Episode 5237: War With Iran Enters Fourth Week Cont.
Stephen K. Bannon and Rabbi Walicki analyze the war's fourth week, noting low Israeli casualties despite rocket attacks and debating an imminent Iranian uprising suppressed by the IRGC. They discuss alleged US-Israel coordination bombing Tehran oil facilities under a Trump ultimatum to open the Strait of Hormuz and plans for a ground invasion into Lebanon to dismantle Hezbollah. Ben Harnwell warns European NATO allies avoid toxic Gulf conflicts while high oil prices aid Arab nations, and George Papadopoulos argues the conflict is an economic war against China, suggesting integrating Iran into Western projects could end hostilities amidst fears of Iran acting as a cornered grizzly. [Automatically generated summary]
Sunday, 22 March, here of earlier 2026, Rabbi Walicki is going to join us from Jerusalem here.
And the Jerusalem Post did post a response.
It's a little more, it's a little edgier than the first one they gave.
In response to Trump's, and I'm quoting the Jerusalem Post, in response to Trump's statements, the central headquarters of the Iranian armed forces said that it will fully close the Strait of Hermuz if, and I quote here, America's threats regarding Iran's power plants are implemented, unquote.
President's given them now a little over 24 hours.
He put it out on True Social the other day at 4.44, 4.45 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, gave them 48 hours.
It's going to be fully open, or you're going to pay the price and we're taking down your entire energy and electric infrastructure.
You just heard back from, I guess, the question people have, are they a cornered rat or are they a cornered grizzly?
Rabbi, first off, Israel, Jerusalem taking a kind of a pounding every, what's the report?
What's the sit-rep on how the people in Israel are doing?
Well, the people in Israel are resilient and everyone is, I've never seen so much discipline in terms of going to the bomb shelters, making, you know, we get these pre-warnings when there's missiles on the way and then air raid sirens in whatever region they're going to land in.
And everyone goes to the bomb shelters.
And that's why, despite all of the rocket attacks and even a lot of hits in the last few days, the casualty numbers have been quite low.
In terms of deaths, they're extremely low.
I think we had one or two deaths in the last over the weekend, and that was the first deaths in a while.
Although there have been hundreds who've been wounded since it's now Hezbollah and Iran together with coordinated salvos all at the same time.
And they're also using cluster munitions, which are obviously much more difficult to intercept because they split into so many different rockets.
So, and again, let's just remind ourselves again that they specifically are always targeting civilian targets, which, but, you know, we're okay.
We get the air raid sirens, go into the safe room, got some snacks in there, waited out.
And it's an interesting atmosphere in Israel because while all that is going on, there's actually a sense of kind of satisfaction and even relief that we're actually doing this war on terms that are beneficial to us because we've always known for years, decades, that at some point in the future, there was going to be a big war with the Iranians.
And the only question was, how bad would it be?
What would the conditions be?
And, you know, so there's a real sense that when we get on the other side of this, we will finally, for the first time in decades, not be living under the threat of this Iranian regime as we have been for so long.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but two Saturdays ago, there was essentially a firebombing or a coil or firebombing of oil facilities, storage facilities in Tehran against a standing order of the commander-in-chief.
And we heard a whole lot of hand-waving about that.
But civilians have been targeted in Tehran.
They've got civilian casualties.
They're not putting out the number of civilian casualties to keep down the thing.
But do you believe, and Bibi talked about this yesterday, is there actually a belief in Israel right now by any of the citizens in Israel that there's going to be an uprising against this regime by the Persian people?
Or have we turned this into now they're all Persians and it's a nationalist campaign of the Persians versus Israel in the United States and all the West?
I mean, there will absolutely be an uprising by the Persian people, but they haven't been called back out into the streets yet, not by Trump, not by Netanyahu, not by anyone else or whatever, the Crown Prince or whoever else they would listen to.
They haven't been called back out into the streets yet, and there's no reason for them to come back out into the streets.
They've actually been told to hold off.
It's simple math.
So long as the IRGC and the besieged forces are being degraded day by day, and they are, there's no reason for the people to come out.
There's no rush for them to come out into the streets.
The worst thing that could happen in this war for the Iranian people is for them to come out into the streets before the besiege and the IRGC are weakened.
