President Trump's deadline to reopen the Strait of Hormuz threatens Iranian infrastructure, including power plants and bridges, potentially causing state collapse. Host Stephen K. Bannon and guests Neil McCabe, Eric Bolling, Captain Jim Fennell, and Patrick K. O'Donnell analyze a "Five Rings" strategy targeting leadership and energy, noting recent strikes on Karg Island cut 90% of oil exports and spiked prices to $117 per barrel. While diplomatic efforts by Vice President JD Vance and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff face frozen channels, the discussion highlights legal concerns regarding attacks on civilian targets under Nuremberg precedents and frames the conflict as a moral imperative supported by evangelical Christian nationalists. Ultimately, this escalation risks civilizational collapse while challenging international law's constraints on modern warfare. [Automatically generated summary]
Yes, well, that's a great question, Anderson, and I think it's really the question of the day.
It's not yet in Iran's interest to make that kind of deal, however, given that their control of the Straits is the principal leverage that they have for any kind of negotiation.
And, you know, as I think we talked about last week, their strategy is to survive, to prevent total surrender, to preserve the Islamic regime, and to do that, they have to hang on to the Straits.
It is their principal leverage.
In 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.
And I think that's what those who make these kinds of decisions in Iran are prepared to do for at least several more weeks.
unidentified
It's not just the rhetoric about the Christian nationalist rhetoric.
Well, I think it's really difficult given where we are because the military options at this point are very bad.
A ground operation, I think, would only get us in deeper, cost American lives, and not solve the problem.
I think continuing to degrade Iran's military capabilities and targeted operations is fine, but it also is not going to open the strait.
And an attempt right now to do an escort operation, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has told the president basically that's not a very plausible option.
So this is a reason to get a diplomatic off ramp.
Now, my view is that a diplomatic off ramp doesn't have to be a formal agreement between the two sides.
It could be something a little more informal, a little more implicit.
And I think that the president and his team should be looking for that.
Because they should be trying to bring this war to an end.
And I believe the Strait could be reopened on the back of that.
And we could send a clear deterrent message to Iran you mess with the Strait, you mess with our neighbors, you mess with anyone else.
We retain a lot of capabilities to cause harm to you.
But an off ramp right now for the president, I think, is by far the best option.
All right, the breaking news this morning we are just learning of new reports of explosions on Karg Island.
This handles almost all of Iran's oil exports, about 90%.
If you look at that map, it's actually, yeah, you can see it all the way up.
There at the top of the Persian Gulf, there just off the coast of Iran.
President Trump has repeatedly threatened to bomb or seize the island, and there have been strikes before.
Oil prices have been spiking over the last few minutes since the reports have been coming in of these strikes, up about 2 to 3 percent in the numbers that I've seen.
The president has put out a new message on social media.
Can we put it up?
Let's read it because it's about the deadline tonight.
He wrote, a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.
I don't want that to happen, but it probably will.
However, now that we have complete and total regime change where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen.
Who knows?
We will find out tonight.
One of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the world, 47 years of extortion, corruption, and death will finally end.
I think if you're reading the tea leaves here, it is just an incredibly confusing message from President Trump.
On one hand, he says that.
It probably will happen, referring to potential strikes on Iran tonight.
And at the same time, he says it's possible that there could still be a diplomatic solution here.
So if you're trying to interpret what is going to happen just 12 hours from now, I think it's still incredibly unclear.
What is clear, we have learned, according to one U.S. official, that the U.S. has conducted strikes this morning, Eastern Time, on Karg Island.
Of course, that is the key fuel hub in the Persian Gulf.
It handles most of Iran's.
Oil exports.
So it's a very significant area and very significant that the Trump administration is telegraphing that they are indeed serious about proceeding with President Trump's threats if they don't reach a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz by that 8 o'clock Eastern time deadline.
Diplomatic efforts are underway.
Vice President JD Vance, who's currently traveling in Hungary, is leading those efforts along with Special Envoy Steve Witkopf, Jared Kushner, the president's son in law, Pakistan, Egypt, Turkey, all asked.
acting as key mediators there.
But I asked the president just yesterday whether he might be open to extending that 8 o'clock deadline if he felt like those talks were progressing.
