00:00:22.90035,000, 40,000 people were slaughtered as a result.
00:00:25.980This is not going to bring about regime change in any way.
00:00:29.620Do you see a reason for Iran to make a deal and open the Strait of Hormuz before the president's deadline tomorrow?
00:00:35.920And if not, how seriously do you take his threat to destroy their infrastructure?
00:00:41.600Yes, well, that's a great question, Anderson, and I think it's really the question of the day.
00:00:46.200It's not yet in Iran's interest to make that kind of deal, however,
00:00:51.080given that their control of the straits is the principal leverage that they have for any kind of negotiation.
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00:00:58.360And, you know, as I think we talked about last week, their strategy is to survive, to prevent total surrender, to preserve the Islamic regime.
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00:01:06.580And to do that, they have to hang on to the straits. It is their principal leverage.
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00:01:10.940In terms of the president's threats, I think they have demonstrated an ability to absorb strikes at home while still exacting a cost on the rest of the world.
00:01:20.300And I think that's what those who make these kinds of decisions in Iran are prepared to do for at least several more weeks.
00:01:27.640It's not just the rhetoric about the Christian nationalist rhetoric.
00:01:30.780People are believing what they're saying.
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00:01:34.120I mean, the reason why Trump is tapping into that is because there's been a lot of coverage about the fractures within the right wing over this war.
00:01:40.960The one thing that has been growing in popularity and support for this war is the evangelical communities, the Christian space.
00:01:47.760All of that part of their media ecosystem is excited about this.
00:01:51.780So not only are people believing it, but they're getting impassioned because he's making these very explicit calls to their religion.
00:01:58.540Would it be a limited ground invasion?
00:02:01.260Because the box we're already in, you're being dropped into the wall right now.
00:17:50.040And if these things proceed as they look like they're going to, you may see the same types of numbers or maybe even higher.
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00:17:57.820The problem is, Steve, one of the things that the Iranians in that 10-point, I guess, reconciliation package, one of them I think was a big non-starter.
00:18:07.680First of all, a Trump administration official who saw it told Axios it was a maximalist plan, not a minimalist.
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00:18:13.900But one of the things that I think would be a deal breaker is that they were asking for
00:18:17.940also having some sort of remain in control of the Strait of Hormuz.
00:18:40.220Equities are obviously drifting lower.
00:18:42.900I tell you, though, just hold out because Trump has a way of unleashing hell, showing them he means business, and then somehow, like I said yesterday, this is the art of war combined with the art of the deal.
00:18:56.460And I have hope that there's an off-ramp somewhere that he's holding a Trump card, so to speak, in his pocket.
00:19:05.900Let's go back to that maximalist strategy.
00:19:09.680president trump put out a true social clearly he had thought about right it was um uh very tight
00:19:18.820wasn't loose it was tight about this is going to be the end of your civilization and uh and on this
00:19:25.500on this stage when you're talking about things like this you can't bluff right you can't bluff
00:19:32.760so president trump when he says i'm taking down your civilization and these guys come back
00:19:39.660and we don't know all the 10 points but it's been referred to as a maximalist right i think one of
00:19:45.220the reasons not releasing it they did the even administration doesn't want to show how big the
00:19:49.400gap is although we're not in in a room negotiating this when you have two maximalist positions
00:19:55.240one of the reasons you have it eric is both sides think they're winning both sides think they've got
00:20:04.100as president trump said they have no cards i hold all the cards um and i think we're going and i
00:20:10.640think captain finnell will uh support this in his analysis we're going from the declawing defanging
00:20:17.600degradation of their military now to something i've been talked about and what even the israelis
00:20:23.000were talking about initially which is total state collapse that's we're going after the
00:20:27.740infrastructure uh and the iranians whether they're correct or not is not the point in their mind
00:20:35.740they think they've shifted the center of gravity of this war to the gulf they think they control
00:20:40.740the straits of her moves they haven't seen the united states navy escorting ships in there they
00:20:45.020haven't seen special forces raids uh yet to try to beat them back they've been they've been bombed
00:20:50.280with 2 000 pound bombs but they think they have the initiative not just they're winning they think
00:20:55.340they have the initiatives in this world right now that is not a great set of uh facts to actually
00:21:02.640get into a table and try to negotiate a deal the sides are just too far apart not just far apart
00:21:07.380on what they're asking on what their mentality is the united states of america and the commander
00:21:12.520in chief and the military are absolutely convinced that the plan has worked to date now they're going
00:21:18.880drop the hammer either even even harder and the uh the enemy believes they've gone asymmetric i
00:21:26.360don't think they're debating that they've degraded their military but they're going asymmetric
