It's Wednesday, the 6th of May. Welcome to the President's Daily Brief. I'm Mike Baker, your eyes and ears on the world stage. All right, let's get briefed. First up, the U.S. is pausing its effort to escort ships to the Strait of Hormuz. Well, that didn't last long as President Trump signals progress toward a deal with Iran. But the blockade remains in place. I'll have the details. Later in the show, new U.S. intelligence suggests recent strikes on Iran's nuclear program may not have done as much damage as advertised. Plus, a fired Russian deputy minister reportedly flees to the U.S. to escape fraud charges, raising fresh questions about the current state of the Kremlin. And in today's Back of the Brief, after a seven-year freeze, the U.S. and Venezuela reconnect in the skies as direct flights resume between the two countries. But first, today's PDB Spotlight. President Trump announced that the U.S. is pausing Project Freedom, its short-lived effort to escort commercial ships through the Strait of Hormuz, after what he described as, quote, great progress toward a potential agreement with Iran. No other information on what exactly that means, but at the same time, he says the U.S. blockade of Iranian ports will remain fully in place. So for now, the escort mission is on hold, but the pressure, at least for the blockade on the ports, is still ongoing. Secretary of State Marco Rubio had earlier accused Iran of piracy, saying nearly 23,000 civilians from 87 countries have been stranded in the Persian Gulf for more than two months. According to Rubio, commercial crews have been unable to safely move through the Strait of Hormuz as Tehran asserts control over the waterway. He added that at least 10 sailors have died as a result of conditions on stranded ships. The U.S. had been moving to change that, actively escorting vessels through the Strait of Hormuz before pausing the mission. As we've been reporting, the U.S. Navy has been using guided missile destroyers and other assets in the Gulf to challenge Iran's grip on one of the most critical waterways on the planet. The goal was straightforward, restore the flow of commercial shipping and reassert control over the strait. Now that effort is on hold. But even before the pause, early signs suggested that the strategy was hitting significant limits. Despite American warships in the water and some early success in protecting a handful of tankers, the shipping lanes were still effectively empty, and traffic through the Strait of Hormuz remained at a trickle. Before the conflict, roughly 130 ships moved through that narrow passage every single day. According to S&P Global Market Intelligence, a firm that monitors maritime traffic, on the first day of the new operation, just six ships made the crossing. By the following afternoon, that number had dropped to one. And it's not because the U.S. Navy wasn't doing its job. American forces had already defended both military and commercial vessels from Iranian attacks, intercepting missiles and drones and fast-attack boats. But at least two ships were still hit earlier this week, including one that caught fire. And that, of course, is the problem. Because of a situation like this, it's not just about whether the Navy can protect ships. It's about whether anyone is willing to take the risk in the first place. And right now, most shipping companies have proven that they're not ready to take that risk. Even if the odds of getting hit are relatively low, the consequences are enormous. A single strike, of course, can mean loss of life, destruction of cargo, environmental damage, and reputational fallout for the companies involved. And no operator wants to test a fragile security environment and end up paying the price. So they've been staying put. Which means the U.S. is now facing a different kind of challenge, one that can't be solved with missiles or destroyers. Because control of the Strait of Hormuz isn't just about military dominance. It's about confidence. Confidence from insurers, from shipping companies, from global markets. And right now, that confidence just isn't there. And the Iranian regime has understood that. Even after taking significant damage during the U.S. and Israeli campaign, And Tehran has managed to hit a critical pressure point by targeting commercial shipping and creating just enough uncertainty to keep traffic suppressed. They don't need to shut down the strait completely. They just need to make it dangerous enough or have a perception of danger that no one wants to use it And so far the strategy has worked Now Project Freedom did offer Washington one key advantage It put pressure back on Iran By maintaining a visible military presence and attempting to reopen the lane, the U.S. signaled it wouldn't simply accept Iran's de facto control of the waterway. But Tehran hasn't been responding just militarily. It's trying now to formalize that control. According to Iranian state media, the regime has introduced what it's calling a Persian Gulf Strait Authority, a new mechanism requiring ships to obtain prior authorization before transiting the strait. How does one spell extortion in Arabic? I'm not sure. Vessels are being instructed to follow guidance issued directly by Iranian authorities, essentially creating a parallel system that treats the waterway as if it's under Tehran's jurisdiction. And that is a very different kind of challenge. Because now it's not just about who can patrol the strait, it's about who gets to set the rules. After months of escalation, airstrikes, targeted killings, and now naval operations, the range of available options is obviously narrowing. The U.S. has already demonstrated that it can hit Iran's infrastructure and defend its forces at sea. What it hasn't been able to do, at least not yet, is restore normalcy. And that is a different kind of fight. Because even if Project Freedom continued, it was already likely to fall short of bringing traffic back to pre-war levels. And without that, well, the broader economic impact remains in place. Tightened energy markets, elevated prices, and continued global uncertainty. All right, coming up next, fresh intelligence casts doubt on the impact of recent strikes on Iran's nuclear program. and a Russian deputy minister reportedly defects to the U.S. I'll be right back. Hey, Mike Baker here with a top tip for anyone trying to save for retirement. 