Western Standard - Putting the oil storage squeeze on Iran's revolutionary guard

00:00:00.000 Good evening, Western Standard viewers, and welcome to Hannaford, a weekly politics show

00:00:21.000 of the Western Standard. It is Thursday, April 16th. If all you have is the mainstream media,

00:00:27.520 you can be forgiven thinking that nothing about the U.S. action against Iran makes any sense.

00:00:33.120 The strategy of contradictory statements by President Trump, along with outrageous threats,

00:00:38.720 from which the President later retreats, even has a name,

00:00:42.320 Tacko! Trump always chickens out. But what if there is a plan, and part of it depends on

00:00:48.080 confusing the enemy? Deception in war? It wouldn't be the first time. With me today is Joseph Varner,

00:00:55.360 a senior fellow of the McDonnell Laurier Institute, Center for North American Prosperity and Security,

00:01:02.160 a former director of policy to Canada's Minister of National Defense in the Harper days,

00:01:07.600 and a post-adjunct scholar at West Point's Modern War Institute. Mr. Varner, welcome to the show.

00:01:14.240 Great to be with you. Mr. Varner, first question. Do we know what's actually happening now on the

00:01:20.640 water in the straits well we know that no ships that are are in iranian ports are able to leave

00:01:30.080 and leave the persian gulf and we know that no ships that are going to iranian ports are going

00:01:35.920 to be able to go to the iranian uh through the straits to the persian gulf so far the americans

00:01:43.040 have 15 warships that are set up to blockade the sea of oman and it seems that they're stopping and

00:01:53.760 and rerouting ships and for the iranians the loss of their export capacity is about 13 billion

00:02:01.760 per month so that will put heavy pressure on their economy likely collapse the real

00:02:09.440 and I think it will be very hard in terms of foodstuffs

00:02:14.740 and other goods to get in and out of the country.

00:02:17.820 And what's also significant is that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps

00:02:22.680 are responsible for about 40% of the country's GDP.

00:02:26.580 This will be a major hit in their pocketbook as well.

00:02:30.800 Are these the kind of people who can be influenced by hits in the pocketbook?

00:02:34.960 They all seem to want to die gloriously.

00:02:36.960 well digloriously rich uh they're enjoying the fact that they're running the regime and i do

00:02:44.560 believe that the hardline elements are running the regime but they also profit very heavily

00:02:49.640 from from that and they use those profits for everything from their proxy militias and

00:02:55.880 and to arm themselves uh to uh to kind of grandize and and have a good life for their leadership and

00:03:04.220 their families. And you'll see many, many of the senior leaders of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard

00:03:10.080 Corps and of the Iranian elite, their families live outside the country in great luxury.

00:03:17.200 Does Israel know about that? 0.99

00:03:20.100 Everyone knows about it, but no one talks about it.

00:03:23.440 Yes, that would seem to me a point of vulnerability for them.

00:03:26.860 What is the relationship like between the IRG, the Revolutionary Guard, that is, and the regular military services, which Iran has, the Army, Navy, and Air Force?

00:03:40.600 so during the revolution the the regular armed forces were viewed as tools in the monarchy

00:03:46.840 and were uh were distrusted so the revolutionary elements uh which which were islamist elements

00:03:55.560 created their revolutionary guard corps to enforce their will both on the population

00:04:00.680 and externally and so there's a deep distrust that goes back and it's institutional

00:04:06.600 between the iranian revolutionary guard corps and the armed forces and there have been a lot of

00:04:11.400 stories about how the uh regular military feels that it's been starved of weapons and capabilities

00:04:20.120 and goodies that have gone to the revolutionary guard corps at their expense so the weapons that

00:04:26.760 the united states has been taking out in the 13 000 targeted airstrikes mostly irgc weaponry then

00:04:36.600 Well, the IRGC controls the bulk of the missiles and drones.

00:04:41.780 So those targets are largely what I would say are IRGC.

00:04:48.100 Some of the aerospace forces, but a large portion of the Air Force was regular military.

00:04:54.720 Some of the Navy, the main Navy has been destroyed, but the Revolutionary Guard Corps maintains a group of fast attack vessels.

00:05:04.920 Probably 60% of those are operational.

00:05:08.160 So it's a mixed bag.

00:05:11.720 But what we can say is that a large number of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard commanders,

00:05:16.300 the IRGC, have been eliminated in Israeli and U.S. strikes.

00:05:20.760 That's not the case among the regular military.

00:05:24.620 The senior leadership certainly has been taken out,

00:05:27.360 but there are a lot less of their lower-level senior, middle, and lower-level commanders

00:05:34.180 that have been taken out, like the Revolutionary Guard Corps.

00:05:38.120 I'm just going to ask you to blue sky a little bit here, Joseph.

00:05:42.120 This sounds like the sort of suspicious relationship that existed

00:05:46.080 between the SS and the Wehrmacht in the 1930s

00:05:51.240 and until the Second World War ended.

00:05:54.440 Is that a valid comparison?

00:05:56.360 And then the second question follows from it.

00:05:58.640 we don't really have an idea of how president trump thinks this is going to end is it possible

00:06:08.680 that he is thinking that at some point the military is going to finish the job and destroy

00:06:14.920 the irgc so what i would say is you're absolutely right the relationship from what i understand

00:06:22.140 between the revolutionary guard and the regular military is very much that ss relationship

00:06:28.460 to the german army uh that that same sort of relationship that the rush the roman legions had

00:06:35.580 with the praetorian guard so there's there's not a lot of love lost between the two organizations

00:06:41.820 and i think certainly that one of the options that the us and and israel were hoping would be to see

00:06:47.900 that the military would step out or step up and take out the revolutionary guard corps and the

00:06:53.900 elements of the security apparatus that keep the government in power i think they also thought

00:06:59.100 there'd be a bigger rising in the streets but you know it's there are a lot of questions around

00:07:04.300 whether people have been armed to do that or not and the opposition is very diverse

00:07:10.540 well at the start at the start of the operation into february i think it was

00:07:15.900 president trump indicated that this wasn't going to take long

00:07:20.060 It was all about preventing Iran from getting nuclear weapons. Then it was to destroy Iran's 0.73

00:07:25.580 military capabilities. Then it was to end Iranian support for their proxies. Then it was about

00:07:31.660 regime change. And then it was about a negotiated settlement, which of course didn't happen,

00:07:36.300 which brings us to today's lock-aid of the Gulf of Hormuz. Now, when you rattle off the headlines

00:07:45.900 like that it seems to be supporting the view that mr trump didn't have a plan doesn't know what he's

00:07:51.580 doing and is obviously got himself into this predicament that is going to be hard to get out

00:07:58.140 of honorably uh but six weeks later it's not iran blocking the strait of hormuz it's the united

00:08:04.700 states and the iranian regime is still defiant so what was there ever a strategy for that trump was

00:08:15.180 using so what i would say to that nigel is that you know militaries win wars when they achieve 0.94

00:08:21.500 their strategic objectives and you just rattled them off uh you know eliminating their uh the 0.91

00:08:28.140 iranian nuclear capability degrading their missile drone forces their air force their navy

00:08:33.100 uh uh cutting them off from their proxies and and uh regime change and so these are very high

00:08:42.960 objectives the iranian objective was simply to survive was to endure to maintain the regime

00:08:54.840 and as much of their strategic capabilities as they could and so for for iran they're fairly

00:09:01.400 you know, low-level goals as opposed to the U.S. and Israeli objectives in the war.