00:21:29.980and one of the tells there is west texas i mean why would west texas intermediate which is the
00:21:36.040price of the oil here uh be at 117 dollars i think it's higher than than brent crude right
00:21:43.340why are people panicking and at least bidding that up right now when that's not directly related to
00:21:48.600what's coming out of the Strait of Hormuz? Well, a couple of things. Price of West Texas
00:21:54.320is 117 approaching a record, but the Brent crude that we see on CNBC, et cetera, is for a June
00:22:01.040delivery. What you're looking at West Texas is for a May delivery. Apples to apples with the Brent
00:22:05.880will be a spot price Brent. And that's roughly almost $140 a barrel, but they don't trade it
00:22:11.700actively like that. That's immediate use right now. Why is West Texas going up? Because
00:22:16.480yes, it is more benchmarked in North America and maybe some European countries, but it's still oil
00:22:24.620like money is fungible. It's not perfectly fungible like money, but it's fungible in that
00:22:29.980if Brent goes to $200 a barrel, let's say, and West Texas stays at $120, there'll be a lot of
00:22:36.980people who are switching their refineries over and stays there, and they believe it will stay
00:22:40.580for a long time. They'll switch the refineries over because the transportation cost makes it
00:22:45.920economic to do so. So it's tough to do. You need a lot. But that's why a dislocation in one area
00:22:52.280in the global oil market brings all oil prices up. Because at some point, the dislocation
00:22:59.180and price differential makes sense to pay the extra money to transport it around the
00:23:04.980you know, horn of Africa, wherever it may have to go. But the one thing I think on what your first
00:23:10.800point was, people aren't going to like this. And this is really bad for me and for stock
00:23:17.320accounts everywhere. But at this point, Steve, yeah, I think both sides, I don't know if Iran
00:23:22.820thinks they're winning. They like to thought of being martyrs and fight to the death. And they
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00:23:29.000may be on that mentality right now. But at this point, a 45-day ceasefire doesn't make a lot of
00:23:35.920sense. Markets would take a breather, oil would go down, stock market would go up, but it doesn't
00:23:40.160fix any of the problems. And I don't think the Iranians are ever going to come around to where
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00:23:44.060Trump needs them or wants them to be. So at this point, unless they come hat in hand in the next
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00:23:49.620eight hours or so, nine hours, I think the best move is just unleash hell on them and follow
00:23:55.700through with it when you say unleash hell the president has bifurcated this as infrastructure
00:24:02.680uh electrical grid what they need to for their day-to-day and and oil infrastructure in their
00:24:11.940oil industry karg island hit this morning at least as i can parse it focus additionally on
00:24:18.320military targets i clearly sent a message that karg island is on the punch list but they hit
00:24:24.000military targets what do you think happens if this goes broader than just the electrical
00:24:29.060infrastructure and he actually starts to hit the iranian infrastructure of of all the complexity
00:24:36.520of their oil and gas industry sir i think he's he's well on his way when you take out the power
00:24:43.060if they you need power and energy to transport oil it's our only commodity that's our only
00:24:48.360economic input so he'll effectively create a situation and take the bridges out so they can't
00:24:55.820transport it via truck or train anymore without the bridges he's he's going to cripple them he's
00:25:01.160going to bring the country to their knees and maybe that's what it's going to take to get them
00:25:04.580to the bargaining table but they're going to feel hell for quite a while with with just this if he
00:25:10.420escalates it to you know media which i have recommended in the past go but i want i was
00:25:16.100hoping to do without a five or six hour ultimatum, I think they could have systemically done this
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00:25:22.460thing where the Iranians say, okay, enough is enough, but he wants to, he wants to hit them
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00:25:27.580hard and hit them fast. And, you know, again, I've, I've learned, I'm old enough to have learned that
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00:25:32.960it's not wise to doubt Trump's plan because sometimes you don't see what the ultimate plan
00:25:39.000is, but he seems to always have one that works. This may be painful first though.
00:26:02.120Any closing thoughts before you bounce?
00:26:05.220I think today is a day of hold your breath, so to speak,
00:26:09.160certainly in the oil market, the financial markets,
00:26:12.000and the humanitarian, quote, unquote, markets as well.
00:26:16.100So all eyes are looking straight at 8 o'clock.
00:26:20.700I just hope it's not another delay because it's like let's rip the freaking Band-Aid off already and do it and deal with the fallout now or don't do it and deal with backtracking.
00:26:34.920Trump doesn't seem the type to want to do that.
00:26:37.260At this point, I don't think it's a smart way to do it either.
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00:26:39.320That would give the Iranians, embolden the Iranians to think that they can do this again and again.
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00:26:43.400And so, you know, I'm bracing for some higher prices and some lower equity prices, lower valuations on assets and a lot higher prices on food and everything that's going to happen.