He said he couldn't say just yet.
So that is certainly something to keep an eye out for.
And this truth social post that we are seeing from the president doesn't really add much to whether or not definitively we should expect those strikes to happen.
The president saying that he will bomb Iran to the stone ages, attacking their critical infrastructure, things like power plants and bridges.
It's Tuesday, 7 April in the year of our Lord 2026.
I think if the action lives up to the rhetoric, this will be a day to remember.
So take your number two pencil out right now and circle it.
Action has already started on Karg Island with military targets.
Also, the IDF, the Israelis, are hitting, I think, already infrastructure targets.
Captain Fennell is going to join us in a moment and walk us through.
Systematically, how this is going to be taken, the enemy as a system.
And to break it down that way of what's going to happen and what is happening right now.
Neil McCabe's of the White House bowling is going to join us, Jim Rickards.
So we've got for the next couple of hours to break all of this down and how this impacts your life, the community, your community's life, and the country's life.
Let's go.
I want to read first off, too, and I think the most pressing, I said yesterday on the bowling show before we started the five o'clock.
That if the president can't find someone to negotiate with and not simply a deal, but someone that could actually commit to a deal and deliver a deal, he's told you what the alternative is.
Still, with all this happy talk about a deal and not a deal and talk, we're not, there's no face to face, at least my understanding, there's no actual face to face communication between anyone really on the American side and the Iranian side.
Now, There may be some announcements, et cetera, that come back and say, well, this guy was starting that.
But right now, the president put out, and I think of all the true socialists he's put out, people should take this very, very seriously.
A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.
I don't want that to happen, but it probably will.
However, now we have a complete and total regime change where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail.
Maybe something revolutionary.
Revolutionarily wonderful can happen.
Who knows?
We will find out tonight one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the world.
Let me repeat that from the president one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the world.
47 years of extortion, corruption, and death will finally end.
God bless the great people of Iran.
The Iranians, at least who we think are representing them, one of the ones that the media has been putting up, responded to this moments ago, right?
We're coming on air.
Iran responds after President Trump says their entire civilization will die tonight.
Quote, all diplomatic channels and indirect talks have been frozen after President Trump's recent threats, Iran says.
So there you have it, at least, is the best we can do.
And I said last night, unless.
President's not into games.
Very specifically, yesterday, he said he gave them an additional seven days.
Then he extended it three days.
That got to tomorrow.
He didn't want this action to take place on Eastern Monday.
So he gave them an additional day.
That's 11 days.
And I don't think there's been any real movement.
Supposedly, they got a 10 part counter.
But I might add, none of the points have really been leaked to the media.
And the 10 point counter offer has not been given to the media to see how far the bid and the ask are, which appears.
To be at least right now unbridgeable.
The time is eight o'clock.
Real America's Voice will be covered all day.
Let's go to the White House.
Neil McCabe.
Neil, the White House seems in a very serious mode this morning.
It's very different than yesterday with the celebration of Easter Monday with all the kids there on the Easter egg hunt.
There is a 1 p.m. press conference unrelated to the war.
We're going to cover that because it's quite important.
It's going to be over at DOJ with the new acting Attorney General, Todd Blanch.
And it's specifically going to be about this massive effort they're going to have on anti fraud to make sure that we can get not just the Somalian situation in Minnesota, but across the nation.
Particularly in these blue states that's out of control, as their new initiative, but and the new head of the anti fraud division there.
But I'm sure the media are going to ask questions regarding everything.
So we're going to be there at 1 p.m.
Real America's Voice will cover it.
Hopefully, Neil McKay will be over there to cover this also.
Neil, just stick around at the White House.
We're going to come back to you.
We're going to take a short commercial break.
We're stacked this morning as we're going to break down, I think it's look from the Iranians' position.
They're digging in.
I said yesterday, they feel they have the initiative.
And as brutally as they're getting taken down, and I think now we're moving to the mode of state collapse, they think they're winning.
This is why they're being so arrogant and so tough.
They're just blowing off President Trump, to be brutally frank about it.
There's not really a negotiation going on.
So President Trump's giving them a deadline.
We're about 10 hours away from that deadline.
We will cover this wall to wall.
