Evelyn Farkas analyzes Iran's Strait of Hormuz blockade as leverage against the U.S. and Israel, noting a trickle of ships faces mines and sanctions violations while the U.S. aims to halt oil exports to pressure Tehran. She contrasts the U.S. demand for a 20-year nuclear enrichment halt with Iran's five-year offer, arguing the conflict stems from a failed expectation of quick victory rather than strategic necessity. Farkas highlights China's transactional alliance supplying dual-use tech to secure oil, warning that short-term energy price spikes will peak before resetting, ultimately suggesting recent escalation was avoidable given prior negotiation opportunities. [Automatically generated summary]
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Pressuring the Regime00:10:40
Best ideas and best practices can be found anywhere.
But we have to listen so we can govern better.
Democracy depends on heavy doses of civility.
You can fight and still be friendly.
Bridging the divide in American politics.
You know, you may not agree with La Dokran in everything, but you can find areas where you do agree.
He's a pretty likable guy as well.
Chris Kins and I are actually friends.
He votes wrong all the time, but we're actually friends.
A horrible secret that Scott and I have is that we actually respect each other.
We all don't hate each other.
You two actually kind of like each other.
These are the kinds of secrets we'd like to expose.
It's nice to be with a member who knows what they're talking about.
You guys did agree to the civility, all right?
He owes my son $10 from a bad person.
And he's the vice president.
He'll fork it over.
That's fighting words right there.
I'm glad I'm not in charge.
I'm thrilled to be on the show with him.
There are not shows like this, right?
Incentivizing that relationship.
Ceasefire Friday nights on C-SPAN.
Welcome back to Washington Journal.
Joining us now is Evelyn Farkas.
She's executive director at the McCain Institute.
Evelyn, welcome back to the program.
Thank you for having me, Mimi.
All right, so let's talk about this blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.
First, explain to us what's going on there right now.
Yeah, so basically, we know that the Iranians have been blockading it because they were trying to gain leverage over the United States and Israel.
The counter move now, because negotiations fell apart over the weekend from the United States, was to blockade the Gulf area outside of the Strait.
So now the United States is saying we'll try to help facilitate free passage, but the reality is that we really can't do it.
There are mines in the Strait.
The Strait is still very narrow and controlled by the Iranians.
So we need cooperation from the Iranians if the ships are going to go in and out.
There's a trickle of ships that the Iranians have allowed out.
The U.S. would have to escort these ships.
Again, too many physical dilemmas there, you know, in terms of security.
And then there are the issues having to do with this toll that the Iranians are charging.
If the ships pay these tolls on the back end, they will be violating sanctions.
So most of the international shipping companies are saying we don't even, even if there's an option to pay a toll to get through, we don't want to pay the millions of dollars on the other end that we'd have to pay in fines because they would be violating international sanctions.
So the Strait of Hormuz is pretty much, it's not entirely closed.
There's a trickle going through.
The U.S. play, however, is not a bad one because we had to do something to put pressure on the Iranians.
And at the end of the day, we want them to make a deal.
It seems like there is room for negotiation, and we're just talking about how much time the Iranians have to, you know, to desist from their nuclear arms manufacturing.
Objective here of stopping all ships going in and out of Iranian ports is to target the Iranian economy.
Correct.
Which is the opposite of what was happening before, which was allowing Iran sanctions relief in order to sell its oil on the market, bringing down oil prices.
So now this is the opposite.
Well, yeah, and that was actually kind of like a reaction because initially when we started the war, I think that it sounds like the administration thought it would be a short war.
So they weren't that worried about the impact on oil and gas prices.
And we know 20% of the world's oil and liquefied natural gas goes through the Strait of Hormuz.
They thought it would be over quickly, so they weren't that worried.
As soon as they saw that the Iranians weren't buckling, then the administration kind of had a knee-jerk reaction and said, okay, we're going to lift sanctions on Iran.
and by the way, also on Russia.
Now, the lifting of the sanctions apparently just lapsed.