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00:26:57.080And then hopefully, again, Steve, I've said this a long time, hopefully he gets this over real fast and then just really, really pumps the crap out of oil and gets that price back down to a level that it doesn't hurt us in the midterms.
00:32:19.760And the Soviet-trained general said, well, you finally started impacting those forces
00:32:24.640that supported Milosevic, the Army, and is against his policy, and he started cutting off his access
00:32:32.060to funds. So this is just a reflection of this debate that you've just highlighted, which is
00:32:38.360can air power alone, and this is really the canard, is it's not ever argued alone,
00:32:44.880but what is the value of systematic approach to targeting an adversary? So if you go to the
00:32:50.640graphic that I provided, Cameron there, please. Back in 1995, Colonel John Warden, United States
00:32:58.980Air Force, who had served from 1965 until 1995, was a Ford Air controller, flying Broncos in the
00:33:07.020Vietnam War, came up with this system analysis of how you would go after a look at your opponent,
00:33:15.040And it's called The Five Rings. And a nice article that just came out this last week in the Army War College Press by Dr. Jacob Stoyle says that, you know, he talks about this being applied to Iran.
00:33:29.900And so what you see there is these rings, and in the center ring is the leadership, and then it's outer ring, next outer ring is organic essentials, then infrastructure, then population, and then fielded military forces.
00:33:46.120So for the last 38 days, the U.S. military, the Pentagon and CENTCOM, and the joint force have been going after, predominantly on the U.S. side, the fielded military forces.
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00:33:58.540We've been using asymmetric capabilities against their, you know, lots of different Iranian
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00:34:04.380capabilities. We've gone after their proxies, regional proxies, conventional military forces.
00:34:12.200And likewise, the Israelis have been focusing on the leadership and the leadership. There's
00:34:18.060some charts out there even today that show the, you know, the scores of IRGC leadership that has
00:34:24.420been decimated along with the religious leaders and the supreme leader and his family and whatnot
00:34:29.600and we haven't really struck and touched the organic essentials which is the energy sector
00:34:36.360we've gone after missile industrial complex those missile cities where they produce the
00:34:42.220ballistic missiles and drones and things of that nature and we've gone we hit one bridge it was
00:34:47.900very publicized this last week but we haven't really gone after it too much so what's happened
00:34:53.100this morning already, is that you're seeing Israel IDF going after road and rail bridge networks
00:35:01.540in Tehran, Esfahan, Qam, and in western Iran, along with the United States attacking military,
00:35:10.260finishing off, or I don't know if finishing is not the right word, but continuing to attack
00:35:15.080military facilities on Karg Island, which as everyone knows is about 90% of Iran's
00:35:21.920output for oil. That's the center point. That's the key point in the Gulf. So what's happened is
00:35:29.980we have for 38 days attacked that outer ring and the inner ring. And now we're going to expand it
00:35:36.800out into those two blue rings, organic essentials and infrastructure. And as you said, the plan and
00:35:43.860the structure is to have regime collapse. And the regime leaders, whoever they are at this point,
00:35:50.040several rungs down the ladder uh they may or may not hang hang hang hang hang hang hang hang i want
00:35:56.660to get terminology right here because president trump said and you see from the chart he believes
00:36:02.480that's regime change you've gone down i think on the irgc level it's even to the brigade level
00:36:08.100we've killed a lot of people and the israelis have as they are want to do really target this
00:36:14.380for leadership and some would say well they also target who the negotiators are be that as it may
00:36:20.100they've taken care of that haven't we need look at this systems analysis this is what i want to
00:36:25.720get across to the audience what happens tonight is kind of fundamentally different we're going
00:36:33.000towards state collapse i think if you're getting back on president trump's rhetoric is that this
00:36:38.800is not simply about the regime anymore they're going to take down this is why he's warning
00:36:42.660the uh iranian people that hey your life is going to be very different after this this i'm looking
00:36:48.220at civilizational collapse or state collapse they're going after the basic building blocks
00:36:54.660of how a nation actually exists is that a way to look at it that this is kind of fundamentally
00:37:00.460different as you get closer into that inner circle of of where you're going to take this apart
00:37:06.800systematically, take the system apart systematically? I think the rhetoric will be
00:37:14.360used that way, and the president's used that rhetoric to say exactly that to the Iranian
00:37:19.820regime. This will be the end for you. What in fact will actually happen likely tonight is that
00:37:25.540he's going to take out all their ability to produce power and produce electricity and their
00:37:31.420ability to export oil, which means they will have no money to come in. They will have no power
00:37:37.240to move and, you know, build missiles, build drones. They will not have any bridges, rail or
00:37:45.020road. So they won't be able to get supplies in from Russia or anything flown in or maybe flying
