Markets Not Ready For What's Coming: Iran Just Unleashed Deadliest Weapon Warns Expert | Hal Kempfer

We're going to examine what's next for the Iran conflict, will American troops be put on the ground?

How long will this war last and what are the possible paths from here?

What will happen to the oil market to answer these questions we're getting?

A veteran with real experience joining us now is retired Marine, Lieutenant Colonel Hal Kemfer, CEO and founder of Global Risk Intelligence and Planning.

Kemfer is a retired Marine Intelligence Officer with 24 years of service and former director of Intelligence for the first Marine Expeditionary Brigade.

Here's the latest on Iran.

Today is 11th March 11th, day 12th of Operation Epic Fury.

After the US and Israel launch joint strikes against Iran on February 28th, killing Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Kaminyeh in the opening hours, his son Moushtaba Kaminyeh was named successor on Sunday.

According to the latest reports, at least seven American service members are dead. Roughly 140 have been wounded.

Iran says more than 1,300 of its civilians have been killed. Across the wider region, hundreds more are dead in Lebanon, the Gulf States and Israel.

Iran has so far fired over 500 ballistic missiles and naval missiles and nearly 2,000 drones at targets stretching from Tel Aviv to Kuwait.

The United States has struck more than 5,000 targets inside Iran since Saturday alone.

According to Centcom Commander Admiral Brad Cooper, since the first 24 hours of this campaign, Iranian ballistic missiles and drone attacks have dropped drastically.

Some reports claim that Iran's missile launch rate has dropped roughly 92% since day one, but Tehran retains over 80% of its small boats and mine layers.

The Strait of Hormuz is effectively closed. More than 150 commercial ships are stranded, three were hit by projectiles this morning alone.

Roughly 18 million barrels of oil per day normally transit the strait and most of that supply is now gone.

WTI oil hit $119 a barrel on Monday the highest since 2022, since the invasion of Ukraine, before falling back down to around $88 a Monday.

And just in today, the international energy agency said that its 32 member countries would release 400 million barrels of oil from their strategic reserves, which would be the largest coordinated release since 2022.

President Trump has spoken directly with Kurdish opposition leaders inside Iran about taking up arms against the region but has since pulled back calling the war complicated.

So I just want to say that President has not made a final decision, although he remains open to the ideas.

Mr. President, you've said the war is, quote, very complete, but your defense secretary says this is just the beginning.

So which is it, and how long should Americans be working on this?

Well, I think you could say at both the beginning, it's the beginning of building a new country.

Do you have to take him out? Does he have a target on his bag?

You mean the new Supreme Leader? You mean the Sun?

How can there be an Iran? Well, I don't want to say that.

But you know, I was disappointed because we think it's going to lead to just more of the same problem for the country.

So I was disappointed to see their choice.

So what is next, Colonel Kemper, welcome to the show and honor to host you today.

Oh, thank you, David.

How let's talk about, I think the question on a lot of people's minds, which is, is Iran the new Iraq or Afghanistan?

In other words, is this the beginning of another 10 year war in the Middle East that will involve American troops in the region?

One historian has called this America's Third Gulf War and warned the unintended consequences could merit those of 2003 with mission accomplished actually lasting decades. What's your view?

Well, veteran of the first two Gulf Wars, I sure hope not.

The hope is that the mission can be accomplished with causing enough damage to the way that Iran projects power.

The projects may have might be a better way of putting it, you know, using their ballistic missiles, their drones, their maritime capabilities.

And of course, their proxy network of paramilitaries and terrorists all around the region.

The hope is that this would be something that staunches that that ends any potential, not just aspirations, but capabilities of the radical regime in Iran to ever acquire a nuclear weapon.

And of course, the means to deliver that nuclear weapon to other countries. So that, that's the hope.

Now, with all of that said, that doesn't require a ground evasion. That doesn't require a large movement like you saw with desert storm or with the opening weeks of Iraqi freedom, where you see this massive ground evasion heading north or heading in, you know, certainly I have very vivid memories of going across Kuwait,

in a hundred hours. And so you're not going to see something like that. You might see boots on the ground, but they might be special operations boots.

