Retired Army Gen. Jack Keane is a vocal supporter of the Iran war from his perch as a Fox News senior strategic analyst, regularly arguing that the United States and Israel should escalate their joint military campaign and avoid diplomatic off-ramps. In addition to his TV gig, Keane also sits on the boards of directors of two defense contractors which potentially stand to benefit from the conflict with Iran — a fact that Fox appears not to have disclosed to its viewers since the beginning of the war.

The two contractors, United States Antimony Corp. and REalloys Inc., are both rare earths companies that provide crucial material to the Defense Department for use in weapons and other military equipment. Keane has been on the board of US Antimony since August 19, 2025, and on the board of REalloys since February 9 of this year.

Both companies tout the extensive DOD applications for their products in promotional materials and other outward facing statements. In a publicly available investor presentation from 2025, US Antimony Corp. claimed that 32% of its business comes from “military & defense,” including supplying antimony — a critical mineral — for use in “armor-piercing rounds,” “laser guided missiles,” “military electronics,” “night vision,” and other uses. The REalloys website goes into even greater detail, detailing how its products — critical minerals and magnets — can be used in everything from F-15, F-16, and F-35 fighters jets to Tomahawk cruise missiles to Predator drones and JDAM guided bombs. (The United States has used several of those weapons and platforms in the Iran war.)

As a former vice chief of staff of the U.S. Army, Keane is one of the most important and longstanding pro-war voices at Fox, having appeared on Fox News at least 44 times and on Fox Business at least 15 times since the U.S-Israeli campaign began on February 28. A Media Matters review found that Fox did not appear to mention Keane’s position on the board of directors for US Antimony Corp. or REalloys Inc. in any of those appearances. Fox News’ website also does not appear to have covered Keane’s connections to the two defense contractors, and does not list those affiliations in his official biography on the site.

The recent lack of disclosures are not the first time Keane and Fox have failed to mention his business ties and potential conflicts of interest. In 2017, Media Matters reported that Keane repeatedly called for an increase in military spending while sitting on the board of directors of General Dynamics, a major defense contractor. (Keane is no longer a board member at General Dynamics.)

Keane’s calls to escalate the Iran war and avoid a ceasefire

Even before the Trump administration began attacking Iran, Keane was on Fox downplaying the risks of a conflict.On February 27, Keane listed various examples of U.S.-led regime changes, advising that “there is always ambiguity in terms of what follows after that. And you can't let that distort what the opportunity is in front of you, here. And that's the reality of it."

On March 2, Keane cautioned against any negotiations that didn’t end in Iran’s total surrender.“The only thing we should negotiate with the Iranians is — not talking about nuclear weapons, don’t negotiate with them about ballistic missiles, don’t negotiate with them about support for proxies — we know they’ve done all of that and that’s why we’re in the war,” Keane said. “The only thing we want to negotiate with them about is surrender.”

The same day, Keane argued for a maximalist military approach that would result in regime collapse. “When you put — you're going to take that regime and put it on a pathway for its eventual collapse, and what follows after that is not particularly clear,” Keane said. “And I think that's OK.”As President Donald Trump’s war dragged on, Keane continued to agitate for a military victory rather than a diplomatic settlement.“We should not go to a ceasefire,” Keane said on Hannity on March 24. “I mean, if we go into a ceasefire it’s playing right into their hands — we want to keep the pressure on them to make a deal that makes some sense."

Keane continued to call for escalation on April 6. “What we need to do is keep our pedal to the metal here, so to speak,” he said on America’s Newsroom.“What I don’t think we should do is go to a ceasefire to get it open,” Keane argued, referring to the Strait of Hormuz. He argued that if that were to happen, Iran “will claim victory — and they’re really good at the propaganda."

Following Trump’s apocalyptic threat to destroy Iran’s “whole civilization” and the subsequent ceasefire announcement on April 7, that evening Keane said his “preference would have been to keep the war going as leverage to make that deal,” and that “we have to finish what we started."

The next morning, Keane argued to restart the war. “I wouldn't have done what we're doing,” he said, adding: “I think we should take control of the Strait of Hormuz ourselves."

Waging the kind of war Keane has advocated for costs a lot of money, and that means a big payday for the defense industry as a whole.

The Iran war could be a windfall for critical mineral weapons contractors

The war against Iran has proved costly for the U.S. government, both in terms of dollars spent and munitions used. The Pentagon told Congress that the first week of the war ran a price tag of more than $11.3 billion, and over the course of the war the military has fired more than 850 Tomahawk missiles, leading some in the Pentagon to worry about its overall stockpile. The United States and Israel may also both be running low on interceptors, which are expensive and time-consuming to produce.

To address these significant military expenditures, the Pentagon initially asked Congress for over $200 billion in addition to its annual budget, though that request is expected to be roughly cut in half following the tenuous ceasefire. Beyond that, the Trump administration is reportedly preparing to ask Congress for what Bloomberg calls a “massive” amount of new military spending for fiscal year 2027, sending the defense budget north of $1.5 trillion from its current level at just under $1 trillion.

Which specific contractors will benefit from the deluge of public money remains to be seen, and so far the war hasn’t led to an increase in defense stocks overall. The story is rosier for US Antimony Corp., however, which has seen its year-to-date stock price rise 74 percent as of April 13, significantly outperforming both the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq. (REalloys enjoyed a major rally in early March, then a steep decline before a partial rebound in April.)

Both companies have recently announced significant defense contract wins.On March 2, Reuters reported that REalloy had gotten $1.7 million from the Pentagon to “fund design of a processing facility for metals used to make magnets for weapons and electronics,” which signaled “an ⁠initial vote of confidence in REalloy's technology.”In an article highlighting rare earths companies hiring retired generals, The Wall Street Journal reported that US Antimony Corp. secured a $245 million contract a month after it brought on Keane, though he was reportedly not involved in its procurement:

In interviews, Evans has been open that the Iran war could be good for his business.

“We’re trying to meet the demands of the United States, not only industrial demand but the military demand," Evans told the New York Stock Exchange’s YouTube channel. “As you can see, over the last 60 days we’re using up that stuff pretty quick, when you look at Venezuela and Iran — so we anticipate this being a great business."

Evans made a similar pitch during a recent earnings call, even going so far as to name-drop Keane. “We keep a very high dialogue going on at any given time with senators, house members, governors, and as I mentioned before, General Keane is on our board, so we kinda hear what’s going on,” Evans said. “There’s a lot of need for additional munitions, as everybody knows, with the activities we’d had in Venezuela and now Iran.”

On March 11, Evans appeared on Fox Business’ Mornings with Maria Bartiromo to discuss a recent defense contract win. Neither Bartiromo nor Evans mentioned Keane or his ties to the company during the interview.

“US Antimony Corporation recently receiving a $27 million grant from the Department of War to help support domestic critical minerals used in military weaponry and other defense technology,” Bartiromo said, using the Trump administration’s name for the Defense Department.

She began the interview by asking Evans to “tell us about the grant from the Department of War and how this conflict has impacted your business."

Evan described the antimony ingots his company makes, which “go to the Department of War, the DLA [Defense Logistics Agency], to serve as inventory for wars like we’re in right now."

“We have the lowest stockpile since World War II, so we’re trying to ramp up” production “to help our military,” Evans continued. “[In] 2026, we’re expecting revenues north of $125 million, 2027, north of $200 million,” Evans said. “So we’re moving at warp speed."

The United States and Israel have killed more than 3,000 people in Iran since February 28, according to an Iranian medical official.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters