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It's Wednesday, the 25th of March.
Welcome to the president's daily brief.
I'm Mike Baker, your eyes and ears on the world stage.
And yes, still on the road.
All right, let's get briefed.
First up, the straight of Hormuz is effectively
shut down with hundreds of tankers sitting idle
and reopening it may be far more difficult
than Washington is letting on.
I'll explain the challenges behind getting tanker traffic
moving again in the straight.
Later in the show, golf nations weigh direct military action
against Iran, as repeated attacks,
push the region closer to a widening conflict.
Plus, Israel announces plans to take control
of parts of southern Lebanon, suggesting
a broader push against Hezbollah is underway.
And in today's back of the brief, the Taliban, remember them,
releases a US citizen after more than a year in captivity
in a rare moment of cooperation with Washington.
But first, today's PDB spotlight.
Hundreds of oil tankers are now sitting idle
on either side of the straight of Hormuz,
a critical artery, of course, with a global energy market
that has effectively been choked off
as the conflict with Iran continues.
As the New York Times reported this week,
nearly 500 vessels are currently stalled,
waiting for some reassurance that it's safe to move again.
As we've been reporting, oil prices are surging,
prices at the fuel pumps are rising, markets are rattled,
and President Trump has vowed to reopen the straight,
quote, one way or another.
But here's the reality.
The reopening, the straight of Hormuz,
is far more complicated than it may sound.
Let's start with the geography.
I mean, after all, who doesn't love a good geography lesson?
At its narrowest point, the straight is only 21 miles wide,
and its widest stretch, it's approximately 60 miles wide.
But the shipping lanes, as one inbound and one outbound,
are both only two miles wide.
Those narrow lanes funnel massive oil tankers
into predictable paths that run
uncomfortably close to Iran's coastline.
And that coastline isn't flat desert.
Its rugged, elevated terrain dotted with islands
that give Iranian forces clear lines of sight
and ideal positions for launching attacks.
It's a confined, highly controlled environment
that heavily favors the defender.
In practical terms, during a conflict,
such as what we have now, the straight more closely
resembles a maritime kill zone than a free flowing shipping
route.
And Iran doesn't need overwhelming force
to take advantage of that.
It just needs enough capability to make the waterway dangerous.
Anti-ship missiles, drones, fast-tack boats,
and importantly, sea mines all play a role.
Many of these systems are mobile, easily concealed,
and difficult to eliminate entirely,
even after sustained US and Israeli strikes.
You're not really eliminating the threat,
you're almost chasing it.
And the reality is, success isn't about stopping most attacks.
It's about stopping all of them.
Without that, these shipping and insurance industries
will continue to avoid the risk.
You can degrade Iran's capabilities.
You can strike at launch sites.
You can patrol the waters with advanced warships
and aircraft overhead.
But if even one drone gets through,
one missile finds its target, or one mine detonates
beneath the tanker, well, the entire equation resets.
Shipping halts insurance rates spike and confidence
when little there is will disappear overnight.
That's why mines in particular are such a game changer.
You don't even need to confirm that they're in the water.
The mere possibility is enough to force a response.
Clearing mines has slow, dangerous work
that can take weeks, featuring specialized ships,
constant air cover, and sailors operating
in some of the most exposed conditions.
And those mine clearing teams,
well, they become targets themselves.
So what would it actually take to reopen the strait?
At a minimum, a large-scale military operation.
Naval escorts to shepherd commercial tankers
through the choke point.
Mine sweepers clearing lanes ahead of them.
Aircraft overhead to intercept drones
and strike missile positions along the coast.
All of it coordinated, sustained, and resource intensive.
Even then, there's a bottleneck problem.
Before the conflict, roughly 80 oil and gas tankers
were moving through the strait each day.
Escort operations don't scale easily to that level.
You're moving ships in convoys, a handful at a time,
along predetermined, cleared routes.
That creates a backlog, hundreds of ships
waiting limited capacity to move them
in a system that struggles to catch up.
And here's the part they often gets overlooked.
It's not just a military decision.
Because at the end of the day, it's not the Pentagon
that decides when shipping resumes.
It's the insurance and shipping market.
Ship owners and insurers have to believe the risk is low enough
to justify sending vessels back into the strait.
And as long as Iran retains the ability
to take that one shot, that confidence will be fragile at best.
Even reopening the strait doesn't fully solve the problem.
Iran has already demonstrated that it can strike vessels
not just inside the choke point,
but in the broader gulf and into the Gulf of Oman.