There are a number of targets there tied to ballistic missiles, drones, command and control, and particularly to the nuclear program, where they really might want to put boots on the ground, you know, actually going in there, ascertaining the situation, destroying what's ever there in terms of offensive capability.

And in case of nuclear material, maybe even taking it with them or something like that, there's a lot of possibilities there, but, but hopefully you won't see a ground evasion, but what you are seeing is a very, very robust,

air strike and missile program, and also a growing naval program, as we've seen, particularly when you look at things like a US submarine, you know, basically sinking a ship with a torpedo.

We haven't seen that since World War II, so that's that's kind of a big deal.

So we're going to get it into the details of the Iranian military just admitted and their sea mine operation that's going on in the straight up for moves.

But over the weekend on Sunday, the a new supreme leader was appointed, the a total of sun, mush, mush taba, hamaniye was successor.

And this doesn't sound like a regime change.

No, it's not. It's it's more the same.

Mishabba was was kind of the gatekeeper for his father, you know, the I told Ali, come any who was killed in that strike.

Now, it's not clear.

There's a lot of reports coming out, particularly right now that Mishabba was injured either in the strike.

They say in the opening days or whatever, which could have been he was proximate to wherever that big strike took place.

There's also something that they said who he has survived an assassination attempt, so maybe it was something separate.

But he did suffer injuries. Apparently his foot's injured.

He's got a significant facial laceration.

Whatever it is, it's enough that's kept him out of the pictures.

He hasn't shown up. He's made no, no public appearances, anything like that.

So he was a safe bet.

He is definitely a consistency within that regime.

There is no change.

I imagine he's going to be just as radical or more radical than his father.

And he's going to and he has a very close relationship with the Revolutionary Guard Corps, which does it where he's kind of where his orientation is within the body politic.

If you will, the bureaucracy.

Now I will I will point out a potential opportunity.

Okay, so they put somebody in there who is very much aligned with the Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Despite everything that's said, not the highest levels to get the highest levels of the regular military.

The Arteche and of course the regular secular police forces.

To get to those highest levels, you've pretty much got to be a ideologically better.

Shall we say to make sure that you're one with the regime.

But at the lower levels, that's not always true.

Those are they're just professionals that are in the military or the police forces, whatever.

And they do or not as ideological as by siege, which is that militia that's under the used to be under the RGC that was brutally suppressing protesters or the RGC itself.

So there is a possibility with this choice of supreme leader that you could see not only frustration with the vast majority of the Iranian people, 80, 90%.

But you could see some real frustration with the military, particularly the Navy, but also the Army who have taken and the Air Force.

The Navy and the Air Force have basically been eviscerated by this by these attacks.

They could be very frustrated with what you know looking at the regime and saying, what have you done?

We no longer have a Navy and an Air Force because of you and the Army is probably looking at this saying, why are we putting up with these guys?

That to me is a, that's a possibility. That's always one we've talked about.

Could the secular military and police forces turn on these theocratic regime-focused things like the Revolution of Garcourt and Basitian?

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I'm reading some reports how that the US is, well, it's costing them a lot of money for the US military to sustain this operation.

So according to the Hill published article published yesterday the Pentagon burned through roughly $5.6 billion munitions in the first two days of the Iran War.

Other reports claim that the West doesn't have enough munitions for a sustained operation.

Is that true?

There's a limit to the amount of munitions we have.

There are other contingencies too.

There was a lot of reports prior to sink kicking off that there was a lot of discussion in the Pentagon.

Discussion from the Pentagon going to the White House saying, look, if something happens in the Far East, particularly with China and Taiwan, will we have the armaments, will we have the weaponry, the ammunition that we need to do something?

And I never heard exact numbers attached.

I heard some broad estimates, but the fear was that we wouldn't have enough ammunition for other contingencies around the world.

