In the latest episode of the podcast, we talk about the Israeli attack on Iran and its impact on the Middle East, including what it means for the future of the region, and why the attack in Lebanon continues to be a source of controversy.
00:00:02.560For around 15 years, many American leaders, including all three presidents in that period,
00:00:08.400have believed that the country was too deeply entangled in trying to reorder the societies of the Middle East.
00:00:15.280They felt the more pressing challenges were rebuilding America's industrial base at home and confronting the rise of China.
00:00:23.280Yet, here America is, once again, fighting a war to reorder a society in the greater Middle East,
00:00:30.000And like Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, this seems unlikely to turn out quite as its proponents hoped.
00:00:37.380Lisa, you heard in the earlier segment we're talking about how Israel says we're three weeks in, but we have three weeks to go.
00:00:46.620What that means is not only will they totally destroy Iran's military capacity and they're destroying the factories where weapons are produced,
00:00:55.220they're also destroying Hezbollah root and branch.
00:00:58.700What is the Middle East going to look like?
00:01:02.000And how are the Arabs going to view Israel, countries like Saudi Arabia, at this moment?
00:01:08.740Well, look, I think one of the things that the region had been characterized
00:01:12.180was a sort of balancing between Iran and Israel from the point of view of the Arab countries.
00:01:19.380In the absence of Iran, Iran decimated in the way the Israelis say that they're going to be able to do,
00:01:26.360then you have an Israeli hegemony in the region, which isn't, I think, exactly what people
00:01:32.560calculated. Even the Gulf countries, even the Abraham Accords members didn't particularly see
00:01:40.020the region as having only one hegemonic power or aspiring hegemonic power. So I think it's going to
00:01:46.840be very complicated because, you know, when you have Israeli officials saying they're going to
00:01:51.380do in southern lebanon what they did in gaza when the guns stop if there's that kind of devastation
00:01:57.840also in lebanon which is in a sense not a combatant um i think there's going to be a very
00:02:03.880you know a sort of heart-rending conversation within the arab world about where they want to
00:02:12.920For 16 days, we've delivered overwhelming firepower deep into Iran.
00:02:24.240This past Friday, U.S. forces executed a large-scale precision strike on Karg Island,
00:02:29.580destroying more than 90 Iranian military targets,
00:02:32.500including storage bunkers for naval mines and missiles and other military infrastructure.
00:02:37.000To date, our Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps aviators
00:02:40.280have collectively flown more than 6,000 combat flights, demonstrating the unmatched capability
00:02:45.920of America's joint force as we maintain air superiority over Iranian skies.
00:02:51.340We continue to remain centered on our military objectives. These are well-defined and include
00:02:56.900eliminating Iran's ballistic missiles, drones, and naval threats. It's one thing to defend by
00:03:02.820striking launchers and intercepting missiles and drones, but it's another thing to eliminate the
00:03:07.800wider manufacturing apparatus behind them and we are doing that today we've talked about it in
00:03:14.280concept here's what it looks like in reality let me show you for the first time a few examples of
00:03:20.600how we are dismantling iran's defense industrial base which will prevent threats to the region
00:03:26.280into the future here you see a photo from march 1st of a naval drone storage facility located
00:03:32.200near the Strait of Hormuz. This is the same location eight days later completely destroyed.
00:03:39.160Next here's a photo taken of an attack drone production factory in Tehran on March 5th.
00:03:45.560Here's that same factory six days later after a devastating barrage of U.S. airstrikes.
00:03:51.000And finally the Yazdi Military Depot pictured here last month. These eight buildings are part
00:03:56.360of the IRGC's missile command infrastructure and are used to produce light and heavyweight torpedoes.
00:04:02.040Now, here's that same military depot just last week or what's left of it.
00:04:07.420U.S. and partner strikes are doing exactly what they are intended to do,
00:04:11.660deliver on very clear military objectives to eliminate Iran's ability to project power against Americans and against its neighbors.
00:04:19.520I don't understand the continued excursion into Lebanon.
00:04:23.160I don't understand the scale of the attacks into Lebanon.
00:04:26.780I don't understand why it continues to widen.
