War With Iran Full Episode: Fri, Mar 27, 2026

Good evening, everyone. I'm Rhiannon Alley in for Lindsay Davis. Thank you so much for streaming with us. This is War with Iran tonight. ABC News has learned Secretary of State Marco Rubio expects the war to go on for another 2 to 4 weeks. That's according to sort of two sources with knowledge of the private talks Secretary Rubio had with G7 counterparts. The secretary insisting the U.S. can't achieve its goals without sending troops into Iran. Meantime, we have learned more than 300 troops have been wounded in the war, which hits the 1-month mark tomorrow, most of them suffering traumatic brain injuries. Meantime, Iranian-linked hackers claim to have targeted FBI Director Kash Patel's personal email before he became FBI director. The hack apparently a direct retaliation to the Justice Department. But first, we begin overseas with ABC's Matt River In the region again for us tonight.

Tonight, sources telling ABC News Secretary of State Marco Rubio told G7 leaders in France the war in Iran could last another 2 to 4 weeks.

We are on or ahead of schedule in that operation and expect to conclude it at the appropriate time here in a matter of weeks, not months.

2,200 Marines are set to arrive in the Middle East any day now, and up to 1,500 paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne preparing to deploy. Sparking speculation the Pentagon is preparing for a possible ground offensive in Iran. But tonight, Secretary Rubio saying the US can still achieve its goals without putting boots on the ground.

We can achieve them without any ground troops, without any.

Those troops headed to the region as the US looks to break Iran's chokehold on the critical Strait of Hormuz, sending shockwaves through global energy markets. Oil and gas prices skyrocketing. Global oil prices tonight above $100 a barrel. Gas prices in the U.S. closing in on $4 per gallon. Drivers in many parts of the country already paying more than that to fill up. Prices up more than a dollar since President Trump started the war.

And Matt, we have some breaking news about some more U.S. soldiers that are injured.

Yeah, Rhiannon, that's exactly right. This information just coming in to ABC News. It was earlier today at a U.S. —airbase in Saudi Arabia that we now learned that 12 U.S. service members were injured, 2 of them seriously wounded during an Iranian attack on that airbase. We know several aircraft were damaged as well. This just shows you this war is raging on, Rhiannon, showing no real signs of slowing down. Our thoughts are with those soldiers.

We hope they're okay. Thank you so much, Matt. Joining us now is Professor Nargesh Bajjoli of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. In a recent essay in Foreign Affairs, Professor argues that Iran has been preparing for this moment for nearly 4 decades since the Iran-Iraq War. And despite what looks like deep military losses, in many ways Iran has the upper hand. So we want to welcome Professor Bajjali joining us now. Thank you for your time. I want to jump in, though, because you write that even though the U.S. and Israel appear to be ahead militarily, the real question here is whether Tehran is achieving its strategic objectives. You argue Iran is winning. So what does winning actually mean for Iran?

For Iran, winning means to survive and to exhaust the ability, both militarily and politically and economically, for the United States and Israel to continue a war with Iran. So, for Iran, winning is maintaining its sovereignty long-term, even if that means taking tremendous blows.

And Iran, you mentioned— Iran economically appears to have the upper hand right now by— they're effectively blocking the Strait of Hormuz, causing a worldwide economic crisis. How does that benefit Iran short-term and long-term?

Sure. So it's, you know, these actions will hurt Iran. It's not the fact that it won't. But Iran has been sanctioned for decades now, mostly led by the United States and other Western powers around the world. It is now, in essence, sanctioning the world back by taking and effectively having control over the Strait of Hormuz. And that is sort of the game that it's playing on the economic front.

One example of Iran's resilience is that its leadership structure has survived the targeted assassinations of senior military and intelligence figures, even the ayatollah. How is Iran prepared for what you describe as the decapitation paradox?

Iran has observed the way that the United States and Israel has fought wars across the region over the past few decades, and it knows that one of the main ways in which these wars are fought is to take out about leadership in both the political and military realm in countries across the region. And so, part of what Iran has done is it has decentralized its control and command, both politically and militarily, and it has designated up to 4 different replacements for each major role that it has. It is playing, in that essence, sort of the long game.

All right, Professor Nargesh Bajoley, thank you so much for joining us tonight. Thank you. President Donald Trump has extended a deadline for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz or face U.S. strikes on its power plants. Our Stephanie Ramos spoke to ABC National Security and Defense Analyst Mick Mulroy earlier.