As President Trump said, This may be one of the most important days in world history, the complex history of the world.
Let's take President Trump for his word.
I know people are working nonstop to see if there's an off ramp, but as of right now, as the Brits used to say in the Second World War, the party is on.
Short commercial break, back in the worm in a moment.
Patrick K. O'Donnell's going to join us in the second hour with Jim Rickards.
I've asked Patrick to come on to talk about major presidential decisions because, at least if this lives up to the rhetoric, this is a pretty big decision.
Let's get bowling in.
Eric, I think the markets, it was quite quiet yesterday, as in they were in disbelief.
But I think people are becoming believers, particularly we hit, at least has been reported, additional military targets on Karg Island.
I think Jim Fanell, Captain Fanell, is going to tell us that the Israelis have already started their efforts on the infrastructure side, it looks like.
Yeah, the markets are telling us they heard exactly what Trump said this morning.
He's going to unleash hell on them.
And they're believing it.
WTI crude, the West Texas Intermediate, our crude, benchmarked to many, many crudes around the world, just hit $117 a barrel.
The highest price, it's only been higher twice in our history.
Biden had it at $139 for a brief moment.
And George Bush, during his second term, $150 a barrel.
It's a record high there.
So this is the third highest ever.
And if the things proceed as they look like they're going to, you may see the same types of numbers or maybe even higher.
The 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.
First of all, a Trump administration official who saw it told Axios it was a maximalist plan, not a minimalist.
But one of the things that I think would be a deal breaker is that they were asking for also having some sort of remain in control of the Strait of Hormuz.
They wanted reparations.
They want to be paid for the damage that was inflicted on their country.
And that, Steve, that could be hundreds of billions of dollars.
And I think that would be a Complete non starter for the American people and Donald Trump.
So, a lot going on, higher, higher, higher oil prices, equities are obviously drifting lower.
I 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 that combined with the art of the deal.
And I have hope that there's an off ramp somewhere that he's holding a Trump card, so to speak, in his pocket.
President Trump put out a true social strategy, clearly, he had thought about it, right?
It was very tight, it wasn't loose, it was tight about this is going to be the end of your civilization.
And on this stage, when you're talking about things like this, you can't bluff, right?
You can't bluff.
So, President Trump, when he says, I'm taking down your civilization, And these guys come back, and we don't know all the 10 points, but it's been referred to as a maximalist, right?
I think one of the reasons not releasing it, they did, even administration doesn't want to show how big the gap is, although we're not in a room negotiating this.
When you have two maximalist positions, one of the reasons you have it, Eric, is both sides think they're winning.
Both sides think they've got, as President Trump said, they have no cards.
I hold all the cards.
And I think we're going, and I think Captain Fennell will support this in his analysis.
We're going from the declawing, defanging, degradation of their military now to something I've been talking about and what even the Israelis were talking about initially, which is total state collapse.
That's where we're going after the infrastructure.
Um, price of West Texas, uh, is 117 approaching a record, but the Brent crude that we see on CNBC, et cetera, is for a June delivery.
What you're looking at West Texas is for a May delivery.
If you apples to apples with the Brent will be a spot price Brent.
And that's, that's roughly a hundred and almost $140 a barrel, but they don't trade it actively like that.
That's immediate use right now.
Why is West Texas going up?
Because yes, it is more benchmarked in North America and maybe some European.
Countries, but it's still oil like money is fungible.
It's not perfectly fungible like money, but it's fungible in that if Brent goes to $200 a barrel, let's say, and West Texas stays at $120, there'll be a lot of people who are switching their refineries over and stay there, and they believe it will stay there for a long time.
They'll switch the refineries over because the transportation cost makes it economic to do so.
So it's tough to do.
You need a lot, but that's why a dislocation in one area in the global oil market brings all oil prices up because.
At some point, the dislocation and price differential makes sense to pay the extra money to transport it around this, you know, Horn of Africa or wherever it may have to go.
But the one thing I think on what your first point was, people aren't going to like this.
And this is really bad for me and for stock accounts everywhere.
But at this point, Steve, yeah, I think both sides, I don't know if Iran thinks they're winning.
They like to thought of being martyrs and fight to the death.
And they may be on that mentality right now.