And while they would still have the ability to suppress the protests and to kill more people, that would be the worst case scenario.
It would set everything back.
So the people are staying in their homes until maximum degradation of the IRGC and the besieged forces.
Except for the first couple of days of the war when there was talk of unconditional surrender and one of the war's objectives was no power projection against their own people.
It's always been the bullet point above that's always been degrade their ability for power projection against entities, nations in the region, being both Israel and our Arab allies, our Arab allies in quotes.
That's Admiral Cooper.
It couldn't be clearer.
The last two weeks of briefings specifically exclude power projection against their own people.
So if that's not an objective on the decline and defending, and clearly it's not because it's not talked about, how are they supposed to, how are they supposed to think about it?
Because when they hear this, how are they supposed to think about it as, oh, they're doing against the Allies, but they're not going to actually get, they can't get by air all these bad ombres.
And so there's no chance that we're going to have a chance to go into the streets, sir.
Our officials have been talking about it non-stop.
That what the Israelis are focused on now, well, the Americans are, you know, we really have multiple wars going on.
There's what's going on in the Persian Gulf and the Straits of Hormuz, which is much more the American arena.
And what the Israelis have been busy with is degrading the besiege and the IRGC, hitting their targets and knocking out their command centers, knocking out their bases, knocking out their leadership with these targeted hits.
And they're just degrading them.
And they've also said, the Israeli officials have said that when the time comes for the Iranian people to come out into the streets, they will be hovering with drones, protecting them from the besiege and the IRGC.
They're going to be there providing air cover to the protests when the time comes for those things to happen.
And anything you're hearing about the Iranian people rallying around the regime is absolute nonsense.
There's no basis in reality for that whatsoever.
I don't know where that's coming from.
I mean, that's just not, that just has no basis in reality.
The besiege and the IRGC together, it's very similar to the Chinese Communist Party.
If you add up the Basije and the IRGC, just the fighting men, you probably have about 600,000 people.
Add their families together.
You're dealing with probably a couple of million people who are the ruling class.
That's the regime.
It's about, you know, it's less than 10% of the population oppresses the rest of them.
When you see these big rallies in the streets, that's all the regime people.
Those are the people who come out there, but that's all photo ops.
That's not the numbers.
That's not the people in the street.
Look, Steve, over the last few years, and this is the Iranians themselves bemoaning this.
Out of the 75,000 mosques in Iran, 50,000 of them have closed because no one shows up to them.
The Iranian people are not of that Islamic Shiite ideology of the regime, by and large.
Probably 75, 80% of the people reject the regime outright.
They will come out into the streets as they have in the past, but this time there's no reason for them to while this war is still ongoing from the air with the with the leadership of the of the of these forces being degraded.
I think there's a lot of misinformation here about what's actually happening in Iran.
The truth is with the internet blackout, the only people who have internet are either a few people who have Starlink and the regime is targeting them or people who are part of the regime.
Meaning, almost by definition, if you're seeing stuff coming out from Iran on the internet, it's coming from people aligned with the regime.
And that's part of what makes this a strange war.
Because there's no ground operation, there's no embedded journalists.
We don't have independent reporting here.
We really only have what gets filtered through from what the regime allows out.
But I don't see any reason to think that the trend has been reversed.
I'm saying the history, the history of these people shows it.
There's no, I mean, there's the, all the mass protests we've seen over the years.
And like I told you, for example, that indicator of mosque attendance, which is a well-known indicator, the Iranian people, by huge percentages, are against this regime.
And they're not going to reverse course because the regime is getting pounded.
They would only reverse course if you made it, if you brought them to a nationalist movement of Persians.
It's us versus Israel and us versus the United States, which Israel, with the attack on Tehran two Saturdays ago, and then the attack against a standing order of the commander-in-chief of the United States against this oil field, which is outrageous.
And to me, all the issues about imminent attack and everything like that, that's got to wait for another day because we're in the middle of a shooting war right now.
We have American young men and women exposed, but we have a partner and we have a joint, as Dan Sr. tells us every day on CNN, we have a joint command targeting operation.
