00:00:00.000As you know, I was in favor of Operation Epic Fury.
00:00:03.000We ought to believe Iran when they chant death to America over and over and over and then try to build nuclear weapons and they build ballistic missiles and all the rest of it.
00:00:09.000Then President Trump started hesitating.
00:00:12.000He put forward an MOU, put together a pause.
00:00:15.000In my opinion, as I said at the time, I thought the MOU was counterproductive, that it signaled weakness, that it actually gave credibility to the Iranian regime.
00:00:22.000Well, now things are starting to reverse.
00:00:24.000We have Operation Economic Outcast, led by Secretary of the Treasury Scott Besant.
00:00:28.000The goal is to economically strangle the Islamic.
00:00:31.000I know it's pretty confusing what's going on.
00:00:32.000We're going to break down sanctions, what they mean at this point.
00:00:35.000And we're joined by Miyad Maliki, a sanctions expert from Foundation for Defense of Democracies, to discuss what the future might hold in the Iran war.
00:00:42.000There actually is a success that appears to be happening right under the very noses of most of the press and pretty much all Americans.
00:00:49.000And that is the success of the Trump administration in opening up the Strait of Hormuz, according to Barack Ravid, who's typically terrible, but fascinating report over at Axios.
00:00:57.000He says the U.S. military has quietly established a shipping corridor in and out of the Strait of Hormuz to transport millions of barrels of oil each day.
00:01:04.000A notable success, even as the broader war remains at a stalemate, two U.S. officials told Daxios.
00:01:09.000Under the operation, which has been underway for the last several weeks, 15 to 20 tankers have entered and exited the strait each night through a southern channel along the coast of Oman.
00:01:17.000About 10 million barrels of oil a day, roughly half the pre war volume, are now being transported out of the strait and injected into the global energy market, according to those officials.
00:01:25.000The president also announced today on Truth Social that all mines have now been removed from the Strait of Hormuz, and the United States will be blowing up any ship that tries to put down new mines.
00:01:59.000He says, Pascal understood uncertainty does not absolve men or nations of divine judgment.
00:02:04.000In fact, it demands a more exacting appraisal of risk and imposes a higher price for error.
00:02:08.000Pascal's eponymous wager now applies to Iran's lifelines.
00:02:12.000Nations that, in courting reprieve from Tehran, continue to replenish the very regime from which they seek protection and now exceed the limits of America's tolerance.
00:02:24.000Teams from Treasury, State, and the U.S. military are now meeting with their global counterparts to tell them that the United States expects action.
00:02:35.000Every country has a defined timeline to shut down activities we have identified.
00:02:41.000If they do not take action, We will do so unilaterally through Treasury authorities.
00:02:46.000For example, every branch of Bank Melee must be shuttered and dark.
00:02:55.000And let me be clear any entity that facilitates money laundering on behalf of Iran will be removed from the US dollar system.
00:03:09.000And Besson said that China is not off the hook here.
00:03:10.000China, of course, has been doing enormous financial work with Iran.
00:03:15.000Is the very delicate trade truce with China something that could prohibit you from going that far and taking that very big step?
00:03:24.000We want to make clear here today that no one is above the reach of U.S. sanctions, that if they facilitate transactions and are part of the ecosystem that turns Iranian oil into money, into repression, they will be targeted.
00:03:45.000We find that the best way to engage with countries is through quiet diplomacy, and we are level setting with every country to tell them our expectations.
00:04:33.000So, the odds have been steadily going down about when we will actually have full traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, according to our friends and sponsors over at CalShee.
00:04:40.000But they are rising actually rather sharply recently.
00:04:45.000Before April 1st, 2027, it is now up to 42%.
00:04:50.000Before July 1st, 2027, it is up to 53%.
00:04:53.000Honestly, I think we'll probably get there before that.
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00:06:18.000Everyone in the media seems to be treating the Trump administration's current efforts as though there's already an L on the board for the Trump administration.
00:06:25.000And it seems like that is not the case.
00:06:28.000Well, what it seems is that there is another narrative that is now taking form that is the reality.
00:06:34.000It seems as though the United States has actually somewhat successfully opened up.
00:06:37.000Some lanes inside the Strait of Hormuz to allow for oil to move away from places like UAE and Qatar and Iraq into the mainstream of the oil markets.
00:06:46.000And simultaneously, we are now taking significant efforts to sanction Iran in far more severe ways, isolating their economy.
00:06:53.000You're starting to hear some pretty nervous words, actually, out of the top levels of the Iranian revolutionary regime.