00:09:07.860 I think that there is a strategy. I think that the strategy, if you look at the targeting and

00:09:13.900 how the war has unfolded, there were very heavy hits early on on all the elements that the

00:09:20.140 Iranians had to make war and their senior leadership. And they continued to pummel that 0.73

00:09:26.460 leadership and and nuclear scientists and others so that circumstances were ripe for regime change

00:09:35.580 if the opposition on the ground or the army or some other element of society decided to rise up

00:09:41.020 and and when that didn't happen uh and ceasefire deal came uh or talks came they went to have a

00:09:50.280 ceasefire talk. I think to let the pressure off internationally and kind of cool things,

00:09:57.320 hoping the Iranians might come back to the table with some real concrete 0.98

00:10:03.640 offers, including getting rid of the nuclear program. The Iranians completely stonewalled 1.00

00:10:10.200 that, weren't interested. And so now we have the United States shutting down traffic to Iranian 1.00

00:10:17.980 imports which is effectively strangling their economy and i fully expect that we'll see the

00:10:24.140 iranians get pretty excited in the next few days uh as as their dollars dry up and and other

00:10:31.740 commodities and keep in mind their their uh refining capacity in a matter of 13 to 14 days

00:10:41.100 their storage facilities for their oil and and gas and stuff is going to be a chalk block and

00:10:47.500 they're going to have to shut down uh the refining capability the significance of that is what

00:10:55.420 means that their economy is going to tank and that's going to tank the money for the revolutionary

00:10:59.740 guard corps the regime and that's going to tank money for their proxy militias and put a real

00:11:05.500 crimp in the social life of the revolutionary guard corps but meanwhile i think it's fair to

00:11:12.220 say that the the revolutionary guard core would be the last people to feel the economic pinch

00:11:18.300 everybody else will be starving but they'll still have something so how do you actually bring those

00:11:25.980 people literally to a close there's a lot of stories about the revolutionary guard core

00:11:32.780 sending you know economic assets out of the country sending their families out of the country

00:11:37.740 to places like canada as a matter of fact uh doing different things uh to try and protect themselves

00:11:44.380 and their interests when you fragment a regime and you fragment it at the top one of the things that

00:11:50.620 you do is you make it very difficult for people to choose between their own personal interests

00:11:56.380 and their economic interests and those of the regime and so by by hitting those revolutionary

00:12:02.620 Guard leaders in their pocketbooks, a member of the regime in their pocketbooks, you start to see

00:12:08.300 fractures in the regime and that leads to a situation where you might see regime change.

00:12:16.080 I think, you know, there are already stories that the Speaker has more clout than, who's a former

00:12:22.860 IRGC senior officer, than the President and the Foreign Minister. You saw in the negotiations,

00:12:30.600 delegation of about 60 Revolutionary Guard Corps and military people showed up in Pakistan to try

00:12:39.580 and get what they wanted through in the negotiations. You're seeing the IRGC head

00:12:46.900 tell the Speaker that, you know, you shook hands with the Americans and our Supreme Leader is not

00:12:52.920 even buried yet. So those cracks in the regime are starting to occur and life is starting to get

00:12:58.840 very difficult for people. Any idea how many IRGC members have their families safely hidden away in

00:13:06.840 Canada? Well, there's supposed to be at least a thousand IRGC in Canada, and there's supposed to

00:13:12.440 be a large number of elites that have come here. And that's only through what you see in open

00:13:21.300 source reporting. I would guess, you're seeing similar things in the United States. You know,

00:13:27.720 they've just removed a couple of senior family members of former IRGC leaders and Iranian leaders

00:13:37.140 in the United States. So these people exist all over the place in Britain, you know, France,

00:13:44.160 different Western countries. So maybe the desperate drive to martyrdom isn't quite as

00:13:49.600 extreme as we have been led to believe. Well, it just seems that people like to keep their

00:13:55.660 options open murderdom seems to be an optional extra for some some members of the elite so

00:14:03.580 the story is since monday have been that oil to empty oil tankers are now heading for the u.s

00:14:11.180 gulf coast uh to fill up and you know they can't buy from iran so they're buying from america

00:14:17.820 america isn't the only place with oil for sale how big a deal is that is it going to solve any

00:14:26.920 problems for the americans well certainly makes the americans a fair fair chunk of change and it

00:14:33.520 it does ease the oil needs of their allies i mean china will get oil wherever it can

00:14:42.660 and was getting it from Venezuela,

00:14:45.080 we'll likely get it from Russia.