And yet, our allies, quote unquote, our greatest ally, continues to do things against the commands of the president of the United States, which is to attack Iranian oil infrastructure and particularly to attack this gas field, which has totally changed the makeup of this war in the last 72 hours, sir.
Well, Steve, you know, it depends what we pick and choose to believe.
When Axios first reported it, they wrote explicitly behind the scenes, two Israeli and U.S. officials said the strike on the gas facility was coordinated between the Israeli prime minister's office and the White House.
That's a quote from Axios when it was first reported.
The Wall Street Journal reported the same thing.
And then afterwards, it was said, no, it was just the Israelis and Trump was upset.
But unlike, I wouldn't say this is the same thing as what happened in June, where Trump was like actually dropped an F-bomb and was really upset at the Israelis for continuing after that ceasefire.
This is not the same thing.
You don't, I mean, Trump two days later made a similar threat to them.
I don't think it's out of the question that there was a game of good cop, bad cop going on here.
You're saying, you're saying, what Axios first said it was reported, and then the president of the United States came out and said, clearly, I don't know what you're talking about.
I didn't approve anything.
You're saying, hey, look, to think of the reality that that was a don't ask for permission, right?
Scold me later that it was actually a wink and a nod from the United States to go get the money.
Our own Scott Besant, Secretary of Treasury, is over at Meet the Press right now.
We're going to pull a clip.
I think the quote that the engine room just was able to grab, and we're going to get it booted up in a second.
Sometimes you have to escalate to de-escalate.
You know, I would hope there were people around President Trump that have read the best and the brightest because that certainly sounds like a lot of the discussion with McGeorge Bundy in this crowd around Lyndon Johnson in 1964 and 1965.
And we know how that turned out.
I think there's got to be some very tough and critical thinking right now, particularly with this ultimatum.
And the center of gravity of this war has shifted from Tehran to the Persian Gulf and really expanded.
And as Pete keeps saying, the war is getting tighter and tighter and more and more concentrated.
Just not.
It's just not the missile attempt at Diego Garcia.
It's what's happening at various regions of the Gulf.
And President Trump's given a very hard deadline for tomorrow.
And I can tell you, behind the scenes, I'm sure there's a lot going on and trying to negotiate something, et cetera.
But this is an ultimatum to either open it up.
And even the Iranians, I think today blinked a little bit saying, hey, we're going to open it up to everybody.
It's not an ally to Israel in the United States.
Well, basically, that would still be, I don't know, 80% of the oil.
The only oil that would go to would be the Chinese Communist Party.
And I hope that we're not going to let that happen.
Rabbi Willicki.
Look, reasonable men can disagree about what's going on, but I think the targeting situation, and I just think there are two sets of objectives here, and it's really not working as an alliance.
No one could ever convince me of that.
But talk to us about Lebanon.
Talk to us about what's happening now.
Is that going to be a major incursion?
Is that strategic?
My understanding from reports of a major bombing campaign early this morning in Lebanon by the IDF.
And it appears like preparations for a ground invasion.
There's been a fairly significant reserve call-up, and a lot of ground forces have moved up there.
The Israelis are absolutely planning for a ground invasion.
And you're absolutely right to refer to it as another front in this same war.
It very literally is, because Hezbollah is Iran.
They're not even, we call them a proxy the same way we call the Houthis a proxy or the Iraqi militias a proxy, but Hezbollah actually has a different relationship to Tehran.
They're actually an arm of Iran, meaning when Hassan Nasrallah was killed, his replacement was appointed in Tehran.
They're actually like when the beepers blew up, one of the beepers was on the ambassador of Iran in Beirut.
So they're actually Iran.
And that's an important point here.
So if Israel's at war with Iran, they're also at war with Hezbollah.
And Hezbollah made a massive mistake a couple days into the war where they started firing rockets at Israel as part of this war.
They started it here.
And the Israelis, I said this to you last time I was on your show, it was a mistake that the Israelis were actually kind of hoping they'd make, because this goes back to the ceasefire with Hezbollah going back more than a year, where the Lebanese government committed itself to disarm Hezbollah by the end of 2025.
And of course, they did nothing of the sort.
They don't even have the ability to do it.
But the Israelis sat back and said, okay, you know, we'll give you a chance.
Go for it.
Let's see if you can do And they never did.