It was like a month that they gave the Iranians, so I don't know what the status is right now.
And the Russian ones, I don't know either.
But that was a counterproductive move for the United States to make, frankly, because we then were giving a little pressure release to the Iranians, which we shouldn't do.
So what do you think is going to happen with this?
It's a total blockade, I guess, of the strait for ships going in and out of Iranian ports.
Other ships apparently can get through.
So what's going to be the outcome of this, do you think?
I think that we're going to have a successful negotiation.
I just don't know how long it'll take, Mimi, because the two sides have basically agreed.
It sounds like from what has emerged from the talks in Islamabad over the weekend, the Iranians have agreed to put a halt to their nuclear weapons production, right?
To their enrichment activities.
And the question is how long?
The United States apparently asked for 20 years, and the Iranians, I think what I read was it was five years.
So, okay, the Iranians, are we going to agree about something in the middle?
The Obama administration negotiated also a secession and negotiated for time.
So maybe we'll get a better deal now and we'll get more time.
At the end of the day, when you're dealing with these regimes that want to try to assert themselves and they have aspirations, regional aspirations, and they're aggressive towards the United States, and they want nuclear weapons so that we can't stop them with their conventional arms aggression, with their terrorist activities.
The thing that we want to do all the time, whether it's North Korea, whether it's Syria, the Israelis bombed their nuclear facility in 2007, and in this case with Iran, is we want to get some time.
We want to destroy the physical capabilities, if we can, of course, the know-how, although that exists in people's brains.
But we want to destroy their ability to create a nuclear weapon and a nuclear weapons arsenal.
And so we try to get time because in the meantime, what we really want is a change in the regime.
We want a less aggressive regime.
We want the Iranian people or some combination of Iranian people and outside actors to bring about a change in the government.
So before we get to regime change, I want to ask you about Iranian oil and going back to that.
Is there any other way to get Iranian oil out of Iran and into the world market except through that Strait of Hormuz?
Most of it has to go.
It's completely blocked out.
They're almost completely blocked is my understanding.
Most of it has to go through there.
You know, I confess I'm not an oil expert, so I would have to caveat it with maybe there are other ways they can get some of it out, but most of it flows through that strait, and that is really difficult.
So the Iranians are going to try to facilitate their trade, but again, if the United States is blocking at the other end of the strait, they can't get their ships through either.
And that will put pressure on them.
At the end of the day, the regime, right now, they've cut off the internet for 45 days inside of Iran.
The people of Iran are very upset about this.
They also are suffering economically.
None of that has changed.
In fact, it's worse now.
Plus, they were being bombed by the United States and Israel.
So the people of Iran are going to put pressure on the government.
And yes, of course, they have the upper hand.
This government has the security forces.
They can oppress the people.
They're starting to conduct, supposedly starting to conduct assassinations again, killings basically of opposition people.
So the regime needs to be pressured.
This isn't a bad idea, but we need to quickly convert it, if we can, to a negotiations win.
If you've got a question for Evelyn Farkas of the McCain Institute, you can start calling in now.
We're talking about Iran.
Republicans are on 202, 748, 8001.
Democrats 202, 748, 8000.
Independence 202748-8002.
I want to ask you about China.
President Trump put this out on Truth Social this morning, 7:46 a.m.
He says, China is very happy that I am permanently opening the Strait of Hormuz.
I'm doing it for them also and the world.
The situation, this situation will never happen again.
They have agreed not to send weapons to Iran.
President Xi will give me a big fat hug when I get there in a few weeks.
We are working together smartly and very well.
Doesn't that beat fighting?
But remember, we are very good at fighting if we have to, far better than anyone else.
Talk about the weapons.
What kind of weapons has China been sending to Iran?
So historically, China has actually been an ally of Iran going all the way back to even before the 80s, I think the 70s.
They helped Iran and Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war.
The Chinese have benefited from selling weapons to Iran, and they never stopped.
But they tend to sell dual-use capabilities, so similar to what they're doing in the context of Russia supporting Russia in its aggression against Ukraine.
