Fox News contributor and Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen criticized the decision to enter a ceasefire with Iran, arguing that the halt in military operations prevented the U.S. armed forces from permanently eliminating the country’s military production capabilities.
Speaking on Fox News, on Tuesday June 9, 2026, Thiessen revealed that before the current diplomatic pause took effect, coalition airstrikes were on the verge of entirely wiping out the regime’s defensive infrastructure.
Thiessen expressed frustration with the timing of the diplomatic freeze, noting that the military was on track to achieve total destruction of its primary objectives before the pause went into effect.
“I would have not done the ceasefire to begin with because we were about 10 to 14 days away from finishing off the entire target list,” Thiessen stated. “So, you know, I said we destroyed 82% of their defense industrial base I’d prefer it to be 100, and we were on track for it to be 100%. I’d prefer to finish the job.”
Despite his critique of the ceasefire itself, Thiessen pointed out that the administration has heavily utilized the downtime to massively reinforce its military presence in the Middle East, drastically altering the balance of forces.
“Now, Donald Trump, if he had done the if he had done the ceasefire, started the blockade, sailed the ships through to do that, rearmed the way he did using the time we have now have double the combat power in the region that we did at the start of the war,” Thiessen explained.
The major flaw in the current diplomatic pause, according to Thiessen, is that it allowed Tehran to falsely believe it had successfully forced the United States into a corner by threatening global energy corridors.
“And so if he had then turned around and used that right away to finish the job, we’d be in a much stronger position in terms of negotiations right now,” Thiessen argued. “What the Iranians think now, whether they’re right or not, the Iranians think that they have taken control of the Strait of Hormuz and used it as leverage to force Donald Trump to stop the war.”
Because the Iranian leadership believes it holds a strategic advantage at the negotiating table, Thiessen warned that current diplomatic talks are fundamentally stalled and unlikely to yield a favorable outcome for Washington.
“And so they think they have cards,” Thiessen concluded. “And so that means the negotiations aren’t going to go anywhere into an acceptable, what would Donald Trump would consider acceptable deal. So, that’s where that’s where the danger of where we are now is.”