00:04:29.300Help me and help everybody else understand why is Netanyahu taking such an expansive approach to warfare in Lebanon?
00:04:42.500Joe, it's a tough one to answer. Israelis have bitter memories of Lebanon.
00:04:48.260I watched as they rolled all the way to Beirut in 1982 and lived to regret it deeply for several decades.
00:04:56.700An essayist who writes for The Atlantic magazine last weekend wrote an essay on victory disease, the ways in which leaders and armies can become so stoked by one victory that they keep going beyond the limits of good sense.
00:05:19.720Certainly Donald Trump had victory disease after his stunning success in Venezuela.
00:05:24.120I think the Israelis, after the amazing successes of the last two years against Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, have thought they just have to keep going, go all the way.
00:05:38.120Lebanon has been a real kragmire for Israel.
00:05:41.260And I would expect that in the next few days you'll hear a growing criticism of the idea of a big ground invasion of Lebanon again, because people have seen where that leads.
00:05:54.120Why does it happen? It happens because leaders get intoxicated by their own power.
00:06:00.180All this talk about this war wasn't imminent. Why did we decide now? All this talk about what is
00:06:07.900the mission? All of this is used to try and obstruct, undermine, dispirit and divide this
00:06:14.080nation. At a time when Donald Trump is doing what great presidents do and the battle against Iran,
00:06:22.300Maybe we should call it for now the Battle of Iran.
00:06:27.340I call it a peace mission because that's the objective.
00:06:54.560The primary indispensable role of the United States is to anchor the global system against the revisionist ambitions of Beijing and Moscow.
00:07:04.420China is not getting bogged down in Middle Eastern quagmires.
00:07:08.480It is relentlessly investing in artificial intelligence, quantum computing, solar and wind power, batteries and robots,
00:07:16.840the technologies that will determine the balance of global power.
00:07:20.120Russia remains fiercely committed to disrupting the European security architecture and undermining Western democracies through hybrid political military warfare that has proved hard to detect and even harder to defeat.
00:07:35.920But while Moscow and Beijing challenge the basic architecture of America's world order, Washington is preparing once again to spend blood and treasure policing the Middle East and trying to pick the leaders of one of its countries.
00:07:51.300But it's enough, but it's enough to distort the probably the most important shipping point in the world.
00:07:58.500And I don't want to say that the straight is closed.
00:08:01.140I don't like that term, but the reality is shipping traffic has fallen off a cliff.
00:08:05.100It's critical for oil, for gas, for fertilizers, helium, for semiconductors.
00:10:10.140So we're working with all of our allies, including our European partners, to bring together a viable collective plan that can restore freedom of navigation in the region as quickly as possible.
00:10:25.220We're also zeroed in on dismantling Iran's decades old threat to the free flow of commerce through the Strait of Hormuz.
00:10:32.200Through a combination of air, land, and maritime capabilities, we have successfully destroyed
00:10:37.380over 100 Iranian naval vessels, and we are done.
00:10:41.440We will continue to rapidly deplete Iran's ability to threaten freedom of navigation
00:10:48.240Our progress remains steady, and we remain vigilant against the enemy.
00:10:52.000Because it is their territory, it's the place from which they get their energy, and they
00:10:59.960should come and they should help us protect you could make the case that maybe we shouldn't be
00:11:06.360there at all because we don't need it we have a lot of will we were the number one
00:11:10.360producer anywhere in the world time soon by double at least now i think it's much higher than that
00:11:17.000but we do it it's almost like we do it for habit but we also do it for some very good allies that
00:11:23.720we have in the Midwest. Commander-in-Chief Donald Trump, who's facing the same kind of ugly
00:11:32.380internal forces as Roosevelt did, who's facing the same kind of enemy that Jefferson did and
00:11:41.320Madison did. Just remember this. This is a righteous war that seeks peace. Peace. Again,
00:11:54.760changing slightly the quote from Madison in 1815, peace is better than war, he said,
00:11:59.780but war is better than nuclear annihilation. He said war is better than enslavement.
