Former US National Security Council Communications Advisor John Kirby Talks Strait of Hormuz, Iran War

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So we're back in this same world.

Stocks and gold down, oil, and interest rates up.

With great concern about what might happen next in the Middle East

and ahead of our conversation with retired Admiral John Kirby.

And it's one that we've been really looking forward to.

I'll just bring you back to the cabinet meeting with President Trump.

So many questions, so few answers.

And mixed messages when it comes to the potential for negotiating a deal.

President saying they're lousy fighters, but they're great negotiators.

They're begging to work out a deal.

They want on to say, I don't know if we'll be able to do that.

I don't know if we're willing to do that.

Yet at the same time, he talked about the so-called present that he was given by Iran.

He teased reporters with this a couple of days ago and actually identified what that present was today.

Listen.

They said to show you the fact that we're real and solid and we're there.

We're going to let you have eight boats of oil.

I said, well, I guess we deal with the right people.

And actually, they then apologized for something they said.

And they said, we're going to send two more boats and ended up being 10 boats around.

I hope I haven't screwed up your negotiations.

But I thought it was appropriate to say because I did talk to you the other day by saying they're going to give us a present.

So when we considered the straight of four moves and this conflict, we will speak now, as Joe said,

with someone who is not only experienced having naval experience in this theater,

but also experienced in communicating around armed conflict and national security.

Retired real Admiral John Kirby is with us.

Of course, the former White House National Security Communications Advisor in the Biden administration.

Thank you so much for being here on Bloomberg TV and radio.

Admiral, obviously you know this area well.

If Iran is giving us gifts of allowing vessels to pass through the street,

if they're charging others some $2 million in order to do so, one could argue that is Iran being able to continually exercise control over this water.

Is the U.S. Navy alone able to wrestle that control back? What would it take?

It would take more than the U.S. Navy.

I did convoy escort operations back in the 80s when President Reagan sent us there to do exactly the same thing.

Make sure that the oil traffic could flow in and out safely.

And we didn't do it alone back then.

And I really don't think the U.S. Navy wants to or can do it alone today.

Now obviously we're the most powerful Navy in the world.

We have a lot of capabilities and certainly our destroyers can conduct these kinds of convoy escorts.

But it's dangerous, it's slow, it's time consuming, it's resource intensive,

and it's going to require a lot more ships than the U.S. Navy is going to be able to afford to that mission.

It could take just to get through the straight itself.

That's a good half a day, transit.

But depending on how long the route is, where you're picking the convoy up and where you're dropping it off,

I mean it could take days to a week.

And with the traffic shut down the way it's been the last few weeks,

it's going to take a while before confidence can be grown enough in the shipping industry to get back to anything near.

The semblance of traffic that was going through before this conflict started.

Well this is incredibly helpful, Admiral. It's great to see you.

It's been a long time since we've heard from you here on Bloomberg.

And so I'd like to hear a little bit more based on your experience

and what it would take to reopen the straight militarily,

because it's been suggested that we would need to have a full-blown, stand-up, a full-blown, no-fly zone

to help protect the naval vessels who would be escorting ships.

The president has talked about volume, that he needed the help of our NATO allies,

which he now says he never needed, to be able to create the scale.

Is that correct? Is that the approach the administration should be taking?

Yes, and I was glad to hear the president when he did talk about the need for allies

and partners to chip in. I think he was 100% right on that.

And back to your origin of your question is, it's not just about convoys.

It's not just about a man-on-man kind of defense, you know,

putting ships with oil tankers. It's about ISR, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance.

You have to have eyes on over that straight 24-7, so that you can see anything

the Iranians might or might not be doing.

And that requires, again, a lot of resources from the air.

You're certainly going to need seaborne assets.

And you need to worry about not just the mines.

It's not just floating mines that the Iranians could put in a water or even seabed mines.

It's their drones. I'm mostly concerned about the drones, air drones and sea drones.

Sea drones can attack by stealth. Air drones can be very, very hard to knock down.

They're very slow moving, but they fly close to the level of the water.

They can be hard to knock it out of the sky.

And it all it takes is one, one of those things, whether it's a missile, a drone.

Air or seaborn, and, of course, a mine to get through, to shut down traffic for potentially weeks.

So it's a very difficult thing to defend against, and it would require an awful lot of assets and an awful lot of time.

How would two marine expeditionary units and thousands of troops from the 82nd Airborne contribute to a mission like this, or another mission admiral?

What exactly do you think we could be getting ready for as we position these thousands of other American service members into this theater?

Difficult to know, of course, what the administration is planning.

But if we're just going to talk about the straits, the strait, the Marines could be helpful if you wanted to go after a couple of the small islands that bound the strait, which are in Iranian control,

and therefore could be used by the Iranians as bases to launch drones or even small boat attacks.

So you could put the Marines on those islands and help, again, restore a little bit of confidence in the shipping industry that you've got eyes on, that you've got a presence, and that you have the ability to defeat Iranian threats.

There's also talk, I know, about maybe using the Marines to assault Carg Island, which is that island way up in the north of the Gulf, right off the coast of Iran, about 15, 16 miles off the coast, that they use for infrastructure.

That's kind of their report of departure and embarkation for all the oil that comes out of the Gulf.

And so there's been talk about maybe the Marines taking that over.

That is a much taller order. It's a bigger island, and I suspect that the Iranians are going to want to defend it.

In fact, I saw press reports today that there are already fortifying Carg Island in anticipation of some kind of amphibious assault.