They provide drone capabilities, blades, turbine blades, things that are not necessarily offensive or lethal in nature.
However, there are some reports that they may have provided some shoulder-filed missiles, some missiles recently to Iran.
And that might be what President Trump is responding to.
And he's clearly trying to convey to the Chinese: don't do that again.
Don't send them anything lethal.
And frankly, what he should be conveying is don't send them any dual use either and include Russia in that calculation.
But I don't.
But why would China be doing this?
Do they want this war to continue?
What do you think?
What's their strategic interest here?
Right.
So their strategic interest is to maintain a relationship with Iran.
They have this alliance.
I mean, it's a loose, you know, tactical or transactional relationship.
Iran, Russia, China allied against the United States and our allies.
The interest, of course, they do want oil to get through and they want to continue doing trade with Iran in oil and gas.
And so that's in their interest.
They want to be viewed as a reliable partner and that's important to them.
So they're not going to cut off their support to Iran.
But they also want to do trade with the United States and with the world economy.
So they're trying to essentially project to the world that, oh no, we're not providing military support to Iran or Russia for that matter.
At what point does China put pressure on the regime in Tehran?
Peak Oil Price Risks00:03:16
Well, they should be putting pressure at the point that I guess it becomes too painful for them.
The Chinese have a little bit of- It hasn't become too painful for them, is that what you're saying?
Yes, and the reason is because the Chinese actually have a really good strategic reserve of oil, and so they can sort of let this play out a little bit.
And they certainly don't mind seeing the United States squirm, seeing President Trump in a bind, because frankly, we don't have a good, quick way out of this, which is what President Trump wanted and what he sort of promised more or less to the American people.
Well, Energy Secretary Chris Wright was talking about oil prices and the conflict in Iran on Monday.
I'll just play a portion and get your response.
Well, by the summer is aggressive timeframe now.
You know, going into this, this is a 47-year-long conflict with Iran that's repeatedly not only been a threat to American soldiers and peace in the Middle East, but also a threat to energy supplies.
You know, the Arabian Gulf and the Straits of Hormuz have been important my whole lifetime.
And so the president knew going into this that if you disrupt the flow of energy through that, in the short term, you're going to push up energy prices.
In fact, I'm very proud of a president who in his first term and his second term has done everything he can to grow supply and therefore push down the price of energy that he was willing to say, I'm not going to kick that can down the road as other administrations have.
I'm not going to let Iran become nuclear-armed with a massive weapons missile stockpile so that they can never be defanged.
We just have to live with this massive energy overhang in the Middle East that got worse.
He knew it was short-term disruptive, but he felt committed to end this threat that Iran is about to cross this threshold.
I'm proud of that, but it does mean higher energy prices in the short term.
It absolutely does.
So what does short-term mean now?
Because you just said that by the summer might be ambitious.
So what is your thinking on when Americans can expect lower prices?
And I'm talking about lower prices and the extent of where they were before this war started.
Yeah, well, in the very long term, definitely this will reset prices down.
But we're going to see energy prices, you know, high and maybe even rising until we get the ships, meaningful ship traffic through the Straits of Hormuz.
That'll probably hit the peak oil price at that time.
That's probably sometime in the next few weeks.
So you think it'll go higher before it goes lower?
It depends how the conflict goes, but it's a very real possibility.
What do you think?
Well, President Trump has said as much as well, that the oil prices will go higher.
And the other thing is that oil experts, you know, I'm not one of them, but I listened to them, and they've said that there's also a backlog.
Like, it's not like all of a sudden the prices are going to stabilize.
They have to refill all the tanks, et cetera.
That's going to take some time.
So the price will stay high.
The demand will still be high.
But I also want to just say something, Mimi, about what the Secretary was saying there.
You know, he's saying that it was great that President Trump took this action to close the Strait or, you know, this new action.
But the reality is that we didn't need to be here today because we actually had a negotiation that was similar to the one that we just had this weekend before this new war started.