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Please check out my new interview series, We'll Do It Live. Each Thursday, I sit down with the most influential people in America. We're a no-spin chat, no script, anything could happen. You can find We'll Do It Live on BillOReilly.com, YouTube, or wherever you download your podcasts. Welcome back to the PDB. A new U.S. intelligence assessment is delivering a blunt reality check about Tehran's nuclear program. After months of strikes, Iran's nuclear clock hasn't apparently really moved. An exclusive report from Reuters, citing multiple sources familiar with U.S. intelligence assessments, says that Tehran is still roughly 9 to 12 months away from a nuclear weapon, essentially unchanged from where things stood after last year's U.S. and Israeli strikes. And that raises a critical question. How can nothing have changed after weeks of airstrikes from the U.S. and Israel? It's clear that the strikes did do real damage. facilities at Natanz and Fordow and Isfahan were hit, in some cases, hard. And that initial campaign pushed Iran's breakout timeline from what analysts once believed was a three-to-six-month sprint to about a year. But since then, even after weeks of additional bombing, that timeline has not budged. And that's because the mission has changed. What we've been tracking under Operation Epic Fury is a shift away from targeting the nuclear program itself and toward Iran's broader military and regime infrastructure. Israel has continued to hit select nuclear-related targets, but the focus has clearly widened. Meanwhile the most dangerous piece of the nuclear puzzle is still believed to be largely intact According to the International Atomic Energy Agency Iran is believed to still hold roughly 440 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 That enough if enriched further for up to 10 nuclear weapons. And much of that material is thought to be buried deep inside underground tunnel complexes near Isfahan. And here's the problem. No one can, at least now, confirm exactly where it is. Inspections have been suspended, as we've discussed recently, and those sites are buried deep enough that even advanced U.S. munitions may not be able to reach them. Now, there have been second-order effects, though. Israeli operations have targeted key nuclear scientists going after the people behind the program rather than just the facilities, and that can disrupt timelines and slow coordination and complicate weaponization. But it does not eliminate the threat. So when you step back, what you're looking at isn't a knockout blow. It's a delay. And if the goal is to truly stop Iran from building a nuclear weapon, well, then airstrikes alone may never be enough. Alright, turning to Russia. There are new signs of strain emerging inside the Kremlin, and they're coming from an unusual place, its own ranks. According to multiple reports, Denis Butsaev, a recently dismissed deputy minister in Russia's Natural Resources Ministry, has fled to the U.S. He reportedly left to avoid a criminal investigation tied to alleged fraud inside a state-run waste management company, which he led from 2019 to 2025 before joining the Natural Resources Ministry. Butsaev, who is not currently under Western sanctions, was formally fired by the Prime Minister on the 22nd of April. But according to several sources cited by the Moscow Times, he managed to slip out of the country undetected days earlier, traveling through Minsk, Belarus, and finally Tbilisi, Georgia, before arriving in the U.S. It appears he got tipped off ahead of his firing, as one source reportedly said, quote, Butzaev is lucky to have friends who were able to warn him on time. Now, despite his hurried flight from Russia, this might sound like a fairly standard corruption case on the surface. But what makes this different is who we're talking about and what it may signal. But Saev's departure is the first known case of a sitting Russian official of his rank successfully fleeing the country to avoid prosecution. And that raises a broader question. What would cause someone inside the system not just to fall out of favor, but to do a runner? A new analysis from former U.S. counterintelligence official Kevin Reilly suggests this may not be an isolated incident, but part of a wider pattern, taking shape inside Russia since the start of the war in Ukraine. Reilly argues that defections tend to cluster during periods of instability in authoritarian systems. And in Russia today, he says, those patterns are beginning to re-emerge. In his view, officials rarely defect for just one reason. Corruption probes, internal rivalries, and fear of punishment are common features of the system. But what ultimately drives someone to leave is something deeper, a growing sense that the system itself is no longer stable. And there are signs of that pressure building. Since the invasion of Ukraine, a number of Russian officials, diplomats, and intel officers have either fled the country or publicly broken with the regime. Others have died under what many view as suspicious circumstances. What has become a grim pattern of sudden, often unexplained deaths among members of Russia's elite don't stand near an open window. Taken together, these incidents are beginning to paint a more complicated picture of what's happening inside Russia's power structure and raise a more fundamental question about just how stable that system really is. Okay, up next in the back of the brief, planes are flying again between the U.S. and Venezuela, a visible sign that relations between the two countries are improving. More on that when we come back. Hey, Mike Baker here. 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For travelers, getting between the two countries had meant piecing together indirect routes through other Latin American hubs, resulting in, of course, more stops, more time, and more hassle. It was a result of a complete breakdown in relations under Maduro, a socialist regime that isolated Venezuela to stabilize the region and ultimately forced American carriers like Delta and United Airlines to pull out as early as 2017, with American Airlines becoming the last U.S. carrier to hold on before suspending their service back in 2019. Following Maduro's capture, diplomatic channels between the two countries reopened, and the process of normalizing relations slowly began. This first flight, operated by Envoy Air, departed Miami on the 30th of April and landed in Caracas just a few hours later. On paper, it was a routine flight, but the pomp and circumstance at Miami International Airport made clear that this was anything but ordinary. The departure area looked more like a parade than a standard boarding. The gate was decorated with balloons and Venezuela's national flag, and passengers cheered as they were served coffee and arepas, a traditional Venezuelan treat, as 75 passengers made their way on board. And what that plane carried went beyond just those passengers. It carried reconnection, a country cautiously beginning to re-enter the global system. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy made that point directly, saying, quote, Today is about more than just another flight. It's a critical milestone in unleashing economic opportunity in both countries. And that, my friends, is the President's Daily Brief for Wednesday, the 6th of May. Now, if you have any questions or comments, please reach out to me at pdb at thefirsttv.com. And finally, if you've found yourself thinking, you know, I love the PDB, but I wonder what it sounds like without commercials. Well, we've got you covered. Just become a premium member of the President's Daily Brief by visiting pdbpremium.com. I'm Mike Baker, and I'll be back later today with the PDB Afternoon Bulletin. Until then, stay informed, stay safe, stay cool. Thank you.