00:37:51.920in still could be some, but there won't be anything coming in from external sources. They will be cut
00:37:57.040off. And so the regime will have to do something. And what can they do? Well, most likely they'll
00:38:03.180respond with a gas, a salvo of ballistic missiles and drones. They'll probably be quite large
00:38:09.680over the next day or two. But they're running out of those systems, regardless of analysis from
00:38:18.240some. I think the fact of the matter is that they're being depleted after 38 days. And the
00:38:24.160idea that they can just go on and do this indefinitely, it doesn't match the assessments
00:38:29.640that are coming out of CENTCOM or the Pentagon or other sources. Now, there's some that still say
00:38:35.000they have so much there. But the idea that we were able to fly two rescue missions on two different
00:38:40.940days and fly American aircraft, you know, MC-130s and helicopters and A-10s and fly for seven hours
00:38:49.020over 200 miles into Iran to rescue two aviators is a demonstration. And I love Sam Faddis,
00:38:56.800but for me, what I heard yesterday from the president's press conference was the Iranians
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00:39:03.000are really incapable of stopping us when we want to do something. Sure, they fired up some missiles
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00:39:09.280or some of these Project 358 loitering surface air missiles, but in 13,500 combat sorties,
00:39:19.020That's maybe the only one that they've actually successfully hit anything with.
00:39:22.700So I think the evidence is from this, you know, what we're seeing is we're operating at will over Iran.
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00:39:29.580And when we still go to turn the lights out and we go to shut down their rail and road networks completely, there's not going to be anything left for the regime to do except kill their own citizens.
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00:39:40.280And maybe the president has some plan there as well that he hasn't told us about.
00:39:45.100And those people will be able to do something against this regime.
00:39:50.420But right now, the regime is not what it was 38 days ago.
00:39:55.580Even in the last three or four hours, we've seen some reporting where the Iranians are saying we can't have a negotiation because our supreme leader isn't really capable.
00:40:05.320So, you know, two days ago, a week ago, we were told he's in control.
00:40:11.200So I think the facts on the ground are that Iran is collapsing, in the process of collapsing, and tonight is going to really be dramatic.
00:40:22.300And I think the precursor actions, which seem to me coordinated between Israel and the United States this morning, are indicators to, again, from the president, as Eric Bolling just said,
00:40:33.580The president is a master at not manipulating, but pressing and getting his point across to say, listen, you really need to come and make a deal and bend a knee, bend the knee, and this will all end.
00:40:47.340Expect not based on what Sam's told us about their regime.
00:40:50.780So it's going to get ugly before it gets better.
00:40:54.680I don't think they're maybe they do, but I think their mentality is, hey, we're winning here.
00:40:59.760We have the initiative, whether it's reality or not, their reality.
00:41:02.500Hang over a second as we go to break in a couple of minutes. Put us in the room. You're basically nine hours away, nine or 10 hours away from what could be a massive assault. What are the target tiers? What's happening at CENCOM's core group as they talk to Admiral Cooper and they go through? What's the work process flow right now?
00:41:24.940Well, in the targeting world, all that work has been done earlier. So right now, as a targeteer, right before these combat operations actually start, this level, this next phase of it, if you will, there's probably some calm because now all the homework's been done.
00:41:43.240They know where all these facilities are. They've been paired up with what platforms and what munitions. They've done all the munitions effectiveness assessments. They've contingency planned, as the president talked about, contingencies last night. So the planning is basically done. It's now down to the execution.
00:42:01.720So the stress will be out in the forward areas, in our forward airfields where the pilots are working with you, the ammunition loaders, and making sure that everything's right and prepared on their aircraft.
00:42:16.660So if I'm a strike planner on board the Lincoln, I'm still humping and making sure everything's right, that I'm ready to go locked and loaded in my mission.
00:42:27.680But back at CENTCOM, everybody's like, okay, we've picked all this.
00:42:31.300they're working on the next phase. So they're preparing the next phase of what else has to be
00:42:37.480done and as well as preparing the battle damage assessment teams. So that battle damage assessment
00:42:43.420process is no longer just as manual as it was when I did it in Desert Storm. It's highly, highly
00:42:49.180integrated today with AI and, you know, tools from Palantir and overhead national systems
00:42:56.700collections and all of the capabilities that we have to be able to get rapid, immediate
00:43:01.380feedback on how, if we start this tonight, oh, we missed something or let's put more
00:54:25.960Now, listen, in the first couple of days of the launch of this company with the Warren Posse, Posse members saved tens and up to hundreds of thousands collectively of dollars in these fees.
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