for more on that Trump Solinsky meeting let's bring in Fox News contributor and former CIA station chief Dan Hoffman dan thanks for joining us this afternoon uh what do you make of that meeting that President Trump President Zinsky they had that alone time there were no aids there how important was that for the Ukrainians for Zalinski i looked at that almost as a reset uh remember the last time they met was in that infamous White House meeting which didn't go the way either side wanted and so I think this was a good opportunity for them
to to catch up and and reset the relationship this is what Senator Kennedy had to say this morning republican from Louisiana putin has reiged on every promise that he's made to President Trump he wants to prohibit Ukraine from joining NATO and he wants America and Europe to stop helping Ukraine um I think that that Putin thinks that America has taken the bullet train to Chunk Town senator Lindsey Graham says he's got a sanctions package ready to go senator Chuck Grassley says it's time to sanction Putin are we seeing a sea change you think in the
Republican party when it comes to these talks i think we're seeing the beginning of a realization that the first um the first effort that the Trump administration made which was to entice Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table with the idea that we could offer uh commercial deals and elimination of sanctions that didn't work putin plowed right through all of those ceasefire discussions and continued to launch artillery strikes and Ukrainian civilians and Ukrainian infrastructure and so I think that that the Trump administration and and bipartisan uh consensus in the Congress is that Vladimir Putin can't be
enticed to the negotiating table the question is whether sanctions would do it recall that President Biden threatened sanctions when Putin was talking was clearly mobilizing to go to war uh in January of 2022 and that wasn't enough to deter Putin putin has now swiveled his economy to China where he exports his hydrocarbons and imports dual use items to keep his war economy afloat and he's got hydrocarbon exports to India as well and so I'm not so sure that sanctions would do it i do think we should be thinking about selling Ukraine the Patriot missiles that
they've asked for and continuing to arm Ukraine and provide them with intelligence that they need that might deliver the right message to Putin that the war isn't tenable anymore and he needs to negotiate because up until then I mean you know Russia better than anyone you know the Putin regime better than anyone is there any chance in the world that that regime right now is seriously considering not trying to take over all of Ukraine vladimir Putin's strategic objective from the very beginning was to topple the government of Ukraine he thought he would do it in
three days it was a massive intelligence failure on his part but on ours as well because remember the Biden administration sent President Sinsky a plane and he famously said "I I don't need a flight out of here i need ammunition this is where the fight is." So there was a sense of an intelligence failure on on both our sides at that time but Putin hasn't veered from that strategic objective and even if we strike some sort of a ceasefire deal right now there's no question that he's going to use that opportunity to rearm and look
to strike Ukraine in the future if the opportunity presents itself that's why Ukraine needs to be uh needs to receive military assistance so that they can deter any future Russian aggression and part of this conversation too focuses on Crimea the Russians took it over 11 years ago during the Obama administration there is some suggestion or some reporting that the United States would recognize Crimea as Russian even though that's not going to change the conditions on the ground at least what impact would that have for the US essentially signing off on that that's a bad move
look de facto Russia is in control of of Crimea no one is disputing that but remember that in 2018 the Trump administration Secretary of State Pompeo uh declared that we would never recognize Russia's illegal annexation of Crimea by force um that's we don't want to do that during uh Russian aggression against their neighbor and certainly other countries like China would seek to do the same thing against Taiwan uh countries shouldn't be allowed to invade other countries and and take their territory we don't want to recognize that uh that would do great harm to the United
States image as a global superpower and run the risk of collateral damage in other parts of the world especially the Pacific yeah and finally just turning very quickly to these negotiations yesterday between the US and Iran uh there's going to be another round according to US officials sometime soon in Europe do you think that the United States can get any productive agreement out of Iran well Iran is trying to run out the clock a bit here look the President Trump delivered that letter to uh to Iran and there was a two-month period for negotiations and
we're looking at negotiations every Saturday in Oman uh I think that it's good that the technical teams are meeting but they appear to be pretty far apart including on the issue of whether Iran is going to be allowed to enrich uranium at all and we haven't even gotten to the issues of the JCPOA of 2015 sunset clauses and the issues that JCPOA never addressed like Iran's ballistic missile program and their support to terrorist proxies in the region and beyond so this is a very complicated issue and Iran wants time to rebuild their uh air defenses
that Israel destroyed as well as rearm their proxy terrorists like the like Hezbollah um and the Houthis so uh look I I'm concerned uh Israel would like to launch a strike but I think we haven't seen any real significant progress except that both sides are meeting which is a good thing but not enough progress uh I don't think that uh would cause us not to leave that uh military option off the table iran is a nuclear threshold state that's the legacy of the Biden administration and the Trump team's going to have to find a solution
to that all right Dan Hoffman thanks so much for joining us thank you click here to subscribe to the Fox News YouTube page to catch our hottest interviews and most compelling analysis you won't get it anywhere else
