Secretary Wright Joins Fox News Sunday with Shannon Bream - June 21, 2026

Thank you, Kevin, always. Now joining us is Energy Secretary Chris Wright. Mr. Secretary, welcome back to the show. I want to read through a couple of things we just got from Trey Yinks, who's just off the phone with President Trump. He says this about the Strait. He says you close the Strait and you won't have a country, reportedly told the Iranians directly. You won't even make it back to your bleeping country. Went on to say we may take over the Strait if we have to. I'll blow the bleep out of them. Where are we this morning with the Strait? Because the IRGC keeps saying you're not going to be safe if you try to transit a vessel here. We're saying vessels are making it through. Yes. Yes, Shannon. In the last 24 hours or yesterday, 67 ships went through the Strait of Hormuz. The day before it was 55 ships. So in terms of oil and oil products, about about equal to where we were before the conflict. So, yeah, traffic is flowing through the Straits quite nicely. Now, that's because of a U.S. military presence. Iranians still have not demined the central shipping channel, but the U.S. opened a separate channel down south. And we've been we've been escorting ships through that for several weeks now and at very high levels today. OK, so one analysis out of Chatham House says this. What was known in theory has now been demonstrated in practice and there will be no turning back. The Islamic Republic will not forget the tremendous leverage it gained by closing the Strait. Neither will it agree to permanently forego the option of resorting to this tactic again. So, as I said, the IRGC keeps telling vessels you're not going to be secure if you come through here. So how do you convince commercial vessels that they are safe enough to resume full traffic there if that threat, whether it's accurate or not, at least hangs over their heads? It does. Iran is still trying to hold the world economy hostage. They're showing what kind of a citizen they are in this world, which is why we we entered into this conflict to begin with, to reduce their abilities to spread havoc around the world and ultimately to destroy their nuclear program. I'm thrilled at the progress we've made in that. But Iran is still behaving like Iran. But as I said, in spite of that, we got 67 ships through the Strait of Hormuz yesterday. Were some of them concerned? Sure. Is this thing over and completely done yet? No. But what we're demonstrating to the Iranians is we can have flow of traffic through the Strait of Hormuz with or without them. We can destroy their nuclear program if they don't want to make any arrangements or any agreements. We can continue to settle these things the way we have. But what's the upside for Iran in that? Maybe they see the light. Maybe there's a slight moderation of their behavior for some economic rewards, but they only get rewards if they stop the destructive behavior. And we have proven the destructive behavior while we prefer it not. It will not stop the flow of traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. OK, I want to go to the memo of understanding as released because it talks about benefits that flow to Iran now. In paragraph 10, it says the United States of America undertakes it immediately upon the signing of this MOU, which has happened. And until the termination of sanctions, the U.S. Department of Treasury will issue waivers for the export of Iranian crude oil, petroleum products and derivatives and all associated services, including banking transactions, insurances and transportation. So critics say that's allowing Iran to now continue to benefit and bring in money that during our blockade wasn't going in. So that's a pretty modest benefit, Shannon. All of their crude during the Biden administration, they exported one and a half to two million barrels a day every day. It just went to China and China paid them through different mechanisms. So, yes, the fact that they can sell it to other countries and get paid more easily, that's a benefit, but that's not a big benefit. That's not a big benefit at all. But, you know, we're trying to be in good faith. We're going to allow their crude to flow. We're going to have dialogues with them. If we can get a pathway to completely ending their efforts to develop nuclear weapons, that's a huge win for the world. The Biden administration's deal, the Obama administration's deal was to observe their nuclear weapon program, and it continued on. We have no interest in that. We want to end their nuclear weapons program. Yeah, the vice president said moments ago, trying to turn over new leaves so that things are not the status quo, but a different relationship moving forward. And a lot of that will have to do with verification of that new program. Those talks now officially underway in Switzerland. Secretary Wright, thank you for your time. Thank you, Shannon.