But at this point, a 45 day ceasefire doesn't make a lot of sense.
Markets would take a breather, oil would go down, stock market would go up, but it doesn't fix any of the problems.
And I don't think the Iranians are ever going to come around to where Trump needs them or wants them to be.
So at this point, unless they come hat in hand in the next eight hours or so, nine hours, I think the best move is just unleash hell on them and follow through with it.
When you say unleash hell, the president has bifurcated this as infrastructure, electrical grid, what they need for their day to day, and oil infrastructure in their oil industry.
Carg Island hit this morning, at least as I can parse it, focused additionally on military targets.
And I clearly sent a message that Carg Island is on the punch list, but they hit military targets.
What do you think happens if this goes broader than just the electrical infrastructure and he actually starts to hit?
The Iranian infrastructure of all the complexity of their oil and gas industry, sir.
I think today is a day of hold your breath, so to speak, certainly in the oil market, the financial markets, in the humanitarian, quote unquote, markets as well.
Eyes are looking straight at eight o'clock.
I just hope it's not another delay because it's just, 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.
Trump doesn't seem the type to want to do that.
At this point, I don't think it's a smart way to do it either.
That would give the Iranians, embolden the Iranians to think that they can do this again and again.
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.
And 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.
Midterms, I keep circling it.
It's going to be a thing.
People are saying, oh, this is bigger than midterms.
Tell me that November 7th when, you know, if there's a sweep, a blue wave, and we're going back to days of wokeism and, You know, nothing getting done in DC, and the liberal progressives just have their way in this country.
And I've given this to Jim Fennell, we'll talk about it.
Captain Fennell joins us.
They have threatened, they said they're going to close.
As I've warned about, the Red Sea is just as important here as the Strait of Hormuz.
They have threatened to basically shut down the entire Saudi Arabian Peninsula, and particularly the Strait that leads into the Red Sea from, I guess it's from the North Arabian Sea.
Not the North Arabian Sea, I guess the Arabian Sea.
Which has always been a choke point with their partners, the Houthis.
Captain Fanel, I want to step back before we get into the details of going back and forth in this rhetoric and what's happening now.
I think it's very instructive because you've been, hey, this is the plan.
This is what we're doing.
This is how we're taking it down.
Every day they get degraded more.
This whole concept of the enemy as a system, the enemy as a system, because this is the way military planners, targeteers like yourself, and others are looking at this.
I think it's quite important today.
For us to separate out the rhetoric from the reality.
And right now, you have two very serious sets of people, one in CENTCOM and the Joint Command under General Kane, that are moving towards a potentially major escalation tonight.
But you also have an enemy who I think believes they're winning.
They've gone asymmetric and they feel they've got cards to play.
Let's start with that concept first off the enemy is a system.
I know you've got a graph, but walk the audience through.
I want to get this construct in people's minds as they see all this activity and what appears to be chaos coming through the next couple of days, potentially, that we help folks look through the fog of war, sir.
Yeah, Steve, I think I would, you know, obviously we're all following this, and I've been talking with colleagues of mine and retired Navy Admiral who was involved with the war against Kosovo.
He said after the conflict, he talked to the Slovenian director of intelligence and asked him, Why did Milosevic give up?
And the Soviet trained general said, Well, you finally started impacting those forces that supported Milosevic, the army, and is against his policy, and you started cutting off his access to funds.
So, this is just a reflection of this debate that you've just highlighted, which is can air power alone, and that this is really the canard, is it's not ever argued alone, but what is the value of a systematic approach to targeting an adversary?
So, if you go to the graphic that I provided, Cameron, there, please.
Back in 1995, Colonel John Warden, United States Air Force, who had served from 1965 until 1995, was a Ford Air Controller.
Flying Broncos in the Vietnam War came up with this system analysis of how you would go after or look at your opponent.
And 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 he talks about this being applied to Iran.
And so what you see there is these rings.
And in the center ring is the leadership.
And then its outer ring, next outer ring is organic essentials, then infrastructure, then population, and then fielded military forces.
So, for the last 38 days, the US military, the Pentagon and CENTCOM, and the joint force have been going after predominantly on the US side the fielded military forces.