This is taking a phenomenal amount of weaponry to do this, particularly when you talk high-value items like Tomahawk missiles, which are not cheap, very expensive, and a number of other things like missiles for Patriot missile batteries are not cheap.

One of the things that we're kind of emphasizing now is we're using these new Lucas drones, which is actually a US adaptation of the Shaheed 136 drone that Iran developed.

And there are a lot cheaper about, I think, 35,000 a piece or something, which is much less expensive than a million dollar Tomahawk missile, which actually is more than a million.

So that's one thing. It doesn't have as much firepower, but it can loiter and do a lot of other things, which is very valuable.

Then the other thing is we're actually going to Ukraine and trying to get some of the drone interceptors, so we don't have to use these expensive air defense missiles to take out these relative cheap drones.

So, yeah, it's big concern. Big concern with this. Now, if you're in the armament's business, if you're in the armament's industry, it's a great time to be in that industry, because we're going to have to, we're already starting to cut contracts as is Europe in rebuilding this capability.

So if you're an investor, you're looking at some of these companies going, that's where I want to put my money right now, because business is good.

But how do the opening days of the Iran war look in comparison to the opening days of Iraq, where you were involved, for example, just in terms of the munitions used in the types of targets struck by US forces?

It's a little bit different. First off, Iran is a much bigger country than Iraq, a vastly bigger country than Kuwait.

So when you just look at targets, you're looking at more target sets across a larger country.

So that's a different thing. So it's tough to really compare that. Also, the price is tough to compare. You talk about 20 years ago, 30 years ago, in terms of what munitions cost then.

So it's tough to say that, but I would say we're using a lot of munitions. I don't know if it was the same five point. I don't know if it's the same equivalent of 5.6 billion over the first two days.

That doesn't surprise me, but what I will say is it's had an effect. About 90%. There's a decrease in about 90% of the ballistic missile launches coming from Iran from its peak period, which was about the first day.

So that's significant. About somewhere in mid 80s, 85% of the drones have been reduced in terms of that.

So yes, there was a big expenditure up front, but the other side was, and this is where it's always difficult. Yes, you can always calculate how much it spends. How much did we save in terms of damage?

And if you say, well, it costs a lot up front, but we stopped them from firing all these missiles. So maybe we saved a lot on the back end because less buildings were destroyed, less loss alive, less everything. Yeah. So it's, it's a difficult equation.

So Iran has fired over 500 ballistic missiles and naval missiles and over 2,000 drones since the beginning of the conflict targeting target stretching from Tel Aviv to Kuwait in the Gulf.

The United States has struck more than 5,000 targets in Iran since Saturday alone, but just on the Iranian front, some people observers would argue, well, the US and Israel failed to contain the first missile strikes from Iran.

Why weren't these missile installations taken out and why were civilian targets struck? Why weren't they completely eliminated and the ability to strike with missiles eliminated in the first 24 hours?

I mean, some reports claim that Iran's missile launch rate has dropped roughly 92% since day one, but still a lot of damage was done. What happened there?

Well, first off, even with, even with everything we had over there, you can only hit so many things at once. You know, it's not like, it's not like you get a chance to go on and say, hey, we're going to reduce our missiles before you fire didn't do that. Now what I am hearing is that we did a amazing job shutting down command and control.

There were some things that were, it's not very clear. Obviously the morning isn't great, but it basically says cyber command and US space command were very busy at the outset, diminishing the ability of the Iranian regime to basically command control its missile and drone forces.

And I didn't notice that they were a little slow off the mark, shall we say from the initial strikes to when they start launching now you only have so many planes, you only have so many missiles that you can hit in such a time period.

So they took out a lot, but there is no perfect way to take out everything and so many things like the tells the transporter that, you know, erect launcher systems, those big things that come out and put missile up any fire.

Those things are hidden underground. So they will pop out and if you catch them while they're out of the revetments, while they're out of their tunnels, you can take them out. But once they go back underground, it's very, very difficult to take them out.