And the Israelis are once and for all going to go in there and get rid of this threat on our northern border.
And quietly, behind the scenes, the Lebanese, and some of them not so quietly, there's more public figures who are saying this, they're grateful to the Israelis to finally liberate the country of Lebanon from this Iranian occupation it's been under for the last four decades.
So the Israelis are planning a real invasion.
They're already clearing out the populations from the southern part of Lebanon and looking to recreate a kind of buffer zone up to the Latani River, which is about 18 miles from the Israeli border, which has that entire area has been a kind of hornet's nest of Hezbollah tunnels and weapons depots and towns that are basically Hezbollah operatives with their families.
So Israel means business this time and plans to once and for all rid Lebanon of Hezbollah.
Rabbi, you and I are friends, but as you know, and people know we disagree on a lot, but we're still friends.
One thing I've said is the Greater Israel Project brought on this disaster in Gaza and particularly what I call the two-state solution of the Qatar of Qatar financing and Turkey being the security guarantee with President Trump's Board of Peace.
And he's kind of signed off on it.
Last night, a helicopter was shot down, it looks like, or had mechanical problems.
I think it was actually taken out with a number of Qatar and Turkish military officials together.
Is the whole situation in Gaza, that whole framework of peace, is that just really by the board?
Is that not going to happen now, given the expanding intensity of this, particularly if there's going to actually be ground troops in Lebanon?
You know, the Arab nations and the Persians are going to dig in even harder.
Do you think the whole thing in Gaza is just over and finished with, and we'll have to go back and think something about the Board of Peace, the Qataris as financiers and the Turks as the security guarantors on the soil of Israel ain't going to happen?
I think from the Israelis' perspective, they're trying to kind of keep it in a holding pattern, keep it on a low boil until we see which way things go with the war in Iran.
Because dealing with the Gaza situation where there's in a reality where there's no longer an Iranian regime, which is not a done deal yet, but dealing with it where there's no longer an Iranian regime and no longer a Hezbollah on our northern border is very different than dealing with it where there is.
And we also don't know where the Gulf states, Saudis, and even where they're all going to fall out in terms of relations with Israel and relations with the United States after this is all said and done.
We don't know what's going to happen if Lebanon is actually rid of Hezbollah and normalizes relations with Israel.
There's a lot of different pieces of the puzzle, including the Egyptians.
How are the Egyptians going to respond?
They're always hedging and playing all sides of everything.
A big question is always the Saudis.
You know, the Saudis are always also waffling, you know, not waffling.
They're always playing both sides of everything.
And where that all shakes down is going to have a lot of impact on how we move forward with Gaza.
And I think from the Israeli perspective, we'd rather not deal with that head on.
And I think that that's why Hamas, no one's noticed this because there's been other headlines in the Middle East, but Hamas has been scrambling to restart negotiations just in the last, just since this war has started, because they're in a tight spot.
Their two patrons, Qatar and Iran, are at war with each other.
And they got themselves into a pickle where they praised Ali Khamenahi on the first day of the war and said, you know, and we're cheering for Iran.
And the Qataris looked at them and said, you better walk that back or we're going to cut you off.
So they walked it back and told and condemned Iran for bombing its Arab neighbors.
And then Hezbollah turned to Hamas and said, What are you doing?
We've been standing with you for years and now you're condemning Iran.
So they're stuck.
But in terms of what's going to happen in Gaza, it's just going to have to wait until the Iran war is over because we don't know what the Middle East is going to be.
Particularly, your videos are always, I think, great to give people the perspective of what's happening in Israel in a very accessible and clear-minded way.
Well, I saw something in the last hour on the news suggesting that oil was going to hit $200 per barrel.
And this is just, I think, the markets trying to give a price on the uncertainty that exists right now.
Really, what I want to talk about, if I may, is the situation with regards to your NATO allies here in Europe with regards to the 48-hour deadline the president has given.
I would suggest that that situation, the NATO position, the alliance position, can be defined by not taking a position at all, which is somewhat interesting.
The most that NATO seems to be doing, and this is on a nation-by-nation basis, is saying, like the UK, which is your most reliable NATO ally in Europe right now, we do not want to get involved with any offensive actions.
