Prior to the midterms. in terms of military reaction. And they're wrong. Uh I do They've always miscalculated the present. That's one thing they're good at, getting that wrong.
Whatever you think of the president's strategy, and I think most of it's really good. They have not predicted, is nothing that they predict has come out correct because he's the only president to take direct action against Iran. John Hannah joins us now, former National Security Advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney and senior foreign policy practitioner to both Democratic and Republican administrations. John, where do you think we're at with this minute right now with this conflict? The one thing I would like to add is we had our Secretary of Energy come out and say we're getting like 30 ships full through the Strait, even though it registers nine.
We're doing with something with shutting off the transponders or whatever. And the Defense of Democracies did confirm it, that they believe from their source with the Navy that it's happening.
So let's say it's 30, not 100. Where do we go from here if the President was to ask you for advice?
Well, I mean, it all depends on his risk tolerance, Brian, and the plans he's presented with. It's so far, it seems like the president doesn't believe at an acceptable cost he's got a military solution on Hormuz or that he's got an option to dramatically escalate and devastate Iranian society because he's worried about what happens in response, retaliation in the Gulf against critical energy infrastructure that takes this energy crisis over a cliff.
So I'd say if he's in that position before the midterms, worried about markets, if there is this worry about munitions, depth, and stockpiles, that if you can maintain the current strategy of oil in a band of $85, $95, strangulation of the Iranian economy, increasing sanctions, getting countries on Iran's borders to further shut down the smuggling. And engaging in whatever tit-for-tat strikes you have to whenever the Iranians raise their heads, I'd say that might be the acceptable solution for President Trump if. The Iranians let you do it, and they don't follow Keene's strategy of believing they've now got the whip hand and they can embarrass and humiliate Trump before the midterms by taking this up the escalation ladder and forcing him to engage in major combat again. If they're going to do major combat. It would probably behoove the President to get it done in August.
Right.
Now's the time. Yeah, no. If you're going to do it, if you're going to resolve this militarily in a definitive way, the sooner you can do it, the sooner you can get past the shock to oil markets, the sooner that kind of victory can seep in to the American people. Again, if it's possible, if it can be done at acceptable cost to the global economy, to American forces, American casualties, yes, you do it as soon as possible. But there's been no evidence for several months now, since April 7th, that the president believes he has any of those options available to him, again, at acceptable cost and risk that he's willing to pay.
They say three separate times the Gulf states have contacted him and said, look, I don't know if we can handle the retaliation. Please don't go ahead. He wanted to go ahead offensively. And of course, our bases are the main target, but he felt as though our bases could be accurately protected. But it's the infrastructure that I think our Gulf states are worried about.
What would you say if you were the President, if the Gulf States are calling you saying they're worried? I take it seriously. I certainly go to my Intel community. I go to my military. Can we protect these guys?
Or are we looking at a real global depression? The president said months ago, I don't want to be Herbert Hoover. And if you destroy permanent, on a permanent basis, critical Gulf oil infrastructure that hasn't been destroyed yet, you're facing a real crisis. Then $100 oil looks like a walk in the park. We're going much, much higher than that.
And again, It may be worth it not to lose the war, to take down the Iranian regime, to get them to capitulate, to achieve a military victory and liberate Hormuz, but the enemy gets a vote, and this could be a very, very costly and tough fight. And now, John, tell me feasibly militarily: is one of the plans hit them so hard from so many different ways, being that we've gone to school on what we did and didn't do in the first with Epic Fury 1? And to hit him so hard in so much to diminish the chances that they have to hit our Gulf states. Yeah, no, absolutely. Reducing that magazine depth has been a, of their missiles and drones has been the obvious top target along with the nuclear program for four months since the beginning of this war.
I don't know if we underestimated, if our intel wasn't adequate on the magazine depth, on the missile cities buried deep under those mountains and what kind of production capabilities they've had for drones. But at every turn, the Iranians have managed to fire these things off despite the enormous damage we've done to them and continue to hold that risk. Not only U.S. military targets, witness the soldiers that were killed in Jordan only a few weeks ago, but obviously also they've got the Gulf states scared to death that this could become an existential battle for them and their ability to sustain life if those desalination plants in the Gulf go. I mean, Riyadh's got to be evacuated.
I mean, if you have. I mean, if you focus on your desalinization plan, there's only a few of them that do a tremendous amount of work. I imagine you could defend them and maybe that there's a plan there. I would not know it. I don't have the satellite images.
I don't. see the missile capabilities in front of me, but I'm just looking overall. Do you think it's time to urge the Gulf states to have a plan offensive plan themselves? I mean, the UAE and Saudi Arabia at different times have taken action on a low-key base. But in basis, but would you think they could have signific be a significant help?
I mean, I don't know. They obviously have significant air capabilities, whether they're sufficiently interoperable with the United States U. S. plans. I think they're they feel, again, Incredibly nervous.
They want to establish some level of deterrence, which is why they've quietly hit back on occasion. And yet, at the same time, I think they have deep doubts about where this the end state of this conflict is going to be. They have some concerns about the president. The president has been back and forth a number of times on ending Iranian civilization on power plant day, on taking, you know, turning the lights off in Iran only to pull back to get an MOU that's that was completely unsatisfactory. Terrible.
And now to have their economic lifeline having been put at risk in the Strait of Hormuz. Almost all of their sea-based trade obviously goes out through Hormuz.
Now Babel Mendebah is threatened, and the United States hasn't had a definitive answer to liberate it and keep it liberated. That raises a lot of questions in their minds, I think, about how far they can go on their own to go after the Iranians. Isn't home where we all want to be? Reba here for Realtor.com, the pro's number one most trusted app. If you're hearing me, I'm going to assume you're awake.