So that's a, that's kind of a, you know, time, time intensive sort of thing where you have to literally sit on top of them and wait for those to pop out.

We had a, we had a similar issue with the Scuds during desert storm. That was where we really looked at this. We said, yeah, we got a, we have put, you know, from the time we get a sensor reading to the time we hit that thing, which we called sensor to target that we had to close that gap as fast we can.

And that regard, I think we've done a pretty good job overall from what I can tell, but, but with that said, you know, war isn't dirty business.

Now, as far as hitting civilian targets, critical infrastructure and stuff, non military targets, that was an Iranian strategic decision. I think they're going to pay, they are paying and they're going to pay an enormous price for that.

I think historians will go back and say, that was probably one of the biggest mistakes that I ran made with opening up this whole target set with all the Arab countries Turkey and elsewhere.

Right. Let's talk about some of these ballistic missiles that Iran has in its arsenals, specifically the hypersonic missiles. I'm going to talk about next.

Fatalk 1 and Fatalk 2, the newer one unveiled in 2023, supposedly, with a range of up to 1500 kilometers, mock 13 to mock 15 speed, as claimed by the Iranians, warhead approximately 200 kilograms, length approximately 12 meters, use for the first time, just a couple of weeks ago, March 1.

My question is, well, a couple of questions. First of all, how much risk do these actually pose to U.S. assets in particular carriers and carrier battle groups?

I'm guessing the Navy wouldn't have moved two carrier strike groups into the region if they thought this is a threat.

I would say not much from a naval standpoint, from a carrier task force standpoint, is it something they watch? Absolutely.

But what's the ability of them to accurately target a carrier? That's where we kind of hit them in a major way.

It's one thing to hit a fixed building that's on the map that is not going to move.

A building isn't going anywhere. A facility isn't going to go anywhere. A military base is going to go anywhere.

Ships on the other hand are never in the same place. They're always moving.

So hitting a ship, a moving ship, somewhere out at sea, particularly if we shut down their intelligence surveillance reconnaissance capabilities,

offshore, that doesn't pose much of a threat.

Now, do these hypersonic missiles pose a threat? Yes. Some of them have actually been launched from approaching the Houthis into Israel while back.

We saw where a couple of them actually got through the air defense zone.

The iron dome got through the arrow one, arrow two missiles got through the David sling, all that got in and hit stuff.

So that was a big problem that they weren't getting through.

And we have reports that some of these have been used by Iran with some effect, you know, was significant effect with this one.

But they don't have a lot of those.

And the question is really, and this was somebody brought this up. They go, you know, if you got 90 ballistic missiles sitting in a, you know, underground tunnel complex, these, what they call missile cities, these underground missile cities.

And you have no way to launch them. You take out all the launch systems.

You basically have a useless tunnel full of missiles that you can't use.

And so that's where we've been going in there. And I said, we should say collectively Israel, the US have been going in there.

And hitting the launcher systems. So even if you have the missiles, if you can't launch them, they're useless.

At some point want to go and destroy them. But right now you just want to stop their ability to actually utilize them.

So in that regard, yes, the missiles always look impressive. I'm always a little skeptical of what the Iranian say about their capabilities.

Just like I'm skeptical of what Russia or China always says about their capabilities.

So everything, everything is, you know, faster, quicker, you know, there's no way we can stop it. It's all, you know, the, you know, why you call marketing hyperbole that you sometimes will hear where people say, oh, this system will do everything.

And they say that, look, it's a capability, but it's not, it's not as, it's not as significant.

I think it certainly is the arrange to make it out to be there's been some debate as to whether or not Iran has the arsenal to hit the US mainland.

Do they have intercontinental ballistic missiles that could target the continental mainland US?

To my knowledge, they really don't. They do have missiles they can get up in Eastern Europe.

All right. They now they have the capability of maybe one doing something where it would orbit or that's possible.

But I would also say if it's just one, we also have the ability probably to knock that out as well.

I haven't seen anything that indicates that they have any intercontinental ballistic missile capability to speak of.