Tomorrow marks 4 weeks since this war began. The longer the conflict drags on, what does that mean for diplomacy with Tehran, especially when we're expecting more U.S. troops to arrive in the region?

So, Stephanie, I think the U.S.

can, can say rightfully that we've depleted their strategic military assets substantially. Now we're going after targets, as you just mentioned, that are more on the civilian power generation side of things. But it is also clear that Iran understands that having the Strait of Hormuz, controlling the Strait of Hormuz, is a big benefit for them. They can both make money off it, of course, and they can put a lot of pressure on the United States. So it seems like we're at a fork in the road. We're either going to go toward negotiations to have a ceasefire. Hopefully that's the path we take. Or the United States is preparing to escalate this by forcing open the strait with ground forces. And they will start arriving this weekend and likely the remaining parts will arrive next week and then the week after. And then they will be in position if the president elects to order them to take these key terrain features.

And Megaron is threatening any ships that try to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, as you know, which is crippling global markets. What options does the U.S. have right now? Is it really just to escalate matters there?

So the options generally are escalatory. One is, of course, to take Karg Island. That won't make the strait open. It's the idea is it will basically hold the infrastructure on that island, which Iran needs to process its energy leaving at risk and as a bargaining chip to have them open it. They could simply ignore it, of course, and that will not help. But the other part is to take— and we can see the graphic you just showed— there's several key islands, Larak, Abu Musa, and potentially onto mainland Iran that the United States could take to essentially prevent Iran, or at least try to prevent Iran from hitting these ships. And then, of course, move in the U.S. Navy to ensure that the strait is completely open and free of sea mines. This is a very risky operation. It would obviously involve U.S. forces on the ground, potential casualties. But that is the other option. If Iran does not agree to open the strait during negotiations, then it could be militarily done by the U.S. Marines that are on the route and the paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne.

Hopefully it doesn't get to that point. Let's talk about this possible meeting with U.S. and Iranian negotiators. They say they're planning to meet in Pakistan soon. What will you be watching out for?

So, of course, the first thing we want to see is that there'll be another meeting after that. That means it was— the meetings went well enough that they both feel that it's worth pursuing and moving into a second meeting. There's going to be, of course, a lot of hesitancy on the side of Iran. We had already planned a meeting for Monday when we launched the war on a Friday. But that is what I'm going to be looking for primarily. It's likely that both sides come out and say, you know, if they agree to meet, they'll say that this was good meetings and things are progressing. But to really understand whether they are, it's whether they announce a second meeting that would come after that. And I think we should all, of course, be hoping that's the case and that these statements by both sides are maximalist, just trying to get leverage before going into these negotiations.

Our thanks to Stephanie for that interview. We turn now to a brazen security breach. Iranian hackers claiming to have accessed FBI Director Kash Patel's personal email before he took over the FBI. Senior Justice Correspondent Pierre Thomas has the story.

Tonight, cyber warfare unleashed with an Iranian-linked group hacking FBI Director Kash Patel's personal email and posting private messages involving Patel's family and photographs of him at a time before he became director.

As this war continues and as the regime is under tremendous pressure, it wouldn't surprise me to hear that the Iranians are potentially trying to take things to an even higher level than what they've done already.

The hack and posting apparently in direct retaliation for the Justice Department taking down several websites associated with the group known as Handala earlier this month. Tonight, Handala bluntly describing why they targeted Patel, quote, while the FBI proudly seized our domains, we decided to respond to this ridiculous show in a way that will be remembered forever. The group claims to have emails, conversations, documents, and even classified files.

Pierre, what can you tell us about the hackers that are responsible for this breach? What do we know?

Well, the FBI says the hacked material is historical in nature involves no government information. And the FBI says the U.S. is offering a $10 million reward for information about those Handala hackers. Rihanna.

All right. Thank you, Pierre. Coming up, the sell-off on Wall Street is worsening. Plus, how strange is it that we have not seen or heard from Iran's new supreme leader? An expert weighs in. Welcome back. With questions swirling over whether or not President Trump could put boots on the ground in Iran, our next guest, who is from a nonprofit group committed to resolving deadly conflict, believes that could lead to quite a predicament. He spoke to ABC News Live anchor Diane Macedo.

You say the U.S., Israel, and Iran all think they are winning this war. How so?

Well, because the US and Israel wanted to weaken Iran and degrade its military capabilities, and they have been able to achieve that. And Iran wanted to survive and maintain retaliatory capacity, and it has been able to achieve that. But the reality is, at the end of the day, they're all losing because neither of them has been able to deliver a decisive blow to the other side. And continuation of this war is only going to increase the cost and risks of it. It's unlikely to bring any of them to a very clean-cut victory.