And that's like, that's even from the UK.
Germany is doing something, I think, with Japan to try to ease up the international trade routes, but it's somewhat symbolic.
I think, as you said at the beginning of the show, we need to sit back and wait what happens.
This is a turning point.
It is an inflection point in the war.
And whether President Trump decides to follow through with his ultimatum will dictate, I think, whether NATO decides to redefine the present situation with regards to NATO as being fundamentally not of the alliance's interest right now, or whether NATO will fall in line and support the US.
I don't see any indication of that from the chances across Europe right now, Steve.
Most European leaders seem to realize that a third Gulf War in as many decades is politically toxic.
He says if Iran doesn't fully open without threat the Strait of Hormuz within 48 hours, from this exact point in time, the United States of America will hit and obliterate their various power plants, starting with the biggest one first.
Has the president changed his mind about winding down the war, as he said a day earlier, and instead plans to escalate?
Again, Kristen, the president's been very clear from the beginning that the goals are to destroy the Iranian Air Force and the Navy, to completely demolish their missile capabilities, demolish their ability to replenish those capabilities, make sure the Iranians cannot have a nuclear weapon, and stop their ability to project power internationally.
And the president will take whatever steps it takes to achieve those goals.
What we have done, there has been a campaign to using military assets to soften up the Iranian fortifications along the strait.
That's going to continue until they are completely demolished.
And Kristen, let me tell you, whether it's this network or the mainstream press, the American people did not have good framing what is going on here.
If you were to read what is happening, and I'm sure when Senator Murphy is on, you know, he has come out and said we are losing the war.
That is wrong.
We have demolished the Iranian capabilities.
Their Air Force is completely destroyed, Navy destroyed.
And every day we are taking out their missiles, their missile systems, and the factories that build those missiles.
And now General Kane, Secretary Hegset, are leading a campaign to destroy all the fortifications along the Straits of Hermote.
And I might say that, you know, you would assume Marco Rubio, who's remembering, not just Secretary of State, he's National Security Advisor.
So he's really the senior advisor to the president in addition to General Kane.
It really falls to the National Security Advisor.
Obviously, the Secretary of War is in there also, but it's National Security Advisor and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, I think, are the two senior military advisors.
Obviously, it's Pete and the Secretary of War, but I think Marco, it's great with Scott, but he's Secretary of the Treasury.
And he's a brilliant guy.
I think we've got to roll Mark.
I don't know if Marco's in the witness protection program or not, but he ought to be out and he ought to be explaining this to the American people.
This has to be sold.
When I say sold, it has to be explained to the American people exactly what's going on here because the center gravity of the war, as we have said and been correct for the last two weeks since the fire bombing of our allies in Israel, has shifted now to the Persian Gulf and to wit.
If you don't believe that, within the commander-in-chief of the United States, your military force has given the Iranians an ultimatum that's pretty tough.
Either the Strait of Hormuz is open for free navigation, or I'm going to take down all your energy and your electricity for your country.
And they just came back in a sense, basically bring it.
So we're at a pretty big standoff here.
Ben Harnwell, how's that going to go down with the President of the United States referred to our NATO allies as cowards, quote unquote?
How is this going to play with that group?
And do you see any true participation, even as feeble as they are?
Because the Houthis, once the Houthis get involved in this, and they may be the ace in the hole for the Iranians, once you get the Red Sea, that's all about Europe.
This whole thing's about Europe and Asia.
And the president said to the American people a couple of times, he said, hey, look, maybe we just maybe we just do some more defanging and declawing this week and we head out and toss it to you and you go on escort duty, sir.
I have to say, if you'll forgive me the analogy, much of the talk about defanging, degradation, and all the rest of it.
I can't help but think that the US-Israeli campaign so far, if that's what it leads to, you're going to say, buying out over to you guys.
It's much like the opening five minutes of Team America and the liberation of Paris from the terrorists.
Look, you know, let's tie all this together.
What was I saying just before the break that the reason Europeans don't want anything to do with this is because politically they realize that a protracted third goal of war in as many decades is political suicide.
It's politically toxic.
That's why they want nothing to do with it.
