Episode 5293: War Enters The 6th Week Of The War; Trump Puts Naval Blockade On The Strait Of Hormuz
Bannon's War Room Episode 5293 details the war's sixth week, where President Trump imposes a naval blockade on the Strait of Hormuz after the U.S. allegedly defeated Iran's military, sinking 186 vessels. Host Mark Levin cites the Potsdam Declaration as legal precedent for using WMDs, while experts predict oil prices will surge past $110 per barrel. As Israel demands total Hezbollah disarmament and Iran threatens pipelines, the blockade aims to force China and India to pressure Tehran, raising questions about the war's long-term economic and geopolitical costs without a draft. [Automatically generated summary]
And now all we do is we'll open up the strait even though we don't use it because we have a lot of other countries in the world that do use it that are either a Afraid or weak or cheap.
I don't know what it is, but we were not helped by NATO, that I can tell you.
And that they had also asked for a regional ceasefire, including Israel and Lebanon.
It seemed that the U.S. was unwilling to meet there.
A couple of weeks before these talks started, U.S. President Donald Trump came out and said that it really made no difference to him whether these talks were successful or not.
He said that the U.S. had already won the war.
We kind of heard a similar sentiment from Iran.
They definitely felt they had the upper hand, they certainly had a lot more leverage, given their control over the Strait of Hormuz, which is absolutely You know, disrupted global supply chains.
And we know that Iran will not open that up until a reasonable solution is met.
So, where does that leave us now?
Unfortunately, a lot more questions than answers.
We know that Qatar had mentioned they were going to restore full maritime navigation in the Persian Gulf today.
We know that the U.S. Navy was working to remove some of those mines in the Strait of Hormuz.
And we know that Israel and Lebanon were in talks to hold ceasefire talks next week.
So, now all of that.
Kind of up in the air.
This comes after yesterday, no reported attacks on Iran and no reported attacks from Iran onto Israel or their Gulf Arab neighbors, which has been a welcomed sign of some sort of peace and stability.
Yeah, so the calculation is a bit different when it comes to weapons of mass destruction because that's really a, those are munitions that have a strategic level effect.
And so for us, it would be the President of the United States who decides whether to launch nuclear weapons, which was also the case back in World War II.
The considerations are probably a bit different now, but it's still this law of armed conflict still applies.
It's just the decision making process for weapons of mass destruction is elevated because of the strategic nature of the impact of those weapons.
You know, the left goes crazy and they try to put words in our mouths.
I'm just trying to get the law now down here.
I think it would be very helpful to go back and read the terms of surrender for the Japanese for our envoys to read it because the Japanese were dug in even after the dropping of two atomic bombs.
And it took a lot of pressure even after that to get them to surrender.
Well, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu clearly said right at the top of the video message, and you saw that top right there, that the campaign against Iran isn't over yet.
He didn't specifically say whether he was for or against the ceasefire negotiations, but he and Israeli officials clearly believed from the very beginning that they would fail, just as they believed that the diplomatic effort between the U.S. and Iran before the war, some 40 days ago, would also fail.
Now, Israel hasn't simply restarted strikes on Iran and attacks on facilities there just because the ceasefire talks fell apart, but that is clearly what Israel is preparing for.
That being said, it's likely President Donald Trump who has the ultimate say there, and Israel knows that.
Netanyahu knows that.
Still, it was very clear going into these ceasefire talks in Islamabad, Pakistan, that Israel wasn't done yet.
It had a longer target list.
It was ready for more days or weeks of war, and that's the position Israel is in right now.
We've heard from a few of Israel's ministers that they demand that the highly enriched uranium be removed, and if not, it'll be either an agreement or backed war.
So we have seen some comment, none from Netanyahu since the statement last night, but it's clear that Israel's position is it's not done yet.
It's ready to resume the war as we've seen it before.
And that's its position at this moment as it waits to see what the next steps are from the U.S. as there is still time left officially in this two week ceasefire.
Now, when it comes to Lebanon, as you point out, Netanyahu said he had authorized the direct talks that will take place on Tuesday.
But it's the same question as we saw with the Iran talks.
Are these going to lead anywhere?
Netanyahu said he's demanding a complete disarmament of Hezbollah as part of the agreement and something that he sees as a true peace agreement that he said would last.
for generations.
From where we sit right now, that's very difficult to achieve.
So it's possible we're looking at a simply a smaller version of what happened in Pakistan.
Significant direct talks, a noteworthy agreement, but one that ultimately leads nowhere.
Meanwhile, unlike the ceasefire in Iran, we are seeing continued Israeli strikes in Lebanon.
You pointed out the smoke rising from the suburbs of Beirut, and we are seeing sirens warning of incoming Hezbollah fire in northern Israel today.
So no ceasefire in Lebanon as we await these talks in DC in just a couple of days.
Now, the vast majority of us do not directly feel any negative impact from this military operation like past generations of Americans have, other than a temporary increase in a gallon of gasoline, an increase that is lower than the increase during the Biden regime over climate change.
We don't have a draft, so those in the military chose voluntarily to be in the military.
Unlike prior generations, there really is no significant sacrifice for us, if you really think about it.
Certainly not at the level, as I said, of our parents and grandparents that they experienced.
Yet I sense, even beyond those individuals and groups I discussed earlier who are trying to sabotage us, some skepticism, maybe some wariness among some of our fellow Americans.
I don't believe it's widespread.
I certainly don't believe it's fever pitched, even though the left and the woke right are trying to create that environment.
A month ago, President Trump weighed in with an announcement.
Here's what he posted on social media.
Quote, effective immediately, the United States Navy, the finest in the world, will begin the process of blockading any and all ships.
Trying to enter or leave the Strait of Hormuz.
The whole notion of the Iranians backing down on that, I mean, it was pretty clear, at least in the first round of negotiations, they said it's a non starter.
So, do you believe that the U.S. military special forces and those who support special forces just need to go in and extract the enriched uranium?
I think that's probably what it's going to come down to.
I mean, this is a special force mission.
It would take about a week to 10 days to get done.
They know how to do it.
It's dangerous.
It's not something that.
We can just sit and think it's casual.
I think they have to do it.
But once they do that, they're taking away literally one arm of the Iranian regime to where they no longer can threaten any of our allies or threaten the grass anymore.
I think they've already known it's a small special operations force that they would have to do to be able to extract that uranium.
It is Sunday, 12 April in the year of our Lord 2026.
I really want to thank my crack team here at the War Room and the Denver team at Real America's Voice for putting together that, quite frankly, magnificent cold open, which I think gave you the best summary of what has happened or transpired since yesterday's show.
And you heard Tel Aviv Levin right there trying to set the terms of surrender.
To have terms of surrender, you have to have an enemy that thinks they're beaten.
This enemy, right now, in their mind, whether that's reality or not, does not think they're beaten.
Now, the administration has gone to something that we've called for for a while a naval blockade in the Gulf of Oman.
Nothing goes in, nothing goes out.
The terms, and particularly the two principles involved in this, and the two principles are not the United States of America and Iran, it is the United States of America and the Chinese Communist Party.
Their allies, including the ones in Islamabad.
And President Trump just put out another true social a moment ago thanking the field marshal.
Was it Munran or Munri?
He has a close relationship with, but Pakistan's a client state of the Chinese Communist Party and kind of owned by them because of one belt and one road.
The Iranians have, in fact, if we can get that clip later, the Iranians are dependent upon the Chinese Communist Party.
President Trump said yesterday there would be bad news in Beijing.
If Beijing was caught arming the Iranians.
And there's been all types of reports coming out of Europe and coming out of intelligence services that are doing just that.
Now, we've got a, we have Thayer and Faddis and Bowling and Captain Fennell and Trina Parsi.
So you're going to get to a wide range of thoughts here because, folks, as I keep saying, this is, you know, we're in the kinetic part of the Third World War.
And folks in our country got to be very serious about.
This and very focused about this because now more than ever we are putting young Americans in harm's way for national goals.
And we have to be very specific.
Are those national goals involved in what's going on in Lebanon, or is it directly related to the United States and the Chinese Communist Party in a great power struggle between the two?
I also think it behooves us to be very, very clear what's going on.
We were told that the 15 points the Americans put forward and the 10 points that That the Iranians put forward, the 10 point maximalist plan of the Iranians were in fact not true.
There was a modified 10 point plan, much of which had been agreed to.
Although the vice president talked about the nuclear program, I don't see any agreement on any of the basic things of which we said why we're even meeting.
They still claimed the Straits of Hormuz.
They still claimed that they wanted sanctions, if not reparations, they wanted all their assets freed up and sanctions relief.
And they talked about it had to be a regional.
That means including the Israelis.
But on those first three points, the Iranians weren't backing off.
Now we highlight the nuclear program, of which we said time and time again, we totally obliterate it.
So, in going forward and galvanizing the nation in back of this policy, and now that you've put a naval blockade in, that folks write this down with your number two parcel.
We just went up the escalatory ladder, big league.
We believe you have to do that.
You have to get the American people on board here.
And to get the American people on board, that has to be very straightforward where's the bid and where's the ask on this.
And for Mark Levin to get terms of surrender, you have to have a party that thinks they're beaten.
These Persians do not think they're beaten.
In fact, they believe they have the initiative.
They believe they changed the center of gravity of this war.
They believe not only are they not beaten, they think they are winning.
This morning on the War Room, we're going to break it all down for you in our special Sunday edition short break.
Yeah, so the calculation is a bit different when it comes to weapons of mass destruction, because that's really a, those are munitions that have a strategic level effect.
And so for us, it would be the President of the United States who decides whether to launch nuclear weapons.
And so, which was also the case back in World War II, the considerations are probably a bit different now, but it's still, this law of armed conflict still applies.
It's just the decision making process for weapons of mass destruction is elevated because of the strategic nature of the impact of those weapons.
You know, the left goes crazy and they try to put words in our mouths.
I'm just trying to get the law now down here.
I think it would be very helpful to go back and read the terms of surrender for the Japanese for our envoys to read it because the Japanese were dug in.
even after the dropping of two atomic bombs.
And it took a lot of pressure, even after that, to get them to surrender.
I want you to know I'm not encouraging this, but I do believe you ought to read, go back to the Potsdam conference and read the accord and then read the terms of surrender in September 45 that we finally got the Japanese to sign on the deck of the USS Missouri.
We did have, not just simply firebombed them, we did have a wait for it naval blockade around Japan for a while.
I'm going to get to Captain Fanon in a moment, but Eric Bowling.
The global markets today, I realize many things are not open, but the field that you've got, particularly that President Trump has, after being rejected by the Iranians, let's be blunt, it was rejection by the Iranians because they think they're winning, right?
Or certainly they don't think they've lost and they're not prepared to sign a surrender document.
I had thought he was going to stay a lot longer and maybe try and negotiate, keep the negotiations going.
But he left after 21 hours and headed back here.
And I'm trying to figure out why.
I mean, this is global oil.
This is a global economy at risk.
Can I just very quick, I'll tell you the first thing I did is I called a couple of my friends who are major brokers of international oil.
And I said, what do you think?
It feels like a lot higher.
And they said, yes.
I said 110.
And the quote was, Very soon.
So we finished Friday at about $96, $97 a barrel.
So these people think at least $100.
I do too, at least $110.
I went to CalShee, which is a betting market since the financial markets are closed.
The oil markets aren't trading at the moment, but CalShee is a betting market and PolyMarket are betting markets.
Smart money goes into these.
And some, I think there's something like $300 million are betting on whether or not we actually put boots on the ground in Iran in CalShee or PolyMarket.
So there's a lot of, Smart people putting smart money and they believe.
I think there's a 55% chance of $103 a barrel tomorrow and about a 33% chance of $104 a barrel tomorrow, about a 25% chance.
I believe we'll be on our way to 110, which brings me to Mark Levin's comment.
I like Mark a lot.
I do.
I think he's a very, very smart man.
He is completely wrong on this.
And I will tell him this.
I'll have this conversation with him or debate him on the economic effects of what's going on.
He wrote it off as the American people are going to feel the price of a gallon of gasoline for a little while.
That is frankly BS, my friend.
Everything is fuel related.
Everything is petroleum related products, transportation.
And when you have this situation where we're pushing $110 a barrel here, $130 a barrel for Brent, $150 a barrel for Mideastern crudes, all prices will go up.
They have to go up and they'll continue to go up.
So a temporary blip is insulting to me.
It's frankly insulting.
And Mark Levine, I would love to have this conversation with you directly.
Here's why it's not temporary.
And we literally removed a president, President Biden, for bringing inflation up.
The last inflation number we just saw, Steve, has inflation tripling, energy inflation tripling month over month from February to March.
That's one month that we started the month of March very low and worked our way all the way up through the month.
I will tell you, I believe we'll have a 5% inflation, 6% inflation.
Okay, and I'm going to do it again.
And people hate when I do this because this is a very important moment in history.
But I think it's also a moment in history for the Republicans, for conservatives to keep the House.
If you lose the House, and God forbid you lose the Senate at this point, You know, it's looking like that.
What do we have?
Are we going back to woke, you know, the woke world that we were just horribly thrust into over the last four years?
Here's the reason the naval equivalent of boots on the ground is a quarantine or blockade in the Gulf of Oman for everything coming in and out of Hormuz.
This is a game changer because call your buddies back now.
What the president is saying by this blockade, there's no oil going to India.
There's no oil going to China.
He's going to put pressure on the people funding the Persians and the people that are arming the Persians.
India is not arming, but their cash is helping to finance this.
And the Chinese are arming and financing.
So, hang on.
So, call them back today and say, hey, look, let me ask this question again.
What about nothing comes in and out?
What about it's totally sealed, hermetically sealed?
Uh, at least for a while, anyway, bowling, stay right there.
We're gonna come back to you, Captain Fennell.
You've walked us through the defanging and declawing.
As much as they were defanged and declawed, they still didn't think they lost, right?
Whether that's technically that they have or not, they don't think so.
But now, the president, after sending those two, I think, Arleigh Burke class destroyers, uh, through Hormuz yesterday, has now ratcheted up, gone up the escalatory ladder, and said, Hey, guess what?
Uh, I'm tired of the Chinese, I'm tired of the Indians, I'm tired of Listening to these guys in Tehran, think they've got leverage.
I've got the leverage, and I'm blockading the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf.
Tell the audience, explain to the audience what that means, sir.
And so where it says hazardous area is where the old traffic separation scheme was that ships would go in and out of the Strait of Hormuz.
The two quarters to the north of that that go through Iranian waters, through Kashmir, The Rock Island on the inbound, and then south of Larrack Island on the outbound.
Those were established in mid March by the Iranians, and some ships were paying this toll to Iran.
So when the talks failed here last night, the Iranians thought that they had checkmate on us.
And then the president's team countered that with saying, hey, we just sent two destroyers through.
And you don't lead in a minesweeping effort sending two Aegis destroyers through.
Now, Admiral Cooper down in CENTCOM said that.
You know, this is the beginning of setting the conditions for mine countermeasure clearances to ensure the strait is fully clear of sea mines.
And there were some conversations about drones and unmanned systems and other EOD services.
And I think the president said, I'm not going to play this game.
I'm just going to blockade this, and everybody's going to suffer until the world finally gets enough of this and tells Iran to stop.
And so I'm very glad that he's done this.