00:14:48.520 Venezuelan oil would now be of interest

00:14:51.720 and maybe Mexican oil and certainly Canadian oil.

00:14:56.800 If we could get around ourselves

00:14:59.720 and actually get our oil and gas industry

00:15:03.300 up and running at full tilt,

00:15:05.600 we would have a lot to offer the world right now. 1.00

00:15:08.720 Do you think the Yanks would actually let the Chinese

00:15:11.500 buy oil from venezuela i think the united states would do what it's in its natural interest right

00:15:18.100 now uh the americans have been quite clear that the chinese are hoarding oil and that they have

00:15:24.980 not been a good partner in in helping to deal with this crisis and we've seen you know two chinese

00:15:32.200 or a chinese tanker twice now try to enter uh uh into uh the blockade and turn around and retreat

00:15:42.600 back away and we saw the treasury secretary say that china wants its oil it's not getting it

00:15:48.280 through iran well let's just talk a little bit more about china how does the uh how does the

00:15:57.320 rivalry between china and the united states fit into this conflict with iran and the idea was

00:16:04.520 that we just didn't want iran to have a nuclear weapon but of course now that china is ability to

00:16:11.080 buy oil from iran is impacted by the by the war um does that make the chinese more hostile to

00:16:21.320 the americans or does it mean that they take the americans more seriously now than they might have

00:16:26.920 under the former administration and recalibrate their their plans to reclaim taiwan or you know

00:16:34.920 how does what's the big picture here well i think that there's there's no doubt that china is is a

00:16:41.960 near peer competitor the united states and and russia and there's no doubt that both of them

00:16:46.680 would have liked to have disrupted uh u.s uh influence and power in the persian gulf and the

00:16:54.200 gulf states and and they've they've tried uh but the fact of the matter is uh what china is coming 0.81

00:17:01.400 to see and what i don't think that it likes very much is that there's one country that can project

00:17:06.840 power anywhere in the world at any time and do it successfully in a way that the russian and

00:17:12.360 the chinese militaries can't and that is the united states and so i think the chinese have

00:17:19.480 now had a little bit of pause to rethink their position uh there i don't suspect that the regime

00:17:26.040 is as confident as it was in beijing and you're continuing to see purges of its military leadership

00:17:32.520 including the only elements that had any combat experience and i think that is causing a little

00:17:37.640 bit of consternation in beijing as well and and and the widespread corruption through the military

00:17:44.280 And you're seeing this purge of the Secretary Generals continue, but there may also be elements of the old Chinese Guard that are actually purging allies of the President to disrupt his concentration power.

00:18:02.080 So I think that the Chinese are finding themselves in a bit of a spot. 0.81

00:18:05.060 Well, indeed. Given that that is the case, let's say we take that theory and run with it, 0.99

00:18:15.060 does it make sense for the Chinese to offer the Iranians sophisticated weaponry of the kind that 0.69

00:18:24.340 possibly could attack a U.S. carrier?

00:18:28.660 Yeah, so the news reports are that the Chinese have offered man-portable

00:18:33.860 air defense missiles to the iranians which which the iranians uh would would use

00:18:42.180 no you know way to try and defend themselves because their air defenses have failed

00:18:46.500 um and and there have been you know all kinds of reports on that and and the chinese have denied 0.76

00:18:54.020 it and i suspect that if they could disrupt the americans in some way that that would make them

00:19:00.260 kind of feel uh better in in beijing uh the same with the russians they both have provided uh

00:19:06.740 intelligence support and they probably provided some some uh other aid there were even reports

00:19:14.020 that two chinese uh freighters have been filled with precursor chemicals for the iranian missile