Ali, the president says he's weighing sending 10,000 ground troops to the Middle East. How would that change things?

Well, it's very likely to turn this into a quagmire. It is very unlikely that the US troops will be able to, even if they occupy land, would be able to hold it for a long period of time. And what it takes for Iran to disrupt traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, honestly, is not more than 1 or 2 drones that will be fired every day. And they could be fired from much more inland, as the Houthis in Yemen have demonstrated. So I really don't think there is a military solution to reopening the Hormuz Strait, which has become the key objective here for the United States.

And Ali, the US says Iran's military is crippled, but Iran still controls the Strait of Hormuz. What would it take to change that?

Well, look, if Iran's military was crippled, we wouldn't see Iran firing missiles into Israel. We wouldn't see the video you showed at the beginning of this segment of a missile being fired towards a fighter jet. We have had dozens of missiles and drones being fired into the Gulf states. So Iran still apparently has enough fight in it to continue to prolong this conflict. And the more the US I think, invests, the more it risks turning this into another Afghanistan, Iraq or Vietnam. And the U.S.

and Iran seem very far apart diplomatically. We can't even agree on whether talks are even happening. So how do you see potential talks playing out?

Well, you're absolutely right. There is no trust. Iran was bombed twice in the middle of negotiations with the Trump administration in the past 2 years. And neither side is at this moment showing any flexibility. They're drawing up conditions that are totally unattainable and unachievable. The only solution would be, I believe, some at least understanding on putting a ceiling on escalation. And then from there, maybe you can get a ceasefire, which would require a lot of patient diplomacy, which so far this administration has demonstrated that it cannot do.

Diane also spoke to ABC News contributor and former CIA officer Darrell Blocker about the ongoing war, and he told her timelines that are set by the Trump administration don't mean anything. He also chimed in on the fact that Iran's new supreme leader hasn't been seen or heard from yet.

What do you make of the administration's approach compared to the Iran nuclear agreement promoted by previous administrations?

You know, Diane, good morning. And that's a great question. I guess the differences are bilateral versus unilateral versus multilateral. I mean, multilateral process for the JCPOA, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, started in 2002 and it was signed in 2015. Started with the Europeans who brought in China, Russia, and the United States around 2006. So all of this predated Obama. So that's That's a part of the message that's out there that's incorrect. This was not an Obama deal. So the difference is hitting them really hard or easing sanctions and using the carrot to entice Iran to do the right thing.

Darrell, do you think it's strange that we still haven't seen or heard from Iran's new supreme leader?

I don't think it's that strange. I think it's— I think it speaks to a lot of things. I think it speaks to the fact that They don't either want to show what condition he's in. They don't want to basically highlight where they are because they know he's a target. But it's definitely the Iranian people have to be questioning themselves whether the mujtaba is in charge. And at the end of the day, who's pulling the strings?

With so much of the regime killed or seemingly in hiding, why hasn't there been regime change in Iran?

Well, regime change is impossible from the air. It is only possible by door-to-door, city by city. And guess what? The IRGC, the Basij, the local police unit, they're armed, they're trained, they're communicating with one another, and they're dealing with an opposition that is fractured and an opposition that can't communicate with one another. So you got armed people against people who want to rise up, and bullets almost always win in that, in that sense.

And, Darryl, President Trump says he's postponing strikes on Iranian energy plants for another 10 days. What are you watching for in the meantime?

Well, timelines, as this administration has demonstrated, don't mean anything. I'm going to stop the war in Russia on one day with one phone call. I'm going to do this by then. I think people need to move away from what the president's saying and hopefully take a focus on what the Iranians are doing. But no one's fooled by these changes in timelines. Timelines didn't work when we pulled out of Somalia, just made it more dangerous. Timelines didn't work in Afghanistan. We saw what happened in Kabul. Timelines mostly favor the enemy.

Our thanks to Diane for those interviews. And coming up, an insider's perspective on the war, what the president's former national security advisor tells us keeps him up at night. Plus, the worsening oil crisis, the latest numbers, and how it could impact inflation overall. Former Ambassador John Bolton John Bolton gave Lindsay Davis his unfiltered thoughts on the war. Bolton served as President Trump's national security adviser during his first term and opened up about what keeps him up at night amid the ongoing tensions.