It is escalatory in the sense of economic escalation for the rest of the world.
But in terms of military escalation, it has actually kept our forces from actually having to be picked off or.
Or that, you know, Golden BB that we saw against the F 15 last week.
A similar kind of event could happen against a ship doing mine clearance measures in there.
Why risk that?
Let's just tell everybody you can't come through the strait until Iran, you know, is broken on this.
And so they're going to have to give this up.
And that'll be the test to see how long the world will put up with having zero ships go through.
And I'll just tell you this thing on the mines one last thing there's the United Kingdom's Maritime Trade Office that has been putting out these reports.
Since the war started, they put out 31 reports every couple of days.
And I counted them up.
I went through every report today.
There have been 202 tankers and cargo ships, big bulk cargo ships, that have gone through the Strait of Hormuz since the war started.
Vastly down from the normal transit of 135 ships a day.
But still, 202 ships went through the Strait of Hormuz.
Most of those were on AIS tracked.
Some went through the toll booth, but many went through the middle.
And we had a larger number of dark ship vessels that went through, turned off their AIS, and went through the strait.
And in those 40 plus days, there hasn't been, according to the United Kingdom's Maritime Trade Office, which is feeding the Lloyds of London's paradigm, zero mines have been confirmed.
So there hasn't been a confirmed mine.
Yet the whole world shut down and refused to go through.
And it was really based upon, you know, in the tanker wars, ships continued to go through, even though ships struck mines in the 80s.
But now, There's zero risk from the international shipping community.
And I think President Trump has just said, that's it.
Okay, Sam Fett is going to join us in a little while.
Dr. Thayer, the treat of Parsi.
You can get Jack Basopic in the second hour.
We're also going to go into Ireland, also about the revolution in the streets by the truckers and the farmers to get to all that.
Bowling, I'm coming right back to you.
Because, folks, this is, we are now thrust upon the world stage.
We had this because of imminent threat of nuclear weapons.
I argue that Israel dragged us into this war for their own Greater Israel Project.
But hey, be that as may, that is water under the bridge.
Now, President Trump did try to accommodate and sit down and had the first meeting of senior officials of the U.S. government since we were unceremoniously turfed out back in 1979 when the Shah got thrown out and we got thrown out with them, and then they seized our.
Embassy.
So we've been around that neighborhood for 47 years.
President Trump tried to do it.
It looks like the Iranians don't think they're losing.
Their arrogance in this is pretty upfront and in your grill.
So, Captain Fennell, we've been arguing here, and Scott Besson's been arguing here in the war.
We've been arguing for a while.
Instead of boots on the ground or taking Karg Island, because Karg Island's up near the Tigris and Euphrates, just block.
We have two carrier strike groups and put a third down there.
Just blocked the Gulf of Oman, be far enough standoff he has to.
Just block the Gulf of Oman before it gets to the Arabian Sea and turn back every ship.
Don't let anybody come in and turn back every ship.
And don't let any of these dark ships and don't let the Chinese Communist Party get their fuel because you got to give a wake up call to Xi because they also think they're on the winning side right now.
You have argued, and I want you to go with details, we weren't there yet.
In fact, you're saying, hey, the mining situation was very cloudy.
Although it looked like there was no mines, you sent the two Arleigh Burke class, I think, destroyers through yesterday.
You kind of now have proven, or at least proven, I think, to enough people that there's not really, it hasn't been a big minefield laid.
And now, because of other things that we did to make sure that we could defang and declaw, you can actually do a naval blockade.
Is that your theory of the case here?
Is that it took a while for Admiral Cooper and the team at CENTCOM to do this, sir?
It's taken just over 40 days to be able to essentially roll back the Iranians' ability to have this coordinated ability to strike our naval forces off the coast of Iran.
And in order to do that, they had integration of national overhead systems, intelligence from satellites that's being fed to them from China and Russia.
They have their own airborne surveillance platforms, they have their own ground based surveillance platforms.
