U.S. President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office as he signs the Secure America Act, at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., June 10, 2026. REUTERS/Evan Vucci
Former Defense Department official Ariane Tabatabai responded to some of President Donald Trump's strangest comments coming out in the past few days.
In a press availability on Wednesday, Trump made a comment that left experts scratching their heads. After saying he "loved" inflation, he immediately pivoted to claim that the U.S. was somehow stealing oil from Iran. It was announced that inflation ballooned to 4.2 percent, up from 3.8 percent in April.
The New Republic's Greg Sargent spoke to Tabatabai for the Thursday morning podcast, saying that it's clear that Trump is trying to make it appear as though he's in control of the Strait of Hormuz. The Strait is not open, regardless of Trump's claims.
"But what I’m having trouble understanding is what he means," said Sargent. "He is saying — with total, well, clarity’s obviously the wrong word — he is saying what he thinks he means, to be that this is actually happening, that a hundred million barrels of oil have been transported out of Iran through the strait because the U.S. is escorting them and that oil has gone onto the open market. Does the U.S. control the Strait of Hormuz? How real is any of this?"
Tabatabai made it clear, "It doesn’t."
Sargent asked, "I mean — is the oil being transferred? Is it happening? Do we know?"
"I don’t know. And if it is happening, is it happening on the scale that he says it is? I don’t know," Tabatabai said. "Again, this is somebody who talks about drug prices going down 600 percent. So if you’ve bought any Advil recently, you should really be getting some money back."
Tabatabai went on to question whether Trump was being hyperbolic about what he meant.
"So there might be that there is some oil that is making its way into the market. We’ll see that in the days to come, we’ll be able to fact-check that. I don’t have that information. The piece where he talks about the control of the Strait of Hormuz is clearly not real. Because if it were real, then we would not be in this situation to begin with," she said.
Trump has frequently claimed Iran's military has been destroyed and the nuclear program has been obliterated.
"And that was not the case, because we are here again," said Tabatabai. "And by the way, Iran still has several hundred kilograms of highly enriched uranium on its soil. That is very troubling. Iran still has military capabilities. It’s not 100 percent of what it had at the beginning of this conflict. But it’s not nothing, which is why they’re able to shoot down an Apache just a couple of days ago."
Tabatabai explained the U.S. is spending billions of dollars daily using "very expensive, sophisticated weapon systems, munitions, missiles, platforms to fight what was, even before this war, not a particularly sophisticated military."
Meanwhile, the Trump team is doing little more than "putting a Band-Aid on one of the many issues that is cascading out of this conflict. And it is not a sustainable Band-Aid. It is one that we can maybe continue for a bit, but ultimately there needs to be a more sustainable solution here," said Tabatabai.
So, Iran has created more problems for the U.S. in the meantime.
"And we’re here several months later when the president had said that this would be a war that would be over pretty quickly. So all of this to say, this is just another one of these statements in this conflict that I think are probably not going to stand the test of time," she said.
Trump appears to be discovering that "once you start a conflict, you don't always end it on your terms. In fact, you rarely end it exclusively on your terms," she explained
All of this comes as Trump is having difficulties selling the war to Americans who were told "no more foreign wars."
Meanwhile, Trump's allies are having difficulty trying to be "yes-men" while also disagreeing with what he's doing.
Tabatabai criticized the congressional officials who refuse to stand up to Trump despite "bad decision after bad decision on a host of issues. And for things that we’re going to be really, frankly, paying the price for for years to come."
Ultimately, she anticipates that things will escalate and even though Trump wants to end the war to start a new one with Cuba, he's "stuck," Tabatabai closed.