00:06:59.000What do you make of where we currently stand?
00:07:02.000So, you know, it's really interesting to see how this.
00:07:08.000Propaganda that you hear coming out of the regime itself is shaping some of the discourse, some of the conversations here in the US and in the West.
00:07:17.000I served for many years in the Treasury Department.
00:07:19.000Before that, I was at US Central Command.
00:07:22.000Prior to that, I was an active duty US Air Force officer.
00:07:25.000So for years, I watched how the regime's propaganda really shaping the narrative here in the US, when in fact, the reality is always very different.
00:07:47.000Sanctions take time to work to be effective.
00:07:50.000And these sanctions are coming in after four years of the Biden administration of not enforcing sanctions, putting on some really relaxed policies on Iran's sanctions enforcement.
00:08:01.000So, what happens is the sanctions regime was really in a bad shape.
00:08:05.000They were not being enforced, they were not being really hurting the Iranian economy or the Iran regime's economy.
00:08:11.000So, it takes some time for the sanctions to work.
00:08:12.000Now, we had the war, which caused some serious damage to Iran's.
00:08:17.000Economy, in addition to the political establishment and elsewhere and other issues.
00:08:22.000But now, what we have in place is a naval blockade that is really accelerating the effect of sanctions because it put a physical disruption on Iran's ability to export oil and import goods and products that it needs.
00:08:37.000And then you have sanctions that are being enforced for about two years now.
00:08:41.000And now, today, yesterday, if you listen to the announcement, it's very clear.
00:08:47.000A lot about not just enforcement, but also working with our allying partners and others like China to get them to understand that their trade with the U.S. is more important for their economies than their little tiny trade with Iran.
00:09:02.000And if you push them hard enough and remind them that with secondary sanctions, their trade with the U.S. and their access to the U.S. dollar would be at risk, then they're going to change course.
00:09:12.000Listen, 80% of global trade is in U.S. dollars.
00:09:15.000We still have that power and we have that control over the.
00:09:21.000So, what Secretary Besson is doing right now is what we did towards the end of President Trump's first administration, because it took us about four years to rebuild what the JCPOA, the Iran nuclear deal, has damaged as far as leverage against the Iranian regime.
00:09:36.000Shifting from enforcement of sanctions alone to a combination of enforcement of sanctions plus engagement with countries that are now more willing to work with us because of what Iran has done in the shred of our mouths to put more pressure on the regime.
00:09:52.000So, where does that put us in terms of the timeline here?
00:09:55.000Because the Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Besson, he has suggested the regime may be on its last legs, that they're having trouble paying their people.
00:10:01.000Obviously, you have shortages that are taking form in Iran, people in gas lines in Tehran and all the rest.
00:10:17.000Could they just continue to hold on at poverty, their subsistence levels, shooting people in the streets?
00:10:22.000What do you think is the most likely next step here?
00:10:25.000Well, it's really difficult to come up with a timeline.
00:10:28.000The reason for that is because, listen, this is a dictatorship with significant control over the flow of information.
00:10:36.000We don't really know exactly what's going on in, for example, a national Iranian oil company that is not exporting any oil.
00:10:44.000It's difficult to get a sense, really, of the dilemma that the government is facing internal to the government, but we have some really good numbers.
00:10:52.000We know the government's budget is about 40% coming from oil revenue and about 60% from taxation.
00:11:03.000And it's not collecting taxation because the domestic production has disrupted.
00:11:08.000They're not getting any import, which is a major source of income for the government through the taxation of import and all of that and customs.
00:11:16.000So the regime is really printing more Iranian rial.
00:11:23.000But because of the inflation rate, people can't really buy anything for that rial.
00:11:27.000So I'm not on the lookout for when the regime is going to stop paying.
00:11:31.000I want to look out for when you start listening and hearing very clear indications of the people not being able to really purchase what they need, and the government is not being able to provide to these forces what they need as far as equipment, weapons, training, and housing.
00:11:47.000So I think at this point, while it's very difficult to come up with a timeline, but we know historically every time the Iranian regime faced a major domestic pressure, it came very unexpectedly.
00:12:00.000There used to be every eight years that the Iranian regime had to deal with domestic protests or demonstrations.
00:12:06.000In the past few years, it's been almost every year.
00:12:12.000And when it comes, it's just going to be worse than January.
00:12:16.000And sadly, they had to kill, they killed 30 to 40,000 Iranians, probably more, to calm things down before they started war.
00:12:24.000Now things are just going to be worse for them.
00:12:26.000And they're probably going to have the RRGC and security forces that are hopefully not going to be as willing to go back on the street and kill their fellow Iranians.