That means ships may require protection
well beyond the narrow passage itself,
stretching US and allied resources even further.
And every step taken to secure the waterway
carries its own risks.
Escort missions could lead to direct confrontations.
Strikes on Iranian positions could escalate the conflict,
even limited ground operations, season-key islands, for example,
could widen the war in ways that Washington may not intend.
So yes, the US can reopen the strait of Hormuz.
It has the capability and it has the assets.
But restoring normal traffic, well,
that's a different question entirely.
All right, coming up next, Gulf states edge closer
to joining the fight against Iran while Israel
signals a major expansion of its campaign in Southern Lebanon.
I'll be right back.
Hey, Mike Baker here.
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Welcome back to the PDB.
As the war with Iran, near as the fourth week mark,
we're starting to see the posture across the Gulf
begin to change.
US allies that we're trying to stay on the sidelines,
find themselves leaning toward entering the fight.
As we've been tracking,
Gulf states had initially tried to stay out of this conflict,
but sustained Iranian missile and drone attacks
on US and regional assets such as oil infrastructure
are fine and reasoned,
even areas of major population centers like Riyadh,
well, that makes that stance increasingly untenable.
So at a certain point,
these attacks on the regime stop being something
the Gulf states can just absorb,
and that's exactly where Saudi Arabia now finds itself.
The kingdom, which had initially refused
to allow its territory or airspace
to be used for strikes on Iran,
is now quietly reversed course,
agreeing to let American forces operate
out of a King Fad airbase.
Now that's a significant shift.
Saudi Arabia's foreign minister made that clear,
warning that, quote,
patience with Iranian attacks is not unlimited, end quote.
At the same time,
this isn't just happening on the military side.
The United Arab Emirates, UAE,
now finds itself opening an economic front in this war.
Authorities in the UAE have begun shutting down
Iranian-linked institutions,
including the Iranian hospital and Iranian club,
while signaling that they could freeze billions of dollars
in regime assets.
UAE officials say the measures are targeting networks
tied to the IRGC,
with the monarchy stating the quote,
certain institutions directly linked to the Iranian regime
will be closed under targeted measures.
Now, it's worth pausing on that for a second.
The UAE has long been a financial hub
for Iranian businesses,
cutting off that relationship,
impacts Iran's ability to access foreign currency
and global trade.
This move comes after the UAE has had to fend off
more than 2,000 Iranian attacks since the war began.
But I want to point out that the pressure on Gulf states
isn't just coming from what Iran has already done.
It's coming from what the regime may be signaling
that it could do next.
As I previously mentioned,
Tehran has begun asserting that it wants a role
in controlling the state of Hormuz.
As our regular listeners are aware,
Iran has effectively halted traffic
by targeting commercial vessels
while allowing select ships through.
Now, the regime has floated the idea
of charging tolls to use the straight,
effectively turning the critical waterway
into a long-term economic lever.
And for Gulf monarchies, well, that's a red line.
Because even partial control over Hormuz
would give Iran enormous influence
over global energy flows,
something that Saudi Arabia and its neighbors
are very unlikely to allow.
So it's against that backdrop.
The conversations are beginning to shift
in a more consequential way.
Over the past week,
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman
has been in direct contact with President Trump,
reportedly pushing him to continue the assault on Iran
and potentially expand the effort.
NBS argues that the current US Israel campaign
presents what he describes as a quote,
historic opportunity to remake the Middle East
by eliminating the regime.
That's according to the New York Times
citing people briefed by US officials.
Sources familiar with these discussions
state that the Saudi Crown Prince
has urged Washington to target Iran's energy infrastructure.
Supposedly, NBS has even floated the possibility
that Washington deploy ground troops to seize key assets.
At the same time, Gulf states are still weighing
the risks of joining the fight.
Directly entering the war would turn them
into open combatants against a regional rival,
exposing critical infrastructure
and population centers to even more retaliation.
There's also the concern that if Trump were to scale
back the conflict, Gulf states could be left
dealing with a more aggressive Iran on their own
if they were to enter the fight,
possibly sparking a long-term war
if the regime were to remain largely intact.
I want to turn now to Southern Lebanon
where we're starting to get a better understanding
of Israel's plans on the ground
as they point to a more permanent shift
in how Jerusalem intends to eliminate
a Hezbollah along its northern frontier.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said the IDF
is now preparing to expand the territory
that it controls in Southern Lebanon
and it's doing so with a very specific line in mind.
That would be the Latani River.
