White House briefs conservative media on Iran deal progress as gas prices soar and GOP critics sharpen

The Trump administration brought a handful of prominent conservative media figures into the fold on its Iran negotiations, with a senior official telling them a memorandum of understanding with Tehran could be days away, even as gas prices sit more than $1.50 above their pre-conflict levels and Republican hawks voice open skepticism about any deal with the regime.

The briefing, reported by the Daily Caller, included Fox News host Kayleigh McEnany, Salem Radio Network host Scott Jennings, Daily Caller Editorial Director Vince Coglianese, and Turning Point USA's Andrew Kolvet. Each took to X afterward to defend the administration's negotiating posture. The move signals that the White House sees its right flank, not the left, as the more pressing political problem on Iran.

And the numbers explain why. The average gallon of gas hit $4.515 on Sunday, according to AAA. That is up from $2.98 on February 26, just days before the United States and Israel launched military strikes against Iran on February 28 after nuclear talks collapsed. Diesel stands at $5.62. A CBS News poll released May 17 found more than three in four Americans feel "concerned" about the economy, and two in three say they are "stressed" as the conflict continues to weigh on household budgets.

The administration's pitch: 'No dust, no dollars'

Coglianese posted the most detailed public account of the briefing. He relayed the senior official's framing in a series of posts on X.

"Just briefed by a senior Trump admin official. I feel VERY good about where the Iran negotiations are going. TOPLINE: 'NO DUST, NO DOLLARS', Iran doesn't get a dime unless they actually produce real results."

The phrase "no dust, no dollars" appears to be the administration's shorthand for a conditions-based sanctions relief framework. The official told the briefed media figures that Iran is "clearly talking details about getting rid of the enriched stockpile in a way they never have before" and that Iranian negotiators have "acknowledged that is something they're going to have to give on."

Sanctions relief, the official said, would come in phases, tied to actual delivery. If Iran hands over its stockpile of enriched uranium, it gets some relief. If it makes long-term commitments to halt nuclear enrichment, it gets more. The official said the memorandum of understanding would not be signed immediately, attributing the delay primarily to the slow pace of communication with Iranian leadership.

None of this has been independently verified. The administration has not released the text of any draft agreement, and the identity of the senior official remains undisclosed.

Trump draws a line against his own allies

President Trump himself weighed in on Truth Social the same day, drawing a sharp contrast with the 2015 Obama-era Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action and pushing back against named and unnamed critics on the right.

"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 followed that with a blunter message: "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 targets of that rebuke appear to include Senator Ted Cruz and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, both of whom expressed concern about a potential deal on social media. Neither man was quoted directly, but their posts were referenced in the reporting. Pompeo, who served in Trump's first term and helped dismantle the original JCPOA, carries particular weight among hawkish conservatives who view any agreement with Tehran as a concession.

That internal Republican tension is worth watching. The administration is not facing a Democratic revolt on Iran, House Democrats have been busy pushing war powers resolutions to constrain the military campaign, not to block diplomacy. The sharper challenge comes from the president's own coalition, where figures like Cruz and Pompeo see any deal short of regime change as a strategic error.

The conflict's cost, and its contested justification

The armed conflict with Iran is now approaching three months. It began February 28, when the U.S. and Israel launched joint strikes after negotiations over Iran's nuclear weapons program broke down. The administration had already struck multiple Iranian nuclear sites in June 2025, a campaign it says "obliterated" the country's nuclear program.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright told Meet the Press on May 10 that Iran possessed sufficient material for ten nuclear devices and nearly 1,000 pounds of uranium enriched to 60 percent. Trump Middle East Envoy Steve Witkoff made comparable claims during a March 2 appearance on Hannity. But the administration has not provided evidence to substantiate these assertions, a gap that matters when the public is being asked to bear sharply higher energy costs.

The economic toll has been real. Gas prices have climbed more than 50 percent in less than three months. Diesel, which drives freight and food costs, sits well above five dollars a gallon. The CBS poll numbers suggest voters feel it. Defense Secretary Hegseth has pushed back on media coverage of the campaign, but the administration plainly recognizes it needs to show progress toward resolution, and quickly.

That urgency helps explain why the White House chose to brief friendly media rather than hold a formal press conference or release negotiating details through official channels. The audience for this message was not the Washington press corps. It was the conservative base.

Joe Kent's warning on Israel

Perhaps the most provocative voice in the debate belongs to Joe Kent, the former Director of the National Counterterrorism Center who resigned from the Trump administration on March 17 over the conflict. Kent posted a lengthy warning on X arguing that any deal with Iran will face active sabotage from Israel.

"To make the deal effective we have to be realistic about 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 position puts him at odds with both the hawks who want no deal and the administration officials who launched the campaign alongside Israel in the first place. A New York Times report from April 7 described how Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, during a February 2025 White House meeting, persuaded Trump to authorize the military campaign. The same report noted skepticism from Vice President JD Vance about the operation.

Kent's resignation and his public warnings illustrate the fractures inside the broader MAGA coalition on foreign policy. The divide is not left versus right. It is hawks versus restrainers, and the president sits in the middle trying to deliver a deal that satisfies both camps, and brings gas prices back down before the political damage becomes permanent.

Adding an unusual wrinkle, Robert Malley, the former Biden administration official who served as lead negotiator on the 2015 JCPOA, reportedly praised elements of Trump's rumored deal provisions on social media. When the architect of the Obama-era agreement is offering kind words, hawks have reason to ask hard questions. Internal administration dynamics have already produced personnel shifts in recent weeks, and the Iran file may generate more.

What remains unknown

The administration's briefing raised as many questions as it answered. No text of a draft memorandum of understanding has been released. The specific terms, what Iran must surrender, on what timeline, with what verification mechanism, remain undisclosed. The phrase "memorandum of understanding" itself is notable: it is not a treaty, and it would not require Senate ratification, a point that will matter to constitutional conservatives who remember the JCPOA's end-run around the treaty process.

Iran's own public posture on the negotiations is absent from the record. No Iranian official statement has been cited. The administration's claims about the pace and substance of talks rest entirely on the word of an unnamed senior official relayed through friendly commentators.

The Israeli government's response to the prospective deal also remains unclear. If Kent is right that Jerusalem views any agreement as an existential threat, the diplomatic road ahead could be far rougher than the White House briefing suggested. Political coalitions are fracturing on multiple fronts in Washington, and the Iran question may prove to be the most consequential fault line of all.

The real audience

The decision to brief podcasters and cable hosts rather than hold a traditional press briefing tells you everything about where the administration thinks the political risk lies. The White House is not worried about MSNBC. It is worried about the conservative base watching gas prices climb and asking whether this conflict was worth it, and whether the deal that ends it will be worth the paper it is printed on.

Trump's track record on deals is the central claim he is asking his supporters to trust. The "no dust, no dollars" framework sounds tough. The phased sanctions relief structure sounds conditional. But until the public sees actual terms, actual verification protocols, and actual results, the administration is asking for something it has not yet earned on this file: the benefit of the doubt.

Voters will extend that benefit for a while. They will not extend it at $4.50 a gallon forever.