00:12:07.320war is better than nuclear annihilation. I ask you, I ask you, what do you think Jefferson and
00:12:14.600Madison would do in these circumstances today? What do you think Franklin Roosevelt would do
00:12:19.100in these circumstances today? Or Abraham Lincoln or George Washington, or even Ronald Reagan when
00:12:24.480they didn't have nuclear weapons in Iran? What do you think they would do?
00:12:31.060It's Monday, 16 March in the year of Our Lord 2026. I want to thank the team in Denver of
00:12:35.700America's voice. Also, our magnificent team hit the worm. That was a perfect curation of what's
00:12:42.120happened in the last 24 hours, beautifully cut and wedged in. And I believe that Lincoln and
00:12:47.240Washington and Madison and Jefferson would have focused on the real threat to the United States
00:12:52.960coming from the streets of New York with Mondami and what's happening in Texas with this Islamic
00:12:58.620takeover and the 20 million illegal aliens, Mark Levin, Tel Aviv Levin, that we have here in the
00:13:05.360united states that now the republican pollsters think oh my gosh mr president sending him fake
00:13:11.840polls that you can never mention mass deportations again the fake polls are showing him to turn down
00:13:17.640shut down the maha movement so now that we're where we are uh promoters of roundup of every
00:13:24.460significant mega policy to now focus on the middle east and like i said to the national
00:13:30.540conservative convention in uh june before the 12-day war the middle east is a sideshow to the
00:13:39.180central problems of the united states of america and israel is a sideshow to a sideshow and of
00:13:45.100course farid zakar sounded like captain james for now keep the main thing the main thing okay here's
00:13:50.580what we're going to do and a programming change already the commander-in-chief of the american
00:13:56.140military forces and the president of the United States has just announced on True Social that he
00:14:01.420is holding a press conference right before his board meeting at the Kennedy Center, the Trump
00:14:06.420Kennedy Center. That board meeting is supposed to start 1145.12. We assume the president may
00:14:12.380hold this press conference sometime in the 11 o'clock hour. So we're going to be packed today
00:14:17.040already. We're going to start with oil. We've got Eric Bolling and Rob Lockwood to walk us
00:14:23.320through it two great briefings today we'll put up in its entirety on our streaming scott bessett
00:14:29.000on cnbc our own former contributor and secretary of the treasury also abril cooper and centcom two
00:14:36.360really great briefings we've got poso and captain james finnell to break it all down for us the
00:14:42.340first hour is going to be on fire short commercial break natasha owens will take us out we'll be back
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00:16:27.860The Arizona engine rooms on fire this morning, they remind me that on 4th of July, 1821, John Quincy Adams, we need not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy.
00:16:41.880Also, General Jack Keene, very close to the president of the United States.
00:16:47.460We tried to get him as national security advisor in the first administration.
00:18:49.240And he went to the – he was asked how much, and he said,
00:18:52.200we're about 10 to 14 million barrels held back.
00:18:55.880I would say we're about 20, 19 million barrels,
00:19:00.00018 million barrels per day being held back.
00:19:02.320So I'm not sure where he gets his math.
00:19:03.740So I have a bit of an issue with that. Then he was asked about draining the SPR even further. We were at 415 million barrels. We're going to release 172 million of our own SPR. That'll bring us to what, 260, 270 million barrels. We were getting dangerously low, but there was another, I think the energy secretary is on saying, don't worry, we're going to buy it back in the futures market down the road.
00:19:30.340You know, I looked at eight months down the road, oil is still $80 a barrel back there.
00:19:35.740So it doesn't make sense to refill the SPR at an $80 a barrel of oil.
00:19:49.760At least three vessels are getting through.
00:19:52.320Scott's saying five at a million and a half barrels or a million barrels.
00:19:56.160That's roughly four to five million barrels, right?