Now we've talked about this specific geographic marker
before the river at its closest point
sits only a few miles from Israel's northern border
and at its farthest stretches about 20 miles
into Lebanese territory.
For years, the Latani has effectively served as a buffer
between Israel and Hezbollah.
Now Katz is signaling that Israel
is preparing to hold everything south of the Latani,
not as a temporary measure,
but as part of a longer-term security posture.
He said, quote,
hundreds of thousands of residents of Southern Lebanon
who were evacuated will not return south
of the Latani River until the security of northern Israel
is assured end quote.
So that's a clear, if not the clearest indication,
that Israel is no longer just trying to push Hezbollah
back from the border,
but to prevent Iran's strongest proxy
from reestablishing itself in the area altogether.
On the ground, we've been tracking Israeli forces
already shaping that reality.
Katz says the military has bombed at least five bridges
along the Latani.
Rouse, he says,
Hezbollah uses to move weapons
and reinforcements into the fight.
The moves by the IDF aim at cutting off Hezbollah's ability
to flow its terrorist forces into Southern Lebanon
and reconstitute along Israel's northern edge.
And of course, this didn't begin with the current operation.
As I've mentioned, following the last ceasefire in late 2024,
Israeli forces had established five outposts
inside Southern Lebanon near the border.
What's happening now builds on that footprint,
expanding beyond those limited positions
and moving towards something that looks much closer
to sustained territorial control.
Inside Jerusalem's government,
there is pressure to go even further.
The hardline Israeli finance minister
has called for the Latani River to become
not just Israel's new security buffer,
but rather its northern boundary,
saying, quote,
the current campaign in Lebanon
must end with a fundamental change, end quote.
And that reflects the broader view inside parts
of the Israeli leadership
that this moment isn't just about responding to Hezbollah attacks,
but redrawing the map permanently.
That idea is somewhat visible
and how the current Israeli military push
in Southern Lebanon is actually being carried out.
The operation began earlier this month.
After Hezbollah fired rockets at Israel
in solidarity with Iran,
following the US-Israeli strikes on Tehran.
Since then, Israeli forces have pushed into Lebanon,
carrying out extensive their strikes across the country,
including in Beirut,
targeting Hezbollah commanders,
fighters and infrastructure
tied to the terror group's operations.
At the same time,
Kat says the IDF is systematically targeting border villages
using what he described as the quote Rafa model.
That's a reference to IDF operations in Gaza
where entire areas were cleared and turned to rubble
to deny Hamas the ability to reuse those positions.
All right, coming up next in the back of the brief,
the Taliban releases a detained American
after more than a year in custody.
More on that when we come back.
Hey, Mike Baker here.
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In today's back of the brief,
a rare bit of good news out of Afghanistan,
where the Taliban has released an American citizen
after more than a year in detention.
But as is often the case in situations like this,
the story is a bit more complicated than it first appears.
Dennis Coil, a 64-year-old American academic,
had been held by the Taliban since January of 2025,
reportedly pulled from his home in Kabul
and kept without formal charges,
much of that time and near solitary conditions.
This week, the Taliban officials announced his release,
describing it as a pardon tied to the Eid holiday
and granted it the request of his family.
The U.S. government confirmed Coil's release,
crediting a combination of diplomatic efforts
and persistent advocacy from his family.
Behind the scenes intermediaries,
including Qatar and the United Arab Emirates,
helped facilitate the negotiations,
an important reminder that,
with no formal diplomatic relationship
between Washington and the Taliban,
these kind of talks have to happen indirectly,
often quietly and over extended periods of time.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the release a positive step,
but he also made clear that this isn't the end of the story.
Other Americans are still being held by the Taliban
and U.S. officials continue to accuse the group
of what they describe as, quote, hostage diplomacy,
detaining foreign nationals as leverage and negotiations.
That framing is important,
because while the Taliban is presenting this
as a goodwill gesture tied to a religious holiday,
Washington sees a broader pattern,
one that mirrors tactics used by other adversaries,
including Iran and Russia.
And that, my friends, is the president's daily brief
for Wednesday, the 25th of March.
Now, if you have any questions or comments,
please reach out to me at pdb at thefirsttv.com
And please don't forget to check out our YouTube channel,
just wander on over to YouTube or mosey on over to YouTube,
whichever you prefer, and search up at president's daily brief.
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say it's the finest YouTube channel they've ever seen.
I'm Mike Baker, and I'll be back later today
with the pdb afternoon bulletin.
Until then, stay informed, stay safe, stay cool.
The President's Daily Brief
