meaningful way. The Iranians were "clearly talking details about getting rid of the enriched stockpile in a way they never have before," the official said, and had agreed to halt further uranium enrichment.
"They have acknowledged that is something they're going to have to give on."
Coglianese laid out the deal's reported structure: relief comes in phases, tied to Iranian action. If Tehran hands over its enriched uranium stockpile, it gets some sanctions relief. If it commits to long-term cessation of enrichment, more relief follows. The administration believes it is "just days away" from a memorandum of understanding with the Iranian regime, though the official cautioned the document would not be signed immediately, in part because "communication with Iranian leadership moves very slowly."
None of the briefed figures are traditional diplomatic correspondents. Their selection signals the White House sees its most pressing audience problem not among swing voters or Democrats, but among its own base, where skepticism about any deal with Iran runs deep.
That skepticism was already public before the briefing took place. Cruz and Pompeo both raised alarms on social media. Their concern sharpened after the deal's rumored outlines drew praise from Robert Malley, the former Biden administration official who served as lead negotiator on Barack Obama's 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iran, a deal most conservatives regard as a catastrophic giveaway.
Trump fired back on Truth Social Sunday, drawing a hard line between his approach and Obama's.
"If I make a deal with Iran, it will be a good and proper one, not like the one made by Obama, which gave Iran massive amounts of CASH, and a clear and open path to a Nuclear Weapon. Our deal is the exact opposite, but nobody has seen it, or knows what it is. It isn't even fully negotiated yet."
He added: "So don't listen to the losers, who are critical about something they know nothing about. Unlike those before me who should have solved this problem many years ago, I don't make bad deals!"
The president's frustration is understandable. He faces a rare two-front political challenge: defending the deal against allies who worry he is giving Tehran too much, while managing an armed conflict that has hammered the American economy for nearly three months. Trump has previously tied Iran peace deal terms to broader Arab normalization with Israel, a strategy that reflects his preference for high-stakes, multi-party leverage.
The urgency behind these talks is not abstract. Americans are paying for this conflict every time they fill up their tanks.
The average price of a gallon of gas hit $4.515 on Sunday, AAA data showed, up more than $1.50 from the $2.98 average on Feb. 26, just days before the United States and Israel launched military strikes against Iran. Diesel has climbed past $5.62 a gallon, a price that ripples through freight, agriculture, and manufacturing.
A CBS News poll released May 17 found more than three out of four respondents said they felt "concerned" about the economy, while two in three described themselves as "stressed" as the war continues to weigh on household budgets through stubbornly high inflation.
Those numbers explain why the White House is working so hard to get conservative influencers on board. A deal that brings energy prices down would do more for Trump's political standing than any messaging campaign. But a deal that looks like Obama's JCPOA, or that critics can credibly frame that way, could fracture his coalition at the worst possible time.
The United States and Israel launched military strikes against Iran on Feb. 28 after talks over Tehran's nuclear weapons program collapsed. The administration asserted last June that the Iranian nuclear program had been "obliterated" following strikes on multiple nuclear sites, but maintained Iran still posed a threat without providing specific details to support that claim.
During a May 10 interview on "Meet the Press," Energy Secretary Chris Wright told host Kristen Welker that Iran possessed sufficient material for ten nuclear devices and nearly 1,000 pounds of uranium enriched to 60%. Trump Middle East Envoy Steve Witkoff made comparable claims during a March 2 appearance on Fox News's "Hannity." The administration has not provided evidence to substantiate either official's assertions.
The New York Times reported in April that Trump authorized the military campaign after a February White House meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and that skepticism about the intelligence behind the decision existed among administration officials, including Vice President JD Vance.
Former Director of the National Counterterrorism Center Joe Kent, who resigned from the Trump administration on March 17 over the conflict, offered a blunt warning Saturday. Kent said he was optimistic about ending the fighting but cautioned that any deal would face a determined obstacle: Israel.
"We must recognize that a peace deal of any kind with the Iranian regime will be viewed by Israelis as an existential threat to their objectives, therefore they will seek to thwart the deal. To stop the Israelis from thwarting a potential peace deal, we will have to take away the military support that we provide that allows them to go on the offensive against Iran, and make it clear more will be taken from them if they attack Lebanon."
Kent's argument puts a fine point on the tension the administration has tried to manage since February. The same ally that helped launch the strikes may now be the biggest impediment to ending them. Whether the White House is prepared to use American military aid as leverage against Jerusalem remains an open question, and one the conservative media briefing did not appear to address.
The decision to brief podcasters and cable hosts rather than, or at least before, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee tells you something about where this White House believes the real political battlefield sits. Cruz and Pompeo are not fringe figures. They represent a serious strand of hawkish conservative thought that views any negotiated settlement with Iran as inherently dangerous.
Deploying Coglianese, McEnany, Jennings, and Kolvet to carry the "NO DUST, NO DOLLARS" message is a bet that the base will trust familiar voices over Washington skeptics. It may work. But the underlying facts, unverified intelligence claims, a $1.50 spike in gas prices, a war authorized in part on Israeli intelligence that drew internal doubt, are not going away because a handful of friendly commentators feel "VERY good" after a classified briefing.
The test is not whether the administration can win a news cycle. The test is whether the deal, when its full terms become public, matches what Americans were told it would be. On that question, the only thing that matters is the fine print, not the podcast.