There was some fear initially that Iran could put a submarine off the US coast.

The, you know, the submarines like the Kilo class submarines, which are not great.

And actually the Kilo class submarines biggest threat was that they would sit at the bottom of the straight of her moves and just sits there quietly and then wait for a target to appear.

That, that kind of got eliminated three of the four were in maintenance, which has always been a perennial problem with the Iranian Navy.

And then the fourth a satellite photo a few days back showed it sitting in and port with a very large hole in its hole.

All right, which is another way of saying it's no longer a submarine or if it does go under the water, it will never come back.

In our regard, I just don't see where they have a big threat right now.

Could they develop a threat? That's significant and unimpeded.

Yes, if you look at how fast their missile program was going, they would have eventually had an intercontinental ballistic missile unless something was done to stop that.

Well, these hypersonic missiles, how much they tip the scale of power in the Middle East itself, the iron dome.

Some say has been rendered ineffective in Israel by these hypersonic missiles.

Yes, a lot of them happened shot down, but yes, some of them get, they get through.

Colonel, tell us about what needs to be done now to advance defense systems against these new weapons.

I would say it's already being done.

There's a number of things are being taken into account.

Some of it is using existing technology, but using it in a different way.

You change the tactics, you know, when is the missile coming in?

What type of warhead would you like to use to stop that missile from coming in?

There's a lot of it's using existing air defense capabilities, but using it in a different way because you have a missile with a different characteristic.

That's being done.

There's also some very advanced stuff, not just in the missiles, but there's some very advanced stuff being used with direct energy and lasers.

Right now, it seems to be most of that focused as a cheap way to take out drones.

Frankly, from a targeting standpoint, drones are a lot easier to hit than a ballistic missile.

In many ways, yes, they can maneuver, but the other side is that they don't move as fast.

So that's working under plenty of drone targets to be hit, but I think at some point we're going to see this change dramatically.

Once we see lasers and direct energy systems come on in a major way, I think that's going to change the whole vulnerability picture in terms of drones and ballistic missiles and hypersonic missiles in its entirety.

Can you comment on some of the air defense systems that Iran claims to have?

So including the Russian made S 300 and S 400 air defense systems and recently acquired from China, more advanced HQ 9B long range service to air missiles.

Can these actually detect stealth aircraft like the F-35 and B-2s?

I don't really know. I think the F-35 and the B-2s certainly have the capability, technologically speaking, but also have certain tactics that they employ with what they do that they can defeat these systems.

The S 300 system isn't that new. It's been around for a while, and there is so much incumbent knowledge on the capabilities and limitations of the S 300 and the associated radars that I'm not worried about that.

The Chinese system, I don't think they have much of that as I recall, and frankly, when you hear kind of these broad things like we took out their air defense systems, that's not a very specific statement.

But what from what I hear from that is certainly those are the systems that get prioritized for elimination, the lesser capable systems you work down the list.

So I don't know that those systems actually pose a significant threat at this time towards any of our aircraft.

In fact, what we have is from what I can tell air superiority over Iran, and we achieve that within, I think we achieved it from the outset of this war we had air superiority.

In certain areas we have air supremacy, which means that basically our aircraft can work on a post.

The goal would be to have air supremacy over all of Iran.

Once we have air supremacy over Iran, we can pretty much hit anything we want at any time, any place with whatever we have to hit it with.

And at that point, you're kind of hitting where it was the 12-day war last June towards the end with Israel, where they appeared to have air supremacy in large swaths of Iran.

That has a psychological dimension too. Once the Iranian people realize that the government can't protect them in any way from aircraft.

You know, the fear is that they will, you know, they'll throw up nationalist sentiments.

And those opposed to regime might say, well, we're being attacked by foreign invaders, so we have to back the regime even though we hate them.

The other side, as they may look at it and say, this, this foreign invader is trying to enable us to overthrow the regime.

And now the regime can't do anything. They can't move. They can't move their forces.

And if we come out in the streets, they could actually hit, you know, the besiege forces units or the hit the Ryder GC units in ways they couldn't hit them before.

And if they can take them out, that means that the protesters potentially could take over government buildings, take over government.

I'm not saying it would be an easy fate to comply, but I am saying that they could actually accomplish quite a bit.

And, you know, I will go back, let me just go back a little bit. You know, everyone says, you know, with these, with these regimes, they go, you know, it was always considered impossible that they could be overthrown.

And then after it happens, everyone says it was inevitable. And I remember 89 to 91.

We'd watch all these Warsaw past countries eventually, the Soviet Union itself, if we go, no, they won't fall.

No, Chichesky will never be overthrown or Romania. That will never happen. And then literally as you get it out of your mouth, you go, oh, okay, he's dead.

All right, I guess he's out. So, so some of these things that seem very difficult, if almost impossible, can turn inevitable very quickly.

Well, when we talk about air supremacy, how, what's the military's answer to low cost drones, like they should head drones, you were talking about earlier, they supposedly cost around $35,000 to make.

You can make them with commercial parts, which is important. And the Patriot missiles used to intercept them cost roughly $4 million.

We're talking about asymmetric warfare at the extreme here. And, you know, economically it doesn't make a lot of sense.

So when you were in service, yeah, what did you did the army and Air Force prepare for low cost drone swarms?

Yeah, he actually there's been a very, very aggressive program to try and to develop programs. In fact, I understand there is a low cost drone interceptor.

I think it's running about 15, 30,000 something like that that we're sending over there. And the only problem we have is we're behind the park curve.

I'll be the first to say we have been behind the park curve on drone and counter drone for a number of years.

And as we watched what was happening in Ukraine, you know, it was becoming painfully obvious that we had been pursuing these high end drones when we needed to be pursuing these less expensive, less capable, but a lot, you know, much easier to manufacture and to, you know, do swarms and stuff like that.

And we've been ignoring that. So we do have systems. The problem is I think we're in a little bit of a deficit in terms of being able to field enough of them right now.

So what you're seeing with this is we're saying, look, take out the launchers, try to limit the drones. That way the interceptor drones that we can get in there will be more effective because there'll be less incoming that they have to deal with.

So in your opinion, what are the most devastating weapons that the Iranians currently possess? And they could be hard weapons or soft weapons, things that could turn the scale in their favor right now.

Well, I don't think ballistic missiles is good. Yes, it's a, you know, I'd have put it at the top of this is potential. But I think that that has been dealt with in such a way that no longer poses a threat that it did.

I think the ones we have to look at right now are sea sea mines in the straight of hormones. And that's from a strictly economic perspective.

I mean, if you're sitting in the cities, you know, if you're sitting in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, you know, Doha, you're saying, well, sea mine isn't going to come out of the ocean and destroy my building like a ballistic missile or a drone might.

True, but you can't move oil and liquefied natural gas to the straight of her moves. And that really is the economic engine of the person golf.

So dealing with the sea mines, taking out the plethora of revolutionary dark horse small boats that not only do mining, but also are used for other types of attacks.

That is a big one. And then of course, the other one is taking out those anti-ship missiles along the coast, particularly in the straight of her moves.

If we can get the straight of her moves open, if we can get the shipping flowing, then and certainly at that point, you know, you can, you can assume that Iran would be unable to ship anything, you know, whether you want to call it a naval blockade.

It's a de facto naval blockade because of what's going on. That would change all the math. And you know, Iran going into this was in horrific economic shape.

That's why people were protesting in the streets in December and January, because the economy is simply failing to deliver.

At this point, there really isn't, and I don't want to be overoptimistic, but I'm just looking at this from an economic perspective.

There really isn't a way that the regime can continue with the current situation.

This is what the president had to say in regards to sea mines. I am pleased to report that within the last few hours we have hit and completely destroyed.

Ten inactive mine laying boats and or ships with more to follow according to Forbes.

There's been no official confirmation in Iran has put mines in the straight of though off record, US intelligence sources reported a few dozen have been laying, have been late in recent days.

How if mines were late by the Iranians, how long would the Navy need to take to clear at the straight of her moves?

Really depends on how many there are. This is not the first time we dealt with mines. You may recall in the 80s, Iran was putting sea mines into the person golf as well.

That was when we did our flagging operations where we actually took a lot of the tankers going in out of the golf.

We basically put them under US flag so we can do a naval escort to take them through.

Outer back in the 80s we had a lot more minesweepers so we could actually go through that.

There is a rather morbid joke that they use. They say every ship is a minesweeper once.

That's a horrible way to look at it. But it is true. But we really need a way to safely remove those mines.

There are a lot of different capabilities that we could use to take those mines out. There are some interesting drone capabilities.

I don't know if we have those fully filled yet to deal with sea mines as well.

But if we can quirk up the sea mines, if we can stop it from being deployed in large numbers, hundreds of mines, potentially thousands of sea mines being put out there.

If we can prevent that from happening and then orchestrate, shape the battle space in other ways to end this war faster, then we can probably get the straight of her moves open sooner.

And with that, that takes away an enormous amount of economic strain that comes from this conflict.

So here's a trillion dollar question I guess. This is the chart that's been circulating on social media posted by Luke Grumman.

Here are straight of foremost total tanker transit calls according to the source macro bond.

It's been plummeting in the last couple of days down to zero.

So the straight of foremost is you're aware roughly transits 20% of global oil supply every single day.

And with that gone, a lot of Asian countries in particular that need import oil through that region are harder to hit.

We'll talk about that in just a minute.

But from a military perspective, how what needs to be done to reverse this trend, get things back to normal.

Just walk us through the process that the military, the Navy, and the Air Force needs to do and roughly how long it would take.

We want to know how long the straight of her moves roughly is going to get shut down here.

Well, to go in there around the straight of her moves to deal with all the threats emining from Bunder Abbas, that's going to take a while.

There's anti-ship missiles that are in revetments that are in areas are difficult to hit with aircraft.

So that's going to take a while. You may see some of Lucas drones sitting up there.

Thing is, once they're exposed, it doesn't take a heavy warhead, not 2,000 pounds or 500 pounds, something like that.

You can hit it with a smaller warhead.

So those Lucas drones, those low cost unmanned combat, unmanned aviation systems, those can go in there and we have deployed those over.

So those can be sitting there as a body set, although they are kamikaze.

So at some point, they can loiter for a while, but at some point, they actually got to hit something.

So that's something that we have to take into consideration.

We don't have probably as many of those as we'd like to, but we have deployed them.

The other thing too is, though, you might see, and this is where we talk about Boots on the ground.

Again, I go back to special operations.

You might start seeing some things like maybe amphibious raids or something like that or deeper set raids further in,

ones that aren't further in from the coast.

Things that do not look like 1980, where we went and tried to do the rescue mission in Tehran of the U.S. diplomats,

some that's closer to the coast, stuff that we can more easily support from both a maritime and an aviation standpoint.

Well, we don't have to worry about a bunch of refueling aircraft, stuff like that.

Those are the things where that's where you're going to find those anti-ship missiles actually located.

And so we can take those out.

And then the other one is to take out those plethora of small boats.

And a lot of that is, again, they're small boats.

You don't have to have a big warhead to do that.

You can do it with a relatively small warhead.

So taking out those boats, taking out the anti-ship missiles, when all of that's done,

and of course, the other issue is not quite sure how many,

but they have a lot of, the Revolution Guard Corps has these little midget submarines.

So we want to take those out as well.

Once that is dealt with, then we can open it up.

Now, will that take two weeks, three weeks, four weeks?

That's anybody's guess.

It's going to take weeks to really do that.

And again, then it depends on how much risk we want to assume

and putting boots on the ground or using other resources in order to eliminate these weapon systems.

But once it's gone, it's gone.

And then the straight could reopen.

Well, according to reports, three ships have been hit so far as of Wednesday.