And then, of course, there's always the other option here, which when you have the 82nd Airborne coming, it certainly can't ignore it as an option, is the potential to put US troops on the ground in mainland Iran, in the area around the strait, sort of southern Iran, to try to prevent the Iranians from using their coastal facilities to attack ships in the strait.

That is a much, much taller order for the US military, and would require an awful lot of planning, organization, coordination, and of course time, and of course it's very risky, very risky indeed.

Yeah, I don't know if these are in some of the documents, the classified documents that the president had at Mar-a-Lago that mapped out Iran battle plans, Admiral.

We are seeing reports today that the Pentagon is developing options for what they're calling a final blow, and occupying Carg Island is one of them, as well as invading Iraq, if I'm pronouncing it right, the island that helps Iran keep control of the strait of Hormuz, and seizing the island of Abu Musa to that same extent.

Are these battle plans that you have seen for years, are these options that the Pentagon has been looking at for other administrations as well?

Well, I won't get into the details of operational planning, or what I was cognizant of when I was in the uniform, but I can tell you that the US military has long been looking at threats to the strait by Iran, and coming up with contingency plans for how to deal with those threats.

I have no doubt that after I left service the US military and Central Command continue to refine those plans and those contingency operations.

I'll leave it to the planners to speak about what they're thinking or what they may not be able to do.

I would just tell you that if you're going to introduce ground troops, and that certainly appears to be an option the president has not issued, there is a whole new level of risk here, and quite frankly, a whole new level of potential escalation of the war.

If you insert troops on the ground, then you're in a different kind of fight than we are right now.

Well, of course, the president hasn't ruled that out entirely, and to your point about there being some things that you are not able to communicate publicly, obviously things can be classified for a reason and strategic ambiguity can be a real strategy.

But I wonder if you see the administration as kind of straddling the line of not having credibility either as they seem to president Trump or the secretary of state, the defense secretary others aren't necessarily sending a consistent message as to what it is we are not only trying to do, but what it is we're willing to do to get there.

It's an interesting question, and I think what I spent a lot of my time focusing on the Pentagon briefings, I wish they had more traditional media in the briefing room, but when you listen to General Cain, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs talk, or when you watch the videos by Admiral Cooper, the Central Command Commander, you do get a clear sense of what they believe their military objectives are, what they've been ordered by the Commander-in-Chief to do.

And it's pretty simple, they're pretty limited objectives, but then when you listen to the political messaging, it does tend to be all over the map, and it's very hard on any given data, is it unconditional surrender, is it regime change, is it just the nuclear program, or now we're talking about maybe going after energy infrastructure on the ground in Iran, there's a lot of mixed messaging.

This administration might contend that that's good, that that is strategic ambiguity, that that confuses the Iranians, but if you are in fact in the middle of negotiations, if you are trying to end this diplomatically, then clarity and concession in message is absolutely vital, not just for the public that's paying attention like you and I are, but for the Iranians, for your enemy, and for your allies, Israel.

And it's not clear to me that the Israelis share the same strategic objectives as the United States in here, and they get a vote in how and whether this war ends.

So clarity and concession and simplicity in the message as you approach negotiations is absolutely vital, and I would hope that we'd be able to see a little bit more of that than we have in the last couple of days.

Admiral, you of course were appointed Pentagon press secretary by Chuck Hagel when he was the defense secretary, so you know what it's like to stand up in front of that room and manage a press corps in a very sensitive environment here, and I'm curious what you make of the posture that this Pentagon has taken when it comes to journalists, of course, we just saw a recent court ruling in favor of a lawsuit brought by the New York Times that struck down the administration's decision to curtail the activities of reporters.

And in response to that ruling, the Pentagon says it's going to be kicking reporters out of the building altogether. They'll build an annex, some sort of outhouse on the property where reporters will purportedly be allowed to work, although they still won't be allowed to solicit information, even if it is not deemed classified.

Is this all good for the country?

It's not only not good for the country, it's not good for the Pentagon, it's not good for Mr. Hageseth and his leadership and for what they're trying to communicate about the war efforts.

So I really hope that they revisit these policies and begin to allow more briefings to occur and more media to be in the briefing room for them and to have the press back in the building, I think is important.

When you're talking about issues of life and death, war and peace, when you're talking about the US military and the billions of dollars the American people are spending on their national defense and the literally millions of sons and daughters who are in uniform, the Pentagon has an obligation.

It's not a privilege, it's not an opportunity, it's an obligation to explain what they're doing with those tax dollars and with those young men and women in uniform and how they're using those resources to keep the country safe.

It's an absolutely sacred obligation and I always looked at it that way from the podium, so did Secretary Hagel when I worked for him, Secretary Austin when I worked for him, that we had an obligation to get up there and explain ourselves.

The other thing I would say about access to the press and having the Pentagon press there with you all day long and they were with me all day long is it makes you a better spokesman, it makes you a better policy leader.

Because you get to hear what they're hearing from their sources, you get to understand what stories they're working on, you get an opportunity to maybe shape their thinking about those stories and I think you also quite critically get a chance to make better policy.

Because there's nothing better for policy than to throw it open to the scrutiny of an independent press every day and let them poke holes in it, let them ask the tough questions.

You can actually, if you're wise in your humble as Secretary Hagel in Austin where you'll change your mind from time to time.

Spoken by someone who has been there, Admiral, it's great to see you.

We'd like to stay in touch with you as this entire story progresses. John Kirby, retired rear Admiral, former White House National Security Combs Advisor and a fascinating conversation you're only going to hear today on Bloomberg.

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