And that's why Marco Rubio is in the witness protection program because anyone with 2028 ambitions doesn't want to be on this side of the microphone, this side of the television, defending a war, which, if it is still somehow going by the time of the midterms, by the time of 2028, it's kryptonite.
So let's look at what Scott Besant was saying, again, using these words, which we heard to justify the Ukraine war that escalate to de-escalate.
What is that signaling?
And what is President Trump's indication that his European NATO allies are cowards?
Are signaling?
I think, Steve, and this is somewhat a communication strategy, asymmetry between the U.S. side and the Iranian side.
When the Iranian side is signaling something, they're signaling it to Washington, D.C., almost 100%.
Of course, because there's very little internet in Iran right now.
When the U.S. is signaling things, I'd say 75% of that signaling is to the U.S. domestic audience, specifically to MAGA.
And that's why I would put the president's truth social verbal bomb on the Europeans that are calling the cowards.
That's meant for the U.S. domestic audience.
That's meant for MAGA.
Edem, Scott Besant saying, let's escalate to de-escalate, because, of course, the key word that everyone is going to look at there isn't so much the escalation, it's the de-escalation, because there is this instinctive view, I would suggest, in the administration, that the toleration for this war, whilst it's been high so far, is going to tape off very, very quickly.
And that's what people want.
That's what people are going to hone in on and breathe that sigh of relief.
It's the de-escalation side of it.
Of course, the problem is that de-escalation really leads, escalation rarely leads to de-escalation.
And that's why I think it's a pretty dangerous strategy.
As I was saying, though, let's wait for these 48-hour ultimatum to pass and then see what kind of territory we're going to be in there.
Yeah, no, I think you're absolutely right that the president has to start selling this to the American public because we're entering the fourth week of this conflict.
And the last thing we want with the midterms right around the corner is mission creep or a war of attrition or this to metastasize across various borders.
So it's time to start really thinking outside the box.
And I think we have to start looking at the situation in terms of clearing systems, currency settlements, and reserve diversification, and how we could actually attack our preeminent military, political, and security threat,
which is China, which is basically utilizing Iran as a junior partner to wage not only this pot war against the United States, but there's also a silent war against the U.S. dollar and its status as a global reserve currency that many people aren't really talking about, which they should, because it's the economy.
It's all about the economy and it's about oil prices.
And if the United States can somehow take Iran out of China's fear of influence and integrate them into their own Western projects, including this new finance and trade and pipeline design called the India-Middle East Europe Corridor, and similarly, the way that they've attempted to remove Russia from Iran's China's fear of influence,
then I think this military conflict will actually start to fizzle out.
Iran and the United States and the world will actually have something to work constructively towards instead of ballistic missiles, drones, and blockades.
And China will ultimately be the biggest loser, which I think at the end of the day, Steve, and you've been talking about this for years, that's where all of our focus should really be on how we compete with China.
And the longer this war with Iran continues, the weaker our position against China ultimately is.
And that's something that we have to really recalibrate and rethink moving forward, especially with the election right around the corner.
How do you, how do you, if you got a strategic overview of that and you said, hey, that's my sunlit uplands and I can get there, you've got, unfortunately, you've got a pretty stark reality in front of you.
You've got this situation in Hormuz in the Persian Gulf.
And remember, I keep telling people this, the guys are supposed to be your allies.
You know, the Israelis have a whole different geostrategic outlook on this.
This is why they're like in the last scene of the first Godfather.
They're trying to take it all down, every enemy they got at the same time.
That's why I asked Walicki about Gaza.
They've got a very distinct plan to do that.
And while they've got an administration that's open to these types of things, or at least listening, they're full on.
But you also got our other allies in the Persian Gulf that at one hand, they're sitting there going, this is horrible.
They're attacking us.
They're attacking our desalination plants.
They're attacking our oil capacity.
We may not be up online in five years.
And they're going to have cash problems.
But they're loving the fact because under Trump's core and the underpinnings of the Trump economic plan, folks, is what we've said over and over again: full spectrum energy dominance, leading with oil and gas or oil down at below $50 a barrel, maybe with a four handle in front of it.
Now you're talking, Ben saying some guy's talking 200 bucks, the CEO United is talking 170 bucks, all of them talking 100 bucks to 2027.