And it's been reported that one of the ships hit was a Thai cargo ship that carried civilians.

So how does this impact the international community?

At a certain point, other countries would have to step in to intervene

or where they just continually put pressure on Israel in the U.S. to end this quickly.

Well, they're always going to put pressure to end it quickly.

You may have seen Cutter today came out and said,

hey, let's try and work diplomacy or something like that as well.

But I think it was, it was a worthwhile thing for I think for Cutter to say,

I don't think it's going to actually result in much from the Iranian regime.

But with that, you saw a few ships.

And I should mention there are some ships that are kind of hugging the other coast,

if you will, and trying to get through the straight of her moods or trying to bypass this.

There is a one shipping line where the ship owner actually interrounds that it looked.

If I didn't like risk, I wouldn't be in the shipping business.

And he's telling his ships to try and basically run the straight to see if they can get through.

Now, the U.S. has said that they're going to try and set up some sort of naval escort to get ships through.

I don't think we're quite ready for that.

I think we have to shape the battle space on the Iranian coast in such a way that we can mitigate the risk

and control the amount of anti-ship capabilities that Iran can use in a given time.

But you are seeing there's a risk of a number of ships.

You know, we got these three ships that were hit.

That's obviously a big concern that that's going to happen.

China is trying to get its ships through.

You know, Iran, ironically, if they can identify correctly, they may actually let some of the Chinese ships go through.

The question is, what are we going to do?

Are we going to let China bring out ships full of oil or liquefied natural gas, which is certainly full of oil?

Are we going to just stand by and let that happen?

Are we going to try and stop those ships?

Do we want to assume the risk that we go with trying to stop those ships in some way?

So there's a lot of risk going all around.

There's another way to put it.

But that's what we have to consider.

So according to Reuters, just on Chinese ships, China buys more than 80% of Iran's shipped oil.

It says data from 2025.

China purchased an average of 1.38 million barrels per day.

That represents 13% of the total oil it imported by sea.

So a significant portion of China's oil demand comes from Iran.

What's currently happening right now?

Are the Iranians letting oil tankers flow through China?

Well, they're trying to.

Right now, everything's kind of slowed down.

I hear that some tankers may be coming out to go to China.

I don't know if the pipelines could sustain using the Gulf of Belman, the southern coast as an alternative to what they do.

There's so much that's invested in Carc Island.

It's certainly firms of natural gas, but so much that's built up there.

If they can't move stuff through the strait, they can't move stuff through the strait.

There is a double-edged sword, which Iran says,

well, we're not going to let anybody go through the strait.

Well, we could say the same thing.

We're not going to let anything go through the strait.

You kind of have a standoff, if you will, in terms of who's not letting stuff through the strait.

So certainly, from a China's perspective on this,

they import about 11.1 million barrels a day.

I think they produce maybe 4.3 million barrels between China and Venezuela.

This was a good chunk of the oil.

It was probably somewhere around 25% of their imported oil needs daily.

Some would say it was a little bit higher.

But Venezuela has been cut off.

Now Iran has been effectively cut off for a period of time.

That is a huge amount of oil that China can't bring in.

That's going to cause huge problems for China.

In fact, there's already some reflection that it is causing huge problems for China

in terms of acquisition of oil.

And even when it's all said and done,

China will not be able to buy discounted sanctioned Iranian oil, like they have been.

They're going to have to pay the going rate at the very least for that oil,

which means that they have had in a certain advantage

in that they've been able to buy discounted oil from Venezuela,

not discounted oil from Iran and discounted oil from Russia.

And that may all change.

Now, one of the things that's going to go on the background,

it has me a little little concerned,

is President Trump says he's going to lift some of the sanctions on Russia

to allow them to move oil out.

I strategically from a military standpoint

and from a power standpoint, I don't like to see that.

I like to see as much pressure remain on Russia as we possibly can.

But the President has decided the way the President has decided.

And I think that's to alleviate the price pressure on oil

and also to enable