00:12:36.000Because they're just seeing the set of the economy.
00:12:38.000They see the fact that this regime has been over promising victory over Israel, victory over the US, yet Israeli fighter jets and the US fighter jets are flying around Iranian airspace without a fear of any air defense capabilities.
00:12:53.000Their political leadership has been killed layers by layers.
00:12:57.000So it's a really difficult, domestically, they're really facing a challenging time.
00:13:02.000And when those demonstrations start, things might shift very quickly.
00:13:07.000So, Iran right now is threatening pretty much all of the oil fields around it in Iraq and Kuwait, in UAE and Qatar, and all the rest, Saudi.
00:13:16.000Yeah, that doesn't seem like that would really change their math very much, so long as everybody just refuses to play ball.
00:13:21.000Meaning that if Iran starts firing ordnance and drones at all of these various oil fields, so long as the United States maintains the current pressure tactic, nothing actually fundamentally changes for Iran.
00:13:31.000All they would be attempting to do in pursuing that measure would be to ratchet up the pressure to get the United States to cave in a sort of MOU part two.
00:13:40.000And you know, the pressure on the U.S. from the Iran side runs through the Gulf states, meaning if they want to pressure the U.S., they're going to have to escalate with their regional neighbors.
00:13:51.000And they understand with UA's decision to cut commerce with Iran, the fact that Emiratis and Kuwaitis actually conducted air operations within Iran's airspace, they know that they can't really sustain and survive a regional conflict, an all out war with their neighbors.
00:14:10.000So, they're also facing that challenge that if they want to put pressure on the US, they're going to have to bomb their own neighbors where their financial lifeline lies right now the UAE, the Qataris, the Pakistanis, Iraqis.
00:14:24.000These are the countries that allow Iran to still get some source of revenue.
00:14:29.000And if they escalate with them, then things are just going to get more difficult for them.
00:14:34.000So, when you look at the possibility of something happening internally, the biggest problem, of course, is a bunch of unarmed people on the street who are going to get mowed down.
00:14:42.000Do you see the possibility of something like what happened in Syria, where the IRGC is so weakened from the inside that an external force, right?
00:14:50.000This could theoretically be Kurdish, could be the Baluch in the southeast of the country, could be Azeris in the northwest of the country, where some sort of outside force suddenly has a clear path to Tehran?
00:15:03.000You know, that's a very complicated topic.
00:15:05.000And I can tell you, Iranians are very sensitive about an external force.
00:15:12.000And these are not really external, to be clear.
00:15:15.000These are Azeris that are part of Iran.
00:15:17.000These are Baluchis that are part of Iran.
00:15:21.000And I can't see a scenario where you're going to have, let's say, Azeris or Baluchis or Ahwazis or the Arabs in the south or Kurds having the capacity and the support to take over Tehran, the capital.
00:15:38.000And as a matter of fact, when you have protests in Iran, when you have these uprisings that are happening now every one or two years, they do start in Tehran.
00:15:46.000So I don't think that's really, and none of these groups are armed, right?
00:15:50.000I mean, some of them, they do have arms because they're around the border region.
00:15:55.000But what I'm hoping that would happen here is that the next time, and it could be the matter of weeks, months, hopefully not years, but I think it's going to happen.
00:16:05.000It's not a matter of when, if, it's a matter of when.
00:16:09.000When we have the next round of uprising, I'm hoping that the U.S. government, I'm hoping that Israelis, they have a plan to help the Iranian people, whether it's through no fly zone type operations, some kind of drone operations that would.
00:16:25.000Target the RGC bases where some of these demonstrators are being targeted through some external support that would enable Iranians to take the government back.
00:16:37.000And I got to tell you again, I think at this point, the RGC, the law enforcement forces in Iran, the besieged militias, they might not be as willing to go back on the street and kill their fellow Iranians.
00:16:52.000They're not getting paid well, but also ideologically, I don't think they have a whole lot of trust and confidence in this regime anymore.
00:16:59.000They showed that there's this very clear pattern of this regime not being able to deliver on its very basic promises of Islamic revolution in 1979.
00:17:08.000So they've lost their trust and confidence, even within the core supporters.
00:17:13.000And Ben, that's the exact reason why they can't cut a deal with the U.S., because they've been cornered so badly that if they cut a deal with the U.S., they can't sell it as a win to their 10, 15% of radicalized supporters in Iran.
00:17:40.000Well, you know, if you think so, head on over to dailywire.comslash subscribe to watch the full show ad free or check out this crazy story here.