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So would you do a joint hit, according to General Jack Keen, would involve the IDF? Cut seven. I don't think the munitions are having an impact on what we're going to do with Iran. And I think it's well known that for multiple years now, we have been sacrificing rebuilding our arsenal because of budget cuts backs. And where do you take those cuts?
And those were easy places to cut, and you were deferring problems. And those problems are coming home to roost. I think we're fully capable in my discussions with IDF and our military leaders. They have what they need to execute the President's mission. This is more about replenishing the stockpiles and how fast can we replenish them to deal with the potential of other threats.
I think that is really the central issue. But he feels like the IDF is ready to go. Would you have them in on any comprehensive military action? Yeah, if you're going to go up the escalation ladder on this, I think there's so much the IDF could do. Again, I think it's enormously risky.
It's you know, the chances of retaliation are great and significant damage are great. But if you're going to go, I think you go with the IDF. They hit at least half the targets in the first 40 days of this war, did enormous damage to Iranian leadership, to security targets in the IRGC and the besiege. There's an enormous amount the IDF is able to do. They're the best military in the Middle East, head and shoulders above everybody else, not to mention their intel capacity and things they can do internally to cause havoc within the regime itself.
I remember Donald Rumsfeld was always talking about production and efficiency. How hard is it to be a product to Arm uh arm up this country on CRs on continuing resolutions. When we're trying to figure out what to build next and the Pentagon wants to use their budget, but we just get CR after CR because we can't get together on a budget. How much does that hurt procurement? It's a disaster.
It's a disaster that's 20, 25 years in the making. Your inability to have multi-year contracts to give suppliers the confidence and predictability they need to invest in plants, have factory space into the workforce that would be required to build these modern advanced weapons. It's a huge detriment. And you only hope. that facing this crisis now against such a brutal adversary like the Iranians, if there are issues with the stockpile that are constraining and limiting and increasing risk to our forces faced with this problem, you hope that a group of people in the center, both left and right, can get together and realize we need a solution to this problem that lasts the next decade or two decades.
So Iran had a plan. Their plan was to build enough rockets, ballistic missiles, to build up their nuclear program, at the same time make them impenetrable, at the same time wipe out Israel. And by using their proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad. And they thought for a while Syria, when they had an ally there, They thought that that was the way to strangle Israel, you know, and finally get rid of that country. Number one, do you believe that was their plan?
And where do you think that plan is now? Yeah, there's no question that was their plan, Brian. And I'd add one thing. I mean, it was a bit of the North Korea model, you know, that you build up such a force of mortars, missiles, artillery on that border that you would incinerate Seoul. and 5 million, 10 million, 12 million people, including a huge number of U.S.
Citizens hold it hostage, and therefore, your nuclear programs are impenetrable. Nobody's going to go after you. That's what the Iranians have done in the Gulf. They are essentially holding the Gulf hostage as America's soft underbelly, that they will incinerate the Gulf and global energy markets if you come after them. That they've got a depth of magazine in terms of the missile and drone force that they've built up that is substantial and poses now a significant problem in spite.
on a military purely military operational level, the enormous damage we've done not only to their military, but their entire economy, their production capacity to reconstitute both their nuclear and missile programs in the future. They still got enough to cause extreme havoc, and they're pursuing that strategy with a vengeance now. And I think Keene is right. They believe they've got a boot in the American neck. You see it in their recent crazy demands they've made of President Trump.
And I believe that whether they're right or wrong, we'll see in that calculation, but they're hoping to really humiliate him. And I can see them doing some things before the midterms to make sure that he suffers a defeat, that he's not going to want to go back for another round with them after the elections. And he's got to be and so many people have said that, experts like you, John Hanna, that I think the president's got to realize that inaction, it shouldn't be an option. Yeah, and then let's give him credit. He is strangling the Iranian economy right now, slowly but surely.
We'll see if that matters to the Iranians, how long they can last. You've got to believe that even a society as brutal and totalitarian and zealot as theirs is, has some. Breaking point at some point where the people will go back into the streets. But, you know, that's a long-term bet. And the Iranians are betting that their paying threshold is a heck of a lot higher than an American Democratic government that faces midterms in three months and potential shortages in munitions and obviously the markets that are putting pressure on the American consumer.
Yeah, and lastly just with Russia right now. I was just talking with Dan Hoffman, CIA guy, and he says he doesn't think they're close. They have any interest in any type of peace talks. What do you think? Yeah, I agree as well.
I'm not sure Putin's got an acceptable diplomatic off-ramp that he could take, even in the best of circumstances. I think he's so deep and committed into this war and has led the Russian population and elite to believe that victory is at hand that I see no signs of it, both in terms of the punishment of the missile forces. He believes Ukraine is running out of obviously air defenses and patriots. And now recently he's going back after Ukrainian cargo, trying to leave the Black Sea and was filled up with grain to feed the world.
So he's trying to create his own pressure points and crisis to get the world to cave on this. Yeah, but he's not had a good year. And now the general population is feeling it. You can't be losing 20,000, 30,000 people a month and think that things are going well. I can remember back in the day when Gorbachev got out of Afghanistan because a bunch of military mobs got upset when 15,000 Soviet troops had been killed.
Yeah, now he doesn't tolerate that. John Hanna, thanks so much. It's going to be an interesting time. We'll talk to you again, hopefully. Terrific, Brian.
Thanks for having me. Good to see you again. The same here. Did you know Fox News has a wine shop? Did you also know you can get ahead and start on your Christmas shopping?
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