They have their own command and control nodes that integrate the data, the targeting data that then is fed into their ballistic missiles.
And we had to roll all of that back systematically and to destroy it.
And the results of that have been that they have not been able to hit any of our ships.
And our ships are much closer to the coast now than they were.
And they have been unsuccessful.
And I think it's important for people to remember because there's been a lot of, before this war, there's been a lot of talk, especially with regard to China, that.
You know, the U.S. Navy's carrier fleet would be sunk in the first 15 minutes of any war.
And what people really don't understand is how hard it is to hit a ship at sea, a moving target with ballistic missiles and with actually hypersonic or supersonic cruise missiles.
It's no easy feat.
It takes a lot of geometry and a lot of accuracy.
And then to get inside the bubbles of our carrier strike groups that have, you know, Aegis awareness, National Overhead System awareness, has, you know, systems that are designed to shoot down missiles before their missile even gets in.
Inside of our bubble to turn on their sensor to find out where we are in the final home game of the missile coming in.
We can destroy the missile with the SM 6 before it even gets able to get an update on where it's at.
We've disrupted their data links.
We've disrupted their ability to help cue that missile to us.
So we have rolled that back, and now we're in this position where we're able to effectively conduct a blockade.
And oh, by the way, this break in the ceasefire has allowed us to refuel, to rearm, to get fresh food and vegetables to our sailors afloat.
There's reports of ships gone down to Diego to get munitions, interceptors.
Correct, which is to say, what you're essentially saying is that they're operating from a position of extreme weakness.
But as you also say, their attitude is that they're not defeated.
The Iranian statement after the president posted his Truth Social about the blockade, here's what the Iranian said Any wrong move in the Strait of Hormuz will trap the enemy in deadly whirlpools.
That's pretty weak.
What whirlpools?
They're not going to be able to do anything there.
And we're going to be able to blockade.
And oh, by the way, there's even reports that China is preparing to send man pads into Iran.
So, you know, if the Chinese think that they are not going to get any oil, but maybe they're going to supply Iran with, you know, kind of other weapons, they need to be on advisory notification that maybe those ships will be sunk as well.
I'm not sure the president will go there, but that would, I would advise him that that's something that we need to make sure the Chinese know.
You don't think he will turn it, whoa, whoa, whoa, but this is the point of it.
This is why a naval blockade is a different animal, right?
You're now thrust upon the world stage.
I'm blockading the Gulf of Oman in the Straits of Hormuz.
You don't think that.
You think the Chinese, to me, the purpose of it, maybe I'm missing it.
The purpose of it, he understands that the Chinese Communist Party are double dealing us, as they've always done, along with the Pakistanis and the Iranians.
And oh, let me throw in there too our great allies in Saudi Arabia and Qatar and UAE and Tel Aviv, all of them.
And they're doing what's best for them.
They could care what is best for the United States' interests.
But you don't believe by stating we have a naval blockade that we're going to turn back?
The oil coming out of there from the regime to the Chinese Communist Party?
In other words, we're going to blockade the oil, which was a brilliant strategy because I think our U.S. oil will probably regulate in the $100 a barrel area, which is horrible, but better than the outlook is right now.
The Middle Eastern crudes are going to explode higher because you can't get them and the rents are going to explode higher.
So, what are we asking for?
So, we're going to blockade this oil, which is great.
We'll be fine here.
We don't need the oil.
So, great.
But is it regime change?
Is it obliteration of their ability to deliver a nuke?
I think we've done that.
If I take one step further, Captain Faddis read part of the Iranian statement coming out of that meeting.
If I may just, Steve, for a second, this is the IRGC within minutes of Vance leaving, which means this was in advance of this was prepared in advance of Vance leaving.
The American enemy, which is vile, wicked, and dishonest or perfidious.
Evil and deceitful attempted to achieve on the negotiating table what it could not achieve through war.
Iran has decided to reject these terms and continue the sacred defense of its fatherland by any means necessary, military, diplomatic, meaning they will fight to the death.
What are we asking them to do, Steve?
What do we need them to do?
I mean, is it a complete overthrow of their government or is it somewhere in between?
Who cares if the Strait of Hormuz is open and they're not controlling it?
It's just a free, wide open market like it has been for the last thousand years.
First of all, I think President Trump has reiterated and been adamant he's not looking for regime change.
He's not.
Maybe in Tel Aviv they are.
But I think he laid out in those 15 points, particularly the total obliteration, the shutdown of their not just nuclear program, but also the nuclear material.
What happens to that?
We either buy it or we've got to take it, et cetera.
He's listed out those four points.
I think what the blockade does, I'm going to get Faddison here.
I think one of the things a blockade does, it tries to get everybody lined up on a certain side of the football.
NATO's had a free ride in this.
Europe's had a free ride in this.
And they're very mouthy about what they can do or can't do.
The NATO Secretary General came to the White House last week.
As we covered live at the time, he did not go to the sticks.
They had the microphone set up and all the international media.
Our team was there and he didn't come out.
Why?
Because it was a very tough meeting.
Why?
Because I believe the President of the United States said, Where are you guys?
And particularly, where are your navies?
Where's the Royal Navy, the French Navy, the Italian Navy?
Let me pick three random.
That should be down there helping us in Strait of Hormuz.
Ask Captain Faddis, why are we helping European nations get their crude or China for that matter or India when we don't really need that Strait of Hormuz open greatly?
Yes, there's helium.
Yes, there's some petrochemicals that come through that make their way to the United States.
But generally, is it worth risking more blood and treasure?
Over something that really will benefit India, China, and frankly, Europe, that couldn't even lift the finger to help this whole situation to eliminate the global threat for nuclear warfare, which I believe I've heard nothing but we've obliterated their ability to deliver a nuclear weapon to the United States.
Once that objective is met, it feels to me like what's our next objective?
Yeah, we obliterated, quote unquote, but the vice president said when he came to the microphone yesterday, this is the principal reason we took off.
They wouldn't agree to the nuclear material they had, and they wouldn't agree to Any more program, even if it was peaceful, they wouldn't agree to any of our ideas in this program.
They rejected everything.
So, hang on for one second.
I'm going to get to your points.
I want to bring Faddis in for a second.
Sam, on Eric's points, the Iranians, and you saw by that what the Revolutionary Guard said.
I tell you what, we only got 40 seconds here.
We're going to bring Faddis in right after us.
We've got Treat of Parsi.
Eric Bowling, we've gone now to a naval blockade that hasn't been totally defined.
About what it means, the specifics of that, particularly are we going to turn back or put over an anchorage, as Captain Fettis says, the oil heading to the Chinese Communist Party?
The Chinese Communist Party is a strong ally of this theocratic regime in Tehran, as they have been for decades.
This blockade, I believe, is a forcing function.
Put everybody's cards on the table.
Who lines up on what side of the football?
Short commercial break, back in the worm in a moment.
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Our next two guests, Sam Faddis and Trita Parsi, have done, I think, a very good job of describing not just who the enemy is, but their mindset.
They come at it from two different angles.
Sam Faddis, you spent a couple of decades of your life in service to your country dealing with these guys.
You know.
How tough they are, how radical they are, how many of them aspire to this radical Islamic theocracy, this martyrdom cult.
We talked a lot about this last week.
You were not surprised at all of what happened in Islamabad, right?
You were particularly not surprised about their dug in positions and the fact that they kind of gave us the middle finger when it was over.
And instead of, you know, some of them, we've had the first meeting and You know, it's the Revolutionary Guard could not have been more brutal and up in our grill about what they thought of the United States of America, what they think of our military, what they think of the American people, what they think of what we stand for, sir.
That's exactly what I think I said was going to happen.
Look, these guys are not defeated.
We keep talking about all the targets we've hit and all of this.
And God bless the United States Armed Forces.
I mean that sincerely.
I come from a military family.
They're doing what they were told to do.
It doesn't change the fact that we have not defeated these guys.
It's not just like they don't get it yet.
They just need to go away and realize we won.
That we have not won.
So I'm all about the blockade.
I mean, I've been recommending that as well for a long time.
Let's leverage our strengths.
Let's fight smart.
We own the oceans, seal it off.
It's not enough.
And also, it doesn't account for the fact that since they have not quit and Arnani were close to quitting, they're going to respond.
So they're not just going to sit there and say, you blockaded the.
The Gulf, and I guess we lose now.
They're going to start playing all the cards they have on their side.
They already hit the pipeline across Saudi Arabia at least once and temporarily disrupted it.
It's repaired now.
That's the lifeline now for Saudi.
You can guarantee that they're going to do everything they can to take out that pipeline.
And they're going to start hitting production facilities and they're going to start hitting the plants that turn seawater into drinking water for 100 million people.
And they're going to start.
At some point, turning on their proxies in a big way worldwide against us and our allies.
So, that's not me saying we lose, not at all.
Just let's not wait till that happens and then figure out how to respond.
Let's move right now to prevent them from doing that.
And by the way, we're sealing off the Gulf.
That's great.
We got to seal off Iran completely if we're doing this.
We got to get neighboring countries to close land borders and we got to.
Seize their funds in banks all over the world.
And, you know, this has to be a comprehensive thing, not just one action.
This is, hang on for a second, you bring up a key point.
This is one of the, this is kind of got buried in a lot of the proclamations that came out.
But one of the biggest sticking points was the 27 billion that turns out that they've got banks all over, not even discussing.
I think it's the 500 billion in the pirate cove of Dubai.
But their ability to get their hands on cash money is vital to this regime.
You know, in a state collapse, you devolve down to a barter system.
These guys are smart, they're savvy.
And they understand they got assets all over the place.
They need access to it.
One of the biggest negotiating points was we need access to that $27 billion, and somehow you got to give us sanctions relief.
Besson's economic warfare in January, folks, was working.
Now, it does have implications against the dollar because people say, I got to get off of this thing.
I can't let Trump and his madmen choke us down with the SWIFT system and the fact that they got access to all the dollar denominated assets in the world.
We got to do something else.
But It was the economic destroying their currency is what drove those people into the streets, of which 30,000 were then slaughtered.
But there's no doubt the economic warfare part that a naval blockade, Sam, do you agree, is the instrument of economic warfare from time immemorial?
I mean, let we have we are now we are now finally psychologically moving.
To the part of this where we fight smart and we use our leverage against their weakness instead of just being wedded to, there's only, we're just going to bomb things.
And I don't mean to trivialize that.
We've caused massive damage, but we have all kinds of other capabilities here.
I mean, this is a much more productive, smarter, more strategic way of approaching than where we were a few weeks ago when people were feeling locked into, we got to start landing Marines on Iranian soil.
We have huge leverage.
We ought to take all of their money.
And frankly, if they're not going to get their heads around dealing with us, then we keep all of their money.
As far as I'm concerned, if there's Iranian oil in a ship and we've given everybody notice that you can't go in there, we take the Iranian oil and sell the Iranian oil and keep that money too.
Let them starve as a regime.
This is a smart way to approach this, but it's got to be bigger and longer.
It's one of the things we try to get the information and get you up to speed your learning curve.
What Sam and I and others are talking about, Scott Besson on economic warfare, there's a flip side of that.
Remember, there's no easy choices.
When you're playing at this level, every choice has a dark underbelly to it.
One of the reasons the end of the dollar empire, they want to get off the United States as the prime reserve currency, is exactly the Point to saying, hey, look, the Americans have too much leverage over us.
When push comes to shove, Sam Faddis' voice will be heard, and they say, not just let's freeze it, let's seize it, and let's seize our oil and monetize it.