You've been in the room with President Trump in so many situations. Is there anything that you can share about his prior comments on Iran during the first administration, perhaps, that might inform some of what we're seeing today?

Well, he has always been correctly focused on eliminating Iran's its nuclear weapons program. But I think what's become clear over decades is that you can mow the lawn on that program as many times as you want, as we did last summer in what people call the 12-day war, and as we've done in this attack, the Iranian regime just grows it back. And that's— the same is true for its support for international terrorists like Hamas and Hezbollah. And now, really, a third major threat, they know, they can see exactly what happens when they closed the Strait of Hormuz. A normal nation wouldn't do that, but this is not a normal regime, which is why dealing with it in a diplomatic fashion simply will not work.

You've criticized President Trump a lot since leaving the administration. If he picked up the phone, though, today and asked you for your advice, would you take his call? Sure.

I think, you know, if you're— if you're a citizen, you have a responsibility to help the country. But But I'll tell you, I'm not waiting by the phone.

As you know, there were a number of people in his administration, in his inner circle, meeting in the days leading up to— will we go to war, won't we? Would you have been on the side that said this is best, we should go forward with this?

Well, I'd want to know more about what preliminary planning was done. I think Trump missed an opportunity to make the case to the American people before starting the war. That regime change was justified. I think it's a very compelling case, given the threat that Iran poses. But he didn't make it. He didn't coordinate with Congress. He didn't coordinate with our allies and friends around the world. And he didn't coordinate with the opposition. That doesn't mean you have to tell any of those groups specifics about what we were going to do or what the timing was. But you had to— you had to prepare the groundwork. And from all that I can see, we just didn't do that.

Worst-case scenario from your perspective and best-case scenario from the war in Iran?

Well, best case would be the regime collapses. I think the interim government would look like some sort of military regime, not from the Revolutionary Guard, but from the regular army, the conventional military, that hopefully would give space for the Iranian people to decide what kind of constitutional future they wanted. Worst case is we stop prematurely, the regime holds on, rebuilds itself, and then comes back at us as soon as it can, threatening on all three fronts—nuclear, terrorism, and closing the strait.

And perhaps that hits on a bit of my next question. Is there anything with regard to this conflict that may keep you up at night?

Well, I think the example that we set, if we allow the regime trying to escape what its end should be, that other rogue states will see that we'll back down when it comes to it. And it's worrisome what they'll think in Beijing and Moscow and Pyongyang and any number of other trouble spots.

Our thanks to Lindsey for her interview. The war in Iran continues to take its toll on the U.S. economy. The stock market took another big hit, the Dow losing 800 points. The Nasdaq and the S&P 500 were both down as well. ABC News Live anchor Kyra Phillips talked to our Andrew Dembert about the worsening crisis earlier today.

Where do we expect gas and oil prices to go from here, Andrew?

Well, Kyra, so long as this conflict continues, it's really anyone's guess as to how high oil gets. Right now it's creeping towards $100 a barrel to close out this trading week. At last check, it was at $98 a barrel. These are the highest prices that we've seen for oil since 2022, up 40% since the start of the war. Now, gas is holding steady today, but as you mentioned, still hovering near $4 a gallon for gas. Our friends over at GasBuddy says that this is one of the quickest spikes in terms of gas prices that we've seen since it's been tracking that data. The stock market, too, tumbling, a sea of red. The Dow losing 500 points en route to its fifth straight losing week. Kira, so the impacts here being felt far and wide for the U.S.

economy. So how could this situation impact overall inflation in the U.S., you think?

Yeah, that is the key concern that economists are looking at right now, because as gas and oil get more expensive, so does pretty much everything else. We first see it at the pump, as we are now with these $4 a gallon prices here. But then next tends to be groceries or anything else you can buy off of a shelf. One global watchdog that monitors the economies of over 100 countries warns that if oil flows in the in the Persian Gulf don't stabilize soon, inflation here in the United States could double by the end of 2026 to over 4%. Right now, inflation sitting at around 2.4%. And several investment firms have also increased their predictions of a possible recession again in 2026, while futures trading activity now suggests it's more likely that the Federal Reserve were to raise rates this year instead of cut them to sort of try and curb this inflationary concerns if oil markets don't stabilize. That's the key right there, is reopening the Strait of Hormuz.

Our thanks to Kyra and Andrew. That's our show for this half hour. I'm Rhiannon Alley. Stay tuned to ABC News Live for more context and analysis of the day's top stories. Thanks for streaming with us.