00:19:58.700from the 20 that's 15 that's that's 14 or 15 million i mean the his math works out
00:20:03.880it's roughly 15 million barrels a day are not getting through he didn't say four to five are
00:20:08.880getting through he said correct i mean is it let's call it 15 a day okay okay you're talking
00:20:15.280hundreds of millions you know you're gonna hit hundreds of millions of barrels over a three-week
00:20:19.680situation it's been in essence shut the idea of of ensuring these boats with with lloyd's of
00:20:27.000london passage is also not going to work because there's no captain worth his salt that's going to
00:20:32.200risk the lives of 200 crew members to put it through there just because they have insurance
00:20:36.080if the thing blows up their families will be taken care of no we're not in that day and age
00:20:39.840here's my point i want trump to win i want us to win in the midterms my biggest problem with
00:20:44.500what's going on right now steve is it it wasn't one and done it didn't get in there and get the
00:20:48.920hell out which he we i thought we should have we could have because this is now pushing a four
00:20:53.940gallon of gasoline within the next i would say 20 30 days nationally even if it ends everybody
00:20:59.340everybody including the president everybody including the president with current reporting
00:21:02.880wanted something quick and dirty okay whether it was uh misdiagnosed captain finnell is going to
00:21:09.100walk through why it's very methodical what we're doing and that was a multi-week program whether
00:21:13.440people didn't hear that or didn't want to hear it or didn't understand it they're the military is
00:21:18.320moving down a path to de-industrialize uh iran okay and just to put it in perspective iran 90
00:21:26.760million people texas 30 million so three times the population and iran's about two and a half
00:21:31.940size two and a half times the size of texas so you have a large area trying to de-industrial
00:21:38.780yeah yeah but we're not fixing we're not fixing it steve the problem is bombing these um their
00:21:46.340ability to create drones and and various forms of military assets they're they're a petro state
00:21:54.480they you know they're selling three million barrels a day at 100 300 million dollars per day
00:21:59.540they can build that stuff back over time i you know i i'd like to see something done that's
00:22:04.760it's more permanent not let's take out their ability to how you know go ahead well i know
00:22:09.920the you you want you want to you want to cut a deal as it's trading right now where does the
00:22:16.000market because the the the market was up from the time bb went to uh went to mar-a-lago in late
00:22:22.940december i think the i think the oil market was up 20 or 25 percent even before the uh the bombing
00:22:30.440started so the oil market is quite efficient as it deals on information right it tends towards
00:22:37.020efficiency. Where is this market today telling us what the market thinks this is going? Not what
00:22:41.640President Trump and not what Besson, where does the market say this is going right now?
00:22:45.740It's elevated. I just pointed out, I just looked at October delivery for crude oil just right now,
00:22:51.400$78 a barrel today. That means the market believes in October, it'll be at least the $78
00:22:57.340barrel in October, which translates to about $3.75 a gallon. However, we're coming down from
00:23:02.840likely a four dollar per gallon of gasoline the market you're right steve so in late december
00:23:09.120early january we were about 55 a barrel it started to move up because there was anticipation of a
00:23:16.180conflict in the middle east market the oil market is very smart very efficient very smart and it
00:23:21.960predicts and it plans for conflicts it plans for supply shocks it also plans for oversupply and so
00:23:28.320If it were a very temporary blip, let's call it believed in the oil market, you would see $100 on the spot price, which is traded today, $95 today, but it got to $103 last night.
00:23:39.760So $100 a barrel today, and you'd see $60 or $65 in October, November, and December because they would believe that oil prices are coming down.
00:23:49.660They believe it's going to remain certainly elevated from where we started from, maybe a little less than where we are today.
00:24:07.900I want you to stick around for Posobiec and Captain Finnell.
00:24:11.280I want to bring in Rob Lockwood, one of the original gangsters of kind of the MAGA movement.
00:24:16.280Rob, both Republican strategists, media expert.
00:24:20.180You've got a piece up that I find very intriguing.
00:24:22.920You're saying part of the solution to get back to that $50 barrel, $55 barrel, full spectrum energy dominance may be in the appointment of the senator from Oklahoma.
00:24:35.360And you're strongly recommending Harold Hamm.
00:24:38.480Tell our audience who is Harold Hamm and why is he so important to the current environment, sir?
00:24:44.440So, Steve, as outlined by Eric, we live in a complex world and the oil and energy markets are complex.
