Elise Labott reports on diplomatic efforts to secure the Strait of Hormuz, where Iran acts as a costly "toll booth," and notes that while a UN resolution calls for force under Chapter 7, China opposes it. She argues that opening the strait requires either military victory or a deal, debunking claims it will open naturally post-war. Additionally, she covers NATO tensions amid Trump's rhetoric, intelligence assessments of Iran's 1,000-pound uranium stockpiles, and warns that failing to destroy production facilities could escalate the conflict beyond two weeks. Ultimately, the episode highlights the complex interplay between military necessity, diplomatic stalemates, and nuclear risks in modern geopolitics. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Iran Strait War Risks00:11:57
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One thing about baseball is for many people is it kind of enables you to create an identity.
My parents were born in Portugal.
English was really not my first language.
So one thing baseball enabled me to do, I was able to intermingle with neighbors and friends.
They didn't really care, know where you came from.
Can you play baseball?
So that's part of the essence of America.
We all come together as one and we fight together and we play together.
That's the essence of sports.
And that's what makes baseball, in my mind, America's favorite game.
Now his parents came here.
They were blue-collar workers.
Their whole emphasis was to make life better for them and their children.
So that was America's dream.
There's a movie called Field of Dreams.
Is this heaven?
And this was heaven for me here at Fenway Park.
C-SPAN, official media partner of America 250, commemorating 250 years of American democracy.
Talk a little bit about Iran and get an update from Elise Labbitt, global affairs journalist.
Elise, welcome.
Good to be with you.
Let's talk about what's happening on the diplomatic front.
The United Kingdom led talks of more than 40 countries on the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.
Tell us what was happening with that.
Well, you know, you heard President Trump the other night say that the U.S. is going to leave opening the Strait of Hormuz to the countries that he feels needs the oil more, whether that's Europe, whether that's Asia.
It is true.
Those countries take a lot more oil, a lot more natural gas.
And so the United Kingdom held a meeting of some 35, I think, nations to talk about could they get a coalition together to patrol the strait and help escort some ships in to get through some of those tankers.
The problem is, first of all, any country that wants to put a ship through, even the prospect of putting a ship through without some deal with Iran to stand down, Iran is mining the strait.
They have speedboats.
They have drones.
Those ships, even the prospect of an attack is going to make ships very and their country, nation countries, very skeptical about putting through.
And also, you know, insurers.
The insurance will be astronomical.
And so...
And Iran has attacked ships.
So it has attacked ships.
Right now, they have what they're calling a toll booth.
People are calling a toll booth, which is they're letting ships that are not the United States, that are not Israel or any of these Gulf nations, they're letting them through at a steep price.
And so the idea is, can these 30 nations work together to get some of these ships through?
Without the same thing.
Without the...
That would be a military solution or a diplomatic solution.
Are they looking to negotiate with Iran and make their own deal?
But the problem is, and I was going to say, without the buy-in of Iran, without some diplomatic solution, it doesn't matter how many millions of your ships are there because Iran would attack them.
So you're going to need some kind of diplomatic solution.
unidentified
And that's why things are going on at the UN Security Council.
Yeah, let's talk about that.
So they met yesterday and there was a resolution drafted by Bahrain.
Bahrain is the president of the month-long rotating presidency.
Bahrain wants, it calls for an end to the war, calls for a diplomatic solution, but also is looking for what you call any means necessary to get shipping going again to open up the Strait of Hormuz.
Now, what does any means necessary mean?
That by the Chapter 7 of the UN Charter means including the use of force.
And the Chinese, who are a permanent member of the Security Council and have veto over any Security Council resolution, they're saying they don't want force in this resolution.
They want a diplomatic solution.
unidentified
And so again, you're going to need, there's only two ways to open the strait.
And that's what Pakistan and China are trying to work out.
unidentified
And before we talk about Pakistan and China, the president said at his speech that the strait would open naturally at the end of the war.
Can you explain how that would happen, if that's possible, and what impact that could have on the United States if the war ends without the strait being opened?
Well, in President Trump's mind, Iran closed the strait because of the war.
And so when the U.S. and Israel leave, Iran will stand down.
The problem is Iran is not letting any ship pass except ones that it lets pass.
There's no reason for it to not continue.
Now that it controls the strait, and when you saw the president had this 15-point plan to end the war, Iran came back with this five-point plan and said, oh, yeah, under this plan, we control the strait now.
We've seen several months of real tension between the U.S. and NATO, not just on Iran, but also on the whole Greenland issue.
So this is to kind of put things back on a smoother track.
unidentified
And I do think, despite the rhetoric from President Trump, despite the rhetoric from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, I think after this meeting, there'll be some kind of meeting of the minds.
They're not going to kiss and make up, if you will, but there'll be a plan for moving forward.
unidentified
CNN is reporting that U.S. intelligence has assessed that Iran maintains significant missile launching capability.
We put that on the screen.
What are your sources saying about what that could mean for how long this war would last?
Because part of the objective is for the United States and Israel to get rid of that capability.
That's right.
Well, President Trump and the Israelis say they've hit maybe 90% of their targets.
The intelligence, it's a difference of intelligence and reading the intelligence.
These sources are saying that the missile launchers are really what's important, because even if you have the missiles, it doesn't matter if you can't launch them.
So first they went after the missile launching production facilities.
Then they were going after the missiles.
They still have two weeks and they still are going after some of these targets.
But what military and intelligence analysts say is it's not really necessarily the only key issue here.
Yes, those missile launchers are important.
Yes, those missile capabilities are important.
And President Trump does want to say he finished the job before he leaves.
So there are a few weeks to go after those stockpiles.
But back to what you were saying earlier, the strategic problem right now for the global economy is the Strait of Hormuz.
And so the Iranians think they're winning solely on this economic choke point that they have.
So the missiles are important, but Iran's kind of holding the hostage of the global community is also important.
There's also, Mimi, the nuclear issue.
President Trump laid out a lot of things in his speech the other day, the Navy, the Air Force, the missile capability.
He also said when we leave, the nuclear threat will be eliminated.
If he wants to credibly say that the nuclear threat is eliminated, you're going to have to go after that stockpile of 1,000 pounds of enriched uranium, which is fissile material for making a nuclear bomb.
They'll have to go after that.
And the only way, you can't do that from the air.
The only way to do that is to go on the ground and take it out.
That would be a ground operation.
And the president didn't mention anything about ground operations.
He did not.
He did not.
But if he is going to take that uranium out and say that he's eliminated the nuclear threat, and this is what he said to one of the main reasons that he went to war, there are some mixed messages going on right now.
Secretary Rubio is talking about the conventional threat.
Conventional means missiles, drones, kind of weapons systems.
But the nuclear threat is different than a conventional threat.
And to go after the nuclear threat, that's not just facilities, which they have hit, but that's also the fissile material.
And if President Trump wants to go after that, that will take more than two weeks.
And that will put U.S. troops on the ground, and they will be in danger.
And that could escalate the war.
So even if in President Trump's mind he has two weeks, anything could happen between now and then to escalate the situation and that could extend the war.
All right.
That's Elise Labitt, Cosmopolitics Substack founder and global affairs journalist.
Thanks for the update, Elise.
You bet.
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