The Arabs are loving this because they got a problem.
They've got an asset that's depleting that at 40 bucks, what they're lifting costs at about 20, makes a certain amount of cash flow with lifting costs at 20 and selling for 120.
That's nirvana.
And so, and then you've got the European allies who don't want to do anything.
The Red Sea and the Strait of Hormuz are 100%, and Trump's right for them.
And they have put social welfare programs out there to help their workers.
And they're having the American working class and middle class paying for a navy, of which obviously a former naval officer, I love our Navy and naval forces and the great sailors and officers that have done this.
But we have multiple carry battle groups and now amphibious ready groups pouring over there to keep the Red Sea and the Strait of Hormuz open for them.
So every ally we have is actually looking after themselves.
And the United States is left with the burden of doing this.
And yes, that may be, as you know, we're totally against the CCP, but I got the Secretary of Treasury is a smart guy who's sitting there going the 140 million barrels that is restricted on this high seas for the Iranians.
I think most of that's going to the wait for it Chinese Communist Party.
Give me a minute of that and I'll have you through the break.
So I see the overall strategic of where it could go, but it's so many difficult things we have to go through, including going back to 324 BC to Alexander the Great, who had the same logistics problem.
He decided to march half his army and put the other on boats and they still had to contend with the Persian Gulf and the guys on the coast because the guys on the coast today are exactly like the guys on the coast there in 324.
I might also add as a side note that when he got to Babylon, he either got a disease or they poisoned him.
But Alexander the Great didn't get any farther past Babylon.
There he died.
And that should be a lesson to everyone.
George Papadopoulos, Ben Harnwell from Rome on the other side in the war room.
You said there may be a possibility of a big rapprochement around sorting out this Ukrainian mess.
Now we got information that, and the president does, that the Russians are helping the Iranians target American forces.
There's also the Russians then came back and talked to the president and said, hey, look, you stop having your CIA and DIA target us from Ukraine or from Germany, from Visbaden, and we'll stop this.
And there's all sorts of negotiating going on.
Give me a minute or two on the Russian element in this strategically, sir.
Well, strategically, what sanctions have overwhelmingly done against Russia, and I would even add Iran, has made both Iran and Russia junior partners to China.
And as a result, there's now a war that China is waging against not only the U.S. dollar as a global reserve currency, but the Strait of Hormuz is exemplifying the war against the petrodollar.
That's exactly why Iran now is attempting to sell oil in the won and Russia and China have been selling their own oil in one.
And obviously, China has invested hundreds of billions of dollars in both of these countries.
So at the very large strategic level, we have to understand what China is really doing with both of those countries and how U.S. foreign policy follies have created this very disturbing situation for U.S. interests.
Not related to Iran and Russia.
Now, it's in the U.S. interest to separate China from Russia and Russia from Iran so that the United States can have a working relationship with the world's largest nuclear power, a European country, and one of the largest oil and natural gas reserves in the entire world.
Russia has demonstrated that they are willing to negotiate a ceasefire and some sort of territorial agreement in Ukraine in exchange for normalizing relations not only with Europe, but the United States.
And it's not simply Russia and the United States that have been saying this.
European countries, including Finland, Switzerland, have come out openly over the last month and have stated that Russia is a European country.
We must negotiate with Russia.
We need to open the door once again to Russia.
So there's no longer a reason for the United States to share intelligence to send money or weapons to Ukraine to continue an interminable conflict against Russia at a moment when we have China to worry about, Steve.
I think Bibi had absolutely right in the cold open that the Iranian strike at Diego Garcia was an indication to the world, to America, that it has longer than was understood missile range.
It was considered to be about 2,000 kilometers, but now, you know, it's possibly in the upper reach is around 6,500 kilometers, which massively widens the amount of damage that the Iranians can do.
And it's not going to go down in the annals of fighting war with honor, what they're doing, but it's certainly effective.
It's pretty much what the bad guy does in any film that's ever been made.
Put your gun down or the kid gets it.
And that's what Iran is basically doing right now.
It's not primarily focusing its targets on striking the United States, but striking the United States allies in the region.
I just got back from Georgia and they're all supportive in my governor run in Minnesota.
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It took us four weeks, but they said couldn't be done in three months.