00:24:49.780Harold Hamm, if Donald Trump is the CEO and the architect of America's national energy
00:24:54.660dominant strategy, which he is, Harold Hamm is the intellectual godfather and an operator who
00:25:00.420helped usher in an American energy renaissance and American energy independence before President
00:25:04.800Trump even took office. So he was a guy who grew up in absolute poverty, one of 13 kids,
00:25:11.440sharecropper family in Oklahoma. They had no water on the farm in which they lived. He had
00:25:16.760no formal education, no political connections, no industry connections, who built a titan company
00:25:22.160called Continental Resources. And Harold Hamm is a huge supporter of President Trump's, and he has
00:25:26.680been for a long time. And I wrote this piece because right now in Oklahoma, with the, I think,
00:25:32.960forthcoming appointment and confirmation of Senator Mullen to head DHS, there's going to be an opening.
00:25:39.000And this opening is a temporary seat, seven or eight months until the November election is
00:25:43.220certified. This is political crunch time, as we're seeing with the world of geopolitical affairs,
00:25:47.800but also because it's an election year with the midterms. We have to win, because if we don't,
00:25:52.920the Democrats will throw all the sand in the gears of all of the momentum that President Trump has
00:25:57.480built. And so my thought is, Harold Hamm is like, I'm a Patriots fan, I apologize to your audience
00:26:02.580who hates them, but he is the Tom Brady of modern American energy. And this is political crunch time.
00:26:07.540And Governor Kevin Stitt has the opportunity to put an energy icon into the Senate who can work with Republican caucus members to message how that energy is the foundation of prosperity and peace abroad.
00:26:19.640And he could even tutor privately some Democrats who may not be able to campaign on that issue.
00:26:24.580But there are some who do privately understand the need for increased baseload power, the need for President Trump's energy dominance agenda to continue.
00:26:34.060Put this guy in the Senate for seven to eight months.
00:26:35.700He can help President Trump save America. He can help the Republicans win in the midterms and then have two more years of furthering the agenda that's going to bring America back to true greatness.
00:26:44.620So that's the thesis of the piece and who Harold Hamm is.
00:26:48.620Yeah. Hang on for a second. And Eric, hang on. We're going to get to some of the military, but I want you to hang on for a second.
00:26:54.520Harold Hamm is also I mean, he was with us early on. This guy is original MAGA and was with President Trump early on.
00:27:01.520he's also president trump's kind of mentor about the whole theory of the case of full spectrum
00:27:07.000energy dominance and you've seen harold ham have a voice in this situation in venezuela i mean i
00:27:12.580don't think you could get a more important ally of president trump and platform in the senate
00:27:17.160between now and election day and also get some minds right over there uh and even in the
00:27:22.480administration about the importance of uh of full spectrum energy dominance uh harold ham i would
00:27:28.340say his original gangster when it comes to that uh and he certainly is an incredible
00:27:33.140kind of kind of kind of a throwback to the wildcatters of the mythical or the original
00:27:41.420the foundational myth of our oil industry that's ham goes back to that and has that kind of that's
00:27:46.620the cut of his jib anyway short commercial break uh we're going to juggle a little bit this morning
00:27:50.980president said he's going to have an impromptu press conference probably around 11 o'clock
00:30:05.840MBS is telling the New York Times, continue bombing, take the head off the snake.
00:30:10.820Behind the scenes, who knows what they're saying?
00:30:13.760We're going to keep Rob Lockwood and Eric Bolling.
00:30:16.240Like I said, the president looks like he may have a press conference in the 11 o'clock hour.
00:30:19.780we'll go to that live. Let's go to Jack. We've got Captain Fennell, Jack Posobiec. Jack,
00:30:24.260your assessment of what you've seen over the weekend, what does it mean, sir?
00:30:29.580Well, Steve, as I said yesterday here on the program, and I would say as well,
00:30:33.700President Trump clearly at a crossroads in this situation. You've got the 31st MEU,
00:30:38.800which is now steaming its way, I'm told, through the Straits of Malacca, right about now coming up.
00:30:44.440They were in operations in and around the Philippines, South China Sea area.
00:30:50.200They're headed up through the Strait of Malacca.