We've been using asymmetric capabilities against their, you know, lots of different Iranian capabilities.
We've gone after their proxies, regional proxies, conventional military forces.
And likewise, the Israelis have been focusing on the leadership.
And the leadership, there's some charts out there even today that show the scores of IRGC leadership that has been decimated along with the religious leaders and the supreme leader and his family and whatnot.
And we haven't really struck and touched the organic essentials, which is the energy sector.
We've gone after the missile industrial complex, those missile cities.
Where they produce the ballistic missiles and drones and things of that nature.
And we've gone, we hit one bridge that was very publicized this last week, but we haven't really gone after it too much.
So, what's happened this morning already is that you're seeing Israel IDF going after road and rail bridge networks in Tehran, Isfahan, Qom, and in Western Iran, along with the United States attacking military, finishing off, or I don't know, finishing is not the right word, but continuing to attack military.
Facilities on Karg Island, which is everyone knows is about 90% of Iran's output for oil.
That's the center point, that's the key point in the Gulf.
So, what's happened is that we have for 38 days attacked that outer ring and now and the inner ring, and now we're going to expand it out into those two blue rings organic essentials and infrastructure.
And as you said, the plan and the structure is to have regime collapse.
You know, the regime leaders, whoever they are at this point, several rungs down the ladder, they may or may not.
Because President Trump said, and you see from the chart, he believes that's regime change.
You've gone down, I think, on the IRGC level, it's even to the brigade level.
We've killed a lot of people.
And the Israelis have, as they are want to do, really target this for leadership.
And some say where they also target who the negotiators are.
Be that as it may, they've taken care of that.
Haven't we, and you look at this systems analysis, this is what I want to get across to the audience.
What happens tonight is kind of fundamentally different.
We're going towards state collapse.
I think if you get in the back of President Trump's rhetoric, is that this is not simply about the regime anymore.
They're going to take down, this is why he's warning the Iranian people that, hey, your life is going to be very different after this.
I'm looking at civilizational collapse or state collapse.
They're going after the basic.
Building blocks of how a nation actually exists.
Is that a way to look at it that this is kind of fundamentally different as you get closer into that inner circle of where you're going to take this apart systematically, take the system apart systematically?
I think the rhetoric will be used that way, and the presidents use that rhetoric to say exactly that to the Iranian regime.
This will be the end for you.
What, in fact, will actually happen likely tonight is that he's going to take out all their ability to produce power and produce electricity and their ability to export oil, which means they will have no money to come in.
They will have no power to move and build missiles, build drones.
They will not have any bridges, rail, or road, so they won't be able to get supplies in from Russia or anything flown in, or maybe flying in, still could be some, but there won't be anything coming in from external sources.
They will be cut off.
And so the regime will have to do something.
And what can they do?
Well, most likely they'll respond with a gasp, a salvo of ballistic missiles and drones.
They'll probably be quite large over the next day or two.
But they're Running out of those systems, regardless of analysis from some.
I think the fact of the matter is that they're being depleted after 38 days.
And the idea that they can just go on and do this indefinitely doesn't match the assessments that are coming out of CENTCOM or the Pentagon or other sources.
Now, there's some that still say they have so much there, but the idea that we were able to fly two rescue missions on two different days and fly American aircraft.
You know, MC 130s and helicopters and A 10s and fly for seven hours over 200 miles into Iran to rescue two aviators is a demonstration.
And I love Sam Faddis, but for me, what I heard yesterday from the president's press conference was the Iranians are really incapable of stopping us when we want to do something.
Sure, they fired up some missiles or some of these Project 358 loitering surface air missiles.
But in 13,500 combat sorties, that's maybe the only one that they've actually successfully hit anything with.
So I think the evidence is from this, you know, what we're seeing is we're operating at will over Iran.
And when we 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.
And maybe the president has some plan there as well that he hasn't told us about.
And those people will be able to do something against this regime.
But right now, the regime is not what it was 38 days ago.
There is no supreme leader.
Even 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.
So, you know, two days ago, a week ago, we were told he's in control.
Now we're hearing other backpedaling.
So 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.
And 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, the 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.
Well, 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.
They 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.
So, the stress will be out in the forward areas and 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.
