CSPAN - Washington Journal Brad Bowman
Aired: 2026-04-07
Duration: 08:59


=== Iran Strait Importance (08:01) ===

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[00:00:27]  Gear up for engagement.
[00:00:32]  And we are back.
[00:00:33]  We are joined now by Bradley Bowman, who is at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
[00:00:39]  He is the Senior Director at the Center on Military and Political Power.
[00:00:42]  Brad, welcome back to the program.
[00:00:44]  Thank you.
[00:00:45]  So your thoughts on President Trump's statements yesterday at the press conference and kind of the ultimatum that is set to expire at 8 p.m. on Iranian infrastructure.
[00:00:59]  It's great to join you again.
[00:01:00]  Thanks for the opportunity.
[00:01:02]  Yeah, no, I think we're at an important moment here in this war.
[00:01:06]  As many of your viewers will know, the president has said that if Iran does not come forward with good concessions and makes a deal, that there will be, quote, no bridges, end quote, or quote, no power plants in Iran.
[00:01:20]  And of course, he put out a message on Easter that was riddled with expletives threatening that.
[00:01:25]  And then we saw the post this morning talking about ending a civilization and so forth.
[00:01:34]  So very, very strong, unusual rhetoric, to say it politely.
[00:01:39]  I think the president obviously wants the Strait of Hormuz through which roughly 20% of maritime oil flows in normal times to be opened.
[00:01:51]  That is a good goal.
[00:01:52]  That is important to the world.
[00:01:54]  It's important to Americans.
[00:01:55]  If you don't believe me, look at what you're paying at the gas station to fill your car with gas.
[00:02:01]  So there's important U.S. national security and economic interest to open the strait.
[00:02:04]  He's clearly trying to apply pressure.
[00:02:08]  But let's just be clear, deliberately threatening to target civilian infrastructure as a tool of punishment or coercion when there's no military purpose or use of that infrastructure is not only unlawful and cruel, but I'd say it's counterproductive.
[00:02:27]  I'm proud.
[00:02:28]  Yeah, please.
[00:02:29]  Why do you think it's counterproductive?
[00:02:30]  Yeah, no, I think for at least three reasons.
[00:02:33]  I mean, one is that, you know, we've said from the beginning that the Iranian people are our allies.
[00:02:39]  The Iranian people are the ones that have had more, thousands, thousands of them have been killed by this regime that wants to retain its grip on power.
[00:02:48]  And we're not going to see regime change without the Iranian people taking action.
[00:02:53]  But if you are attacking them, then they are more and more Iranians are going to think we're the villains rather than this regime, which has killed thousands of them.
[00:03:00]  That's one reason why it would be counterproductive.
[00:03:02]  It's kind of intuitive, right?
[00:03:04]  If someone's your friend and your ally and you want them to work with you, you don't attack them.
[00:03:08]  You don't deprive them of energy that they need for maternity wards or for clean water and things like that.
[00:03:13]  It's also going to help the regime.
[00:03:15]  It's, you know, this regime is trying to solidify its grip on power that's had since 1979 by deceiving Iranians in the world that it's a true and legitimate and credible and benign representative of the Iranian people when it's far from that.
[00:03:31]  And so we would simply be giving this regime talking points that it will use to retain its power and build domestic unity against the United States of America.
[00:03:40]  And then lastly, I think it will absolutely erode further international and U.S. domestic support for steps that need to be taken both now and the future against Iran.
[00:03:51]  And you really don't have to be a prophet, if you will, to predict how Iran's going to respond.
[00:03:56]  They're going to respond with even more attacks on energy infrastructure in Gulf Arab states, and that will exacerbate the global economic crisis and the energy crisis.
[00:04:05]  So then let's talk about the options for opening the Strait of Hormuz.
[00:04:09]  Is there a military option?
[00:04:10]  Is there a way for the United States military to reopen that strait?
[00:04:15]  There is, there is, but it will be very, very costly.
[00:04:19]  America will take casualties in that effort, and there's several different ways you could do it.
[00:04:24]  But if the goal here is to apply pressure on the regime so that they make a deal that's acceptable to American national security interests, there are other ways to achieve this potentially.
[00:04:36]  One might be that, you know, what we've seen, we've talked about like a complete blockade of the strait.
[00:04:41]  That's not exactly accurate.
[00:04:43]  We've seen a small number of vessels, some of them with energy, going through the strait, many of them, interestingly, to China.
[00:04:50]  And so Iran continues to export some oil, and we know what it's doing with that revenue.
[00:04:54]  It's building its ballistic missile program or trying to reconstitute it.
[00:04:58]  It's supporting terrorism.
[00:04:59]  It's oppressing and persecuting the Iranian people.
[00:05:02]  We don't want that.
[00:05:04]  So what you could do with American naval assets outside the Strait of Hormuz on the eastern side of the strait, when you see Iranian vessels with Iranian oil, you could interdict those.
[00:05:14]  I'm not talking about taking someone else's oil.
[00:05:17]  I'm not talking about stealing it, nothing like that.
[00:05:19]  I'm saying you interdict it and you prevent the Iranian regime from getting that money and you put it in and then you use that to help the Iranian people.
[00:05:27]  And the message to Tehran would be, you will not export oil yourself until you open the straits.
[00:05:33]  But Brad, isn't what the administration has done just the exact opposite of that, which is lifting the sanctions on Iranian oil?
[00:05:41]  The administration has taken, unfortunately, several steps that I think are counterproductive.
[00:05:45]  They've lifted sanctions on Russian oil exports.
[00:05:48]  In the situation of Cuba, they allowed that one large vessel to arrive.
[00:05:53]  And they also lifted sanctions on oil that Russia was exporting.
[00:05:57]  And they're taking similar steps with respect to Iran.
[00:06:00]  And when you do that, you provide these two adversary regimes more funding.
[00:06:05]  And we know how they're going to use it.
[00:06:06]  How is Vladimir Putin going to use that funding?
[00:06:08]  You don't have to guess.
[00:06:09]  Look, he's going to use it to prosecute the worst war in Europe since World War II to attack and kill Ukrainians.
[00:06:15]  And don't miss the reports that we've seen that Moscow is providing targeting information to Iran so that Iran can target American troops.
[00:06:24]  You know, some things in American foreign policy are complicated, some are not.
[00:06:28]  When an adversary is helping another adversary target American troops, you don't give them more money to do it.
[00:06:36]  Full stop, period.
[00:06:38]  I want to ask you about the rescue of the American airmen.
[00:06:42]  Given that you are a you were a Blackhawk helicopter pilot and there were Blackhawks involved in that, I wanted to get your perspective on that rescue mission.
[00:06:53]  This rescue mission was one of the most impressive military operations I've seen in a long time.
[00:07:00]  The bravery, the competence, the dedication of the combat search and rescue crews, the scale of it, the bravery of the pilots, so the pilot and the weapons officer, you know, to do some of this during the daytime.
[00:07:15]  This is just incredible.
[00:07:16]  And, you know, there's a lot in the news to be concerned about right now and frankly to feel bad about.
[00:07:20]  But one thing that we can feel good about is that our military has an ethos that if you're a pilot or if you're any service member and you're caught behind enemy lines, we're going to come get you because we understand the value of a single life.
[00:07:32]  And so we are willing to put many, many people in danger to save one life.
[00:07:37]  And I think that says something really wonderful about our ethos in the United States military that we should be very proud of.
[00:07:44]  And we understand that human beings are more important than equipment.
[00:07:46]  You know, everybody's talking about these planes that we had to destroy because they got caught in the mud.
[00:07:50]  And this came up in the press conference yesterday.
[00:07:52]  You know, who cares about the planes?
[00:07:54]  We saved the lives and that's what's important.
[00:07:56]  And Brad, the president has said many times that the Iranian Air Force is gone.
[00:08:04]  They have no radar.

=== Air Superiority Truth (00:53) ===

[00:08:06]  They're completely decimated.
[00:08:08]  So how is it that they are still able to shoot our planes down?
[00:08:12]  Unfortunately, a lot of things that we're hearing from the podiums in Washington, D.C. these days are just not accurate.
[00:08:19]  I would encourage your viewers, if you want to have some facts, look at what CENTCOM is putting out.
[00:08:27]  And there's a lot of people confusing key phrases that military experts understand.
[00:08:31]  One is destroying versus degrading.
[00:08:34]  Those two words have very different meaning.
[00:08:35]  Destroying means destroyed.
[00:08:37]  It's done.
[00:08:37]  It's over.
[00:08:37]  It's destroyed.
[00:08:38]  Degrading means it's damaged, but it could be restored.
[00:08:42]  And so the truth is, is that America has air superiority in certain places, if not over the whole country.
[00:08:50]  But air superiority basically means you can conduct operations, but that doesn't mean the adversary has no means of fire.
[00:08:56]  down to a discussion with Portuguese ambassador to the U.S. Antonio Duarte.