00:30:52.160They are steaming along, picking up speed and heading over to the Persian Gulf, which
00:30:57.040obviously allows the president for a range of optionality, as it's called in military
00:31:03.640defense circles these days, along with the different pieces of the puzzle that he has.
00:31:09.220And I was on media earlier this morning, and I would say here again, as well as to the
00:31:12.820war room that I have seen a very strange contention from the Wall Street Journal and others saying that
00:31:19.380boots on the ground are necessary to take Karg Island. And that's one of the most ridiculous
00:31:23.640things that I've heard. You don't need to take this territory to be able to neutralize it,
00:31:31.620because if you just simply want to neutralize Karg Island, you could use cyber warfare very
00:31:37.180easily to shut down offload and onload operations. Anything with the computer could be fried.
00:31:43.400And of course, the United States Navy has been neutralizing piers for centuries at this point.
00:31:48.980In fact, the United States Navy SEALs were designed for that specific purpose, if you go
00:31:54.360back to the UDT teams. And so this is something that the Navy is able to do. You can take out
00:32:00.080the pier. You don't have to touch any of the fuel supplies, the depots, the pipelines, any of it.
00:32:06.040You just you just hit the pier. It's really simple. But I think, Steve, that what's going on now is that there are people who are deeply and seriously agitating, including Wall Street Journal, for the president to put boots on the ground because they realize that once he has done so, that the mission creep will be so far in that this thing could explode into a full fledged war.
00:32:25.880And they deeply want that. And that's what I said here last week, that Lindsey Graham was certainly part of that push, jester gooning up and down for a wider, full-scale war with Iran.
00:32:36.980uh so on the sunday show lineup on friday um and all the sunday shows lady lindsey was not included
00:32:48.220now on the saturday update he was he was included in a couple i think meet the press and a couple
00:32:55.100others my understanding he was not on the sunday shows yesterday as a surrogate uh they're maybe
00:32:59.940trying to dial down i think they're buying your theory of jester gooning uh but hang on for a
00:33:05.620second, Jack. Let's bring in Captain Fennell. Captain Fennell, CENTCOM Admiral Cooper went
00:33:10.720through another methodical briefing today of what the still the focus of CENTCOM on the military
00:33:16.760objectives, also the industrial base. The Israelis have told us they've got 6,000 more targets,
00:33:23.200at least two or three weeks, maybe four weeks of still intense bombing. And every day is pretty
00:33:28.600intense. In fact, you could say over the last, at least through Saturday night, those three or
00:33:33.680four nights in a row increased in intensity every night. Your assessment of CENTCOM and then the
00:33:39.580broader military objectives here, sir? Well, Steve, I agree with Admiral Cooper's statement that
00:33:46.440Iranian military capability is declining while U.S. military capability is increasing. And the
00:33:53.320numbers that he put out on his briefing this morning are very clear that we are really,
00:33:58.940really pounding them every day for 16 days. And I would like to give an example because I heard
00:34:05.740Eric Bolling's, you know, angst, and I understand it about the strait and the concern that everyone
00:34:13.520has about this being shut down. But one just little note from the UK's Maritime Trade Office,
00:34:20.780they have what they call a Joint Maritime Information Center, and they've been putting
00:34:23.900out reports every day of the conflict. And since the conflict has started, they pointed out in
00:34:30.180their daily reports, number 15 was released last night, that there has been no Iranian mines detected
00:34:37.280in the Persian Gulf and in the Strait of Hormuz. And people would say, well, that's not verified,
00:34:43.200or they can go down that tangent. But let's just take that independent agencies, who has clearly
00:34:49.440no skin in the game to exaggerate. They have stated that now for 15 days. Why is that? And I
00:34:55.820would say that is a reflection of the targeting plan that CENTCOM put together and that they
00:35:02.160outlined every day since this conflict has been going on. Take out the missiles, take out the
00:35:07.800missile launchers, take out the missile production factories, which they are now heavily doing in
00:35:14.060the last 24, 48 hours, but also this Navy piece. And when we say Navy, we just think of ships
00:35:20.040floating, but it wasn't just ships floating. It was those bases and those storage facilities for
00:35:25.800torpedoes, mines, drones, ammunition, the boats themselves that go ashore, the small fast boats.