Same on our carriers.
So, 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.
But back at CENTCOM, Everybody's like, okay, we've picked all this.
They're working on the next phase.
So they're preparing the next phase of what else has to be done, and as well as preparing the battle damage assessment teams.
So that battle damage assessment process is no longer just as manual as it was when I did it in Desert Storm.
It's highly, highly integrated today with AI and tools from Palantir and overhead national systems collections and all of the capabilities that we have to be able to get rapid, immediate, Feedback on how, if we start this tonight, oh, we missed something, or let's put more pressure here.
So that's what we'll be going through.
And as always, the priority will be on the safety of our air crewmen and aviators that are flying over the territory of Iran to make sure that we don't get hurt, as well as making sure that we're defending for the salvos that are likely to come from Iran back at us.
Now, more than ever, we've come out with the West Texas Intermediate.
It's now at $117.
Markets are all over the place.
And of course, whatever happens tonight in the next nine, eight, or nine hours, we'll drive that even more day by day.
We came out with the eighth free installment of the end of the dollar empire.
It's about the pressure being put on the U.S. dollar.
Part of that is this massive spending.
The proposed Pentagon budget is, wait for it, $1.5 trillion.
I don't think that includes the $200 billion that they're asking for this war effort right here.
And that does not include what's going on here in the last couple of days.
So the pressure on that.
Also, whoever is controlling the Strait or Hormuz, I'm not so sure it's the Revolutionary Guard as a group of pirates.
Down in southern Iran, right on the cliffs there, that have had a good run for centuries of kind of living there and screwing with shipping all the time.
But they're taking it in Chinese currency.
And as Captain Fennell has ground into us over a long period of time, keep the main thing the main thing.
And so the BRICS nations, which we kind of had on the ropes a little bit after the Rio reset.
Uh, with particularly with President Trump coming back into office, uh, now looks like this BRICS thing is back on fire, and the Chinese Communist Party are doing everything they could possibly do to destroy the U.S. dollar.
So make sure you get the end of the dollar empire.
Five years now, we've been putting this out.
Now, the eighth free installment, make sure you got it.
Uh, and sometime this week, given time, we're trying to break down this budget proposal and also at the same time talk to you about what the meaning of this is about they're trying to go to uh.
They're trying to go to break the petrodollar, but learn all about it and talk to Philip Patrick and team.
That's the key thing.
Get the Philip Patrick and the team today as gold bounces all around.
Patrick K. O'Donnell asked you to join us because of major presidential decisions.
The president of the United States, the commander in chief of the most powerful military in the history, in world history, said today on a true social, this is one of the most important days in the complex history of the world with the decisions that will be made approximately or be executed upon around 8 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time today.
The Iranians came back and said, hey, yo.
Put it where the sun doesn't shine.
We're breaking off any communications.
And then they came out afterwards and said, Don't even worry.
You think Hormuz is a problem.
We're going to shut off the Red Sea.
Talk to me about the scale of presidential decisions.
You're someone that's a great combat historian.
You've written so many books about war in America being in war, of which every president, I think all the major presidents, are captured in your writing.
What's your sense of this?
How big a day do you put this?
In the at least the military history of the United States, this is a massive and consequential day.
This is an incredibly important decision, and I think that this war is up there in terms of World War II, in terms of the moral importance of taking down the Iranian regime and freeing the Iranian people, and that's what it's really all about.
And now, the question is, how do you go about that?
It's complex, it's hard, but um.
The axis of the resistance is fueled on a lot of people.
It's the invisible hand that's been fighting the United States for 47 years, killing many of the men that I was in battle with in Fallujah, destroying the efforts in Iraq that many of these soldiers and Marines, airmen gave their lives for.
This is a regime that is bent on destroying the United States as well.
And it's now, you know, we can debate about, you know, how this occurred for a long time.
And I'm sure that's going to happen.
But now it's about winning.
And we have to win, Steve.
And we win by taking away their oil revenue.
And that's, it will collapse.
They are a dead man walking at this stage.
And now what they are trying to do is distract us.
With the Strait of Hormuz.
It's a big distraction.
It's an important distraction.
It is not the center of gravity.
The center of gravity needs to be destroying the Iranian regime.