00:19:20.260 forces um i don't think that it's in their interest to do that in the way it's in the u.s

00:19:27.780 interest to arm Taiwan. And I think that the Chinese would be very reluctant to give the

00:19:34.760 Iranians what are called carrier killer missiles, which are ballistic missiles geared to attack

00:19:43.840 ships at sea. You know, U.S. aircraft carriers got 6,000 people on it. You whack a U.S. aircraft

00:19:51.500 carrier and kill 6 000 people we're no longer talking about a naval blockade and and b-52 0.66

00:19:58.140 bombers well you wouldn't be but then uh perhaps there are perhaps there are elements in china

00:20:08.140 that would say this is it we've been waiting for this day for a long time let's let's go for it

00:20:14.460 i think the chinese are enjoying the fact that u.s attention is on the middle east

00:20:18.700 and that u.s military assets are being used up and drawn to the middle east and i think that if

00:20:24.940 you know if you're in china you're following that old rule of when your adversary makes a mistake

00:20:29.980 let them um you know u.s has has dragged a lot of of uh its military power out of the pacific

00:20:39.420 but i think that there are ways that the u.s is compensated for that likely

00:20:43.020 and and it it causes the chinese planning capability some some problems i mean i think

00:20:49.780 the chinese would would like uh to uh see an end of this so they can get their you know oil and gas 0.66

00:20:57.200 flowing again um and and they seem to enjoy their ability to be a disruptor i mean poor vladimir 0.96

00:21:05.260 putin right now is is is trying to play a role in in this war and he's finding himself completely

00:21:11.480 shoved off to the to the edge of the stage uh where where he's not drawing too much attention

00:21:17.560 so the best the russians can do is say well give us your enriched iranian uh your uranium

00:21:25.320 and we'll look after it for you that's the best that the russians have been able to do

00:21:32.680 how do we know who won when it's over

00:21:37.640 Well, I think that that's the big issue. And I think that going with a ceasefire was probably the right thing to do politically and for optics, but it was the wrong thing to do militarily.

00:21:52.620 It's given the Iranians a chance to reposition their missiles, to dig out launchers, to rearm themselves and get ready for the next round. 0.90

00:22:00.820 and there will be a next round. I think it's inevitable at this stage, unless their economy 0.97

00:22:06.980 collapses and we see the regime change from within. Having said that, the gravity for a US

00:22:15.220 victory or an Israeli victory because of the objectives they set for themselves is very high. 1.00

00:22:20.980 The Iranians just have to survive. They just have to endure. So if we see at the end of this, 1.00

00:22:27.520 the iranians in control the persian gulf and the straits four moves which can't be allowed to 0.82

00:22:33.920 continue you're going to see that the iranians come out of this much further ahead than they

00:22:41.040 they would have otherwise the challenge for the united states and israel is they need to really 0.85

00:22:48.320 pull apart their nuclear program and get rid of their their missiles and and and cut them off 0.79

00:22:56.160 from the proxy militias and really establish a new regime and the regime that's in place now is 0.67

00:23:04.240 hardline elements of the last regime so it's not a new regime they're not pragmatic thinkers or

00:23:10.080 or uh you know the new uh new school boys on the street uh these guys are hardcore members

00:23:16.320 of the revolutionary card corps and they're they're uh killers and butchers and and uh thugs

00:23:23.120 okay well when we then we must hope that the uh the iranian military takes the opportunity if it

00:23:32.720 presents itself as being more reasonable people we are sadly out of time joseph varner thank you

00:23:40.040 very much for joining us and talking about the situation which really is very hard to talk about

00:23:46.260 who knows what what's going to happen but you've offered us some really some deep things to think

00:23:52.580 about. Thank you very much, sir. Thank you, sir. For the Western Standard, I'm Nigel Hannaford.

Western Standard - April 17, 2026

Putting the oil storage squeeze on Iran's revolutionary guard

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