00:35:33.380So we have been decimating that. And a reflection of that success has been that there hasn't been
00:35:39.260one ship that's hit a mine. There's been no detected mines in and around the strait in this
00:35:45.080last 16 days. And I remind people, the number one weapon that has damaged more U.S. Navy warships
00:35:52.560since World War II is the mine. So we have actually been very successful in that regard.
00:35:58.200And so I think what we should, and I know it's very hard for people to do that. I haven't been
00:36:02.280in the military. But when you listen to the former commanders of NAVCENT, Fifth Fleet,
00:36:08.120like Admiral Donegan, who's on ABC this Sunday, we are, we have known about this, we have planned
00:36:14.580for this, and we're going through it very systematically. And I agree with Jack, we don't
00:36:19.160have to put boots on the ground on Karg Island to take out their capacity to produce oil, or to at
00:36:25.640least disseminate the oil. And last night, there was overhead imagery, commercial imagery, that
00:36:30.320showed three maritime tankers from Iran sitting at Karg Island being loaded up with fuel. At some
00:36:37.480point, that will stop. And that's the president's time to choose to do that. And I'm not the
00:36:42.880president. I'm not sure exactly when he'll do that. But at some point, if this doesn't ratchet
00:36:47.440back, he'll have another ladder, a rung on the ladder to take up in the escalation, at least in
00:36:53.400terms of putting pressure on the regime to capitulate. And we do not have to be boots on
00:36:58.220the ground. And we do not have to have an endless war. We can do this if we just stay the helm or
00:37:03.780steady on the helm and keep proceeding as we have. And the Tripoli coming through the Strait of
00:37:09.120Malacca, she'll probably pick up two littoral combat ships with mine warfare packages,
00:37:17.140and they'll escort them out to the Gulf should we have to use even mine sweepers. But there is
00:37:22.380another plan that we can use, which is right now we're going to start rolling in A-10 Warthogs,
00:37:28.400the Thunderbolts. And with those, along with F-18s, F-15s, and F-16s, with this
00:37:36.800advanced precision kill weapon system that the Ukrainians have been using to shoot down drones
00:37:42.280in the Ukraine, these $25,000 missiles can be used, and they're being brought out to the theater
00:37:49.080to be able to take down any kind of unmanned surface vessel or any kind of drone. So we have
00:37:55.740the capacity to start really making it apparent to the shipping community that it is going to be
00:38:02.200safe. Still needs some more time. It will be safe. Hang on. I want to go back in time. My kid brother
00:38:09.500was there. I know you were very involved. Go back to the, it's not directly analogous, but
00:38:13.140we've had this issue before, the tanker wars of 87 and 88. How did we actually have combatants?
00:38:20.260How did we escort? Because this is going to be a big issue. They're pouring more naval assets
00:38:25.540into the region, into the North Arabian Sea, about the actual escorting of these tankers.
00:38:32.640We've done this before during the 87-88 tanker war.
00:38:35.880Explain to us what happened then and what lessons do we derive from that?
00:38:41.200Well, those wars actually started in 81, but we didn't actually start doing the escort program
00:46:20.680Jack Posobiec, thoughts and observations on CENTCOM's plan and our naval strategy.
00:46:28.180Well, Steve, certainly there's a lot to be brought to bear here.
00:46:31.900Now, the idea that NATO is going to send their ships in, it's going to be interesting.
00:46:37.580We'll have to see. Also, real questions about Israel. Israel also has a navy as well, and yet we haven't heard any calls, I think, for the Israeli navy to get involved in this as well.
00:46:48.960They are striking around with their air power, certainly, right now, but they do have naval assets that could be brought to bear.
00:46:55.100And so, of course, if Israel wants to send their naval assets to the Strait of Hormuz, that could also be an option here for greater forces in that region.
00:47:05.180And certainly, and by the way, there's also one other option, of course, that the United States also has not taken, and that's our own use of asymmetric warfare against Iranian tankers that we've seen in the past.
00:47:16.640So we have seen the seizing of tankers by whether it's Venezuela bound, whether it's these Venezuela flag tankers.
00:47:24.220If the United States Navy were to be able to start conducting those interdiction style operations that we saw with the Venezuelan sanctions, then you wouldn't necessarily need to close the Strait of Hormuz at all.
00:47:35.580You'd be able to affect Iran in the same exact way.
00:47:38.520Now, again, of course, this also increases the level of escalation, but doesn't necessarily require boots on the ground.
00:47:44.780And again, Steve, I'm just talking about the wide variety of options, the plethora of options that the president has at his fingertips here that, again, totally at sea or using air power technology or capabilities do not require boots on the ground.
00:48:04.000Asymmetric. Number one, go to Dubai and seize the pirates.
00:48:07.560That's the pirate cove of the Middle East, just like Tortuga was against the British Empire in the Caribbean.
00:48:13.920they should seize all the financial assets of iran the persians all do it you know allow them
00:48:20.380to do it because they're they're making they're making yeah they're making huge they're making
00:48:24.460huge coin off that they ought to seize that immediately we also put sanctions on any country
00:48:29.000trading with iran financially to seize it and i think you i think you you keep it open but i don't
00:48:35.840know why you're not seizing any any oil coming out of there that can't is being traded and cash is
00:48:41.100going to the iranians i don't get it i don't get how you put people in harm's way and like choke
00:48:46.660them down cut their cash off when besan started destroying the what's the currency the real back
00:48:52.840in january you had you know millions of people take to the streets choke them out they shouldn't
00:48:59.000get a penny they shouldn't get a penny from including the chinese commerce party jack
00:49:02.540uh social media you're on fire your uh twitter feed is like uh the modern associated press for
00:49:09.000getting information out about this war where do people go well thank you steve of course we're
00:49:13.560going to be up human events daily every day if you missed that we got our sit reps that come out
00:49:18.640daily in terms of the email and of course the podcast is human events daily on apple on spotify
00:49:24.900we're going to be up there as well and uh today we're also going to be issuing a a response
00:49:30.020because i steve i didn't know there's a little tv show that goes on that's been going on for a
00:49:34.000called the uh the oscars the academy awards where conan o'brien decided to call out my turning point
00:49:41.580halftime show last night so of course we'll be responding to his very poorly watched uh you know
00:49:49.280little little shindig last night and maybe give him a little more ratings because he really needs it
00:49:54.060it's going to youtube nobody watched it but i did see the clip of the joke uh good luck on that
00:50:01.300Rob Lockwood, I think Harold Hamm will be saying, let's rev up Venezuela and let's get rolling in Guyana, in the Gulf of America, and in Texas.
00:50:12.380We got 10x, and the president said yesterday, we got 10 times the natural gas and oil resources here in this part of the world that they got in the Middle East.
00:50:21.460And we can certainly put the Middle East on the back burner.
00:50:24.140I want people to go read your article one more time.
00:50:26.320Why should Harold Hamm be in the United States Senate for the next eight months?
00:50:30.600and you're behind the shale revolution energy renaissance in america he led the crusade to
00:50:37.480legalize the sale of energy exports in america in 2015 that set the table when president trump
00:50:42.460came in and had tremendous success you were a key part of that in his first term which allowed
00:50:46.840america to become truly energy independent the disastrous buying years set us back but in the
00:50:51.880first year of the trump administration we were able to do things like get 6 000 permits approved
00:50:56.500for drilling president trump opened the gulf of america back open for business with the stroke of
00:51:01.060a pen he led to a hundred thousand barrels more per day in immediate exploration and they're
00:51:06.020already holding leases for new energy exploration rig rigs down in the gulf of america right now
00:51:12.660generating hundreds of millions of dollars of proceeds already but it ensures an america energy
00:51:16.900dominant future if we hold the senate if we hold the house with president trump's leadership and
00:51:21.860And there's no better person in the entire world to fill that vacant Senate seat than Harold Hamm.
00:52:44.420There's a trial in federal court I think you ought to know about.
00:52:47.960state attorney generals are hanging in there on one of the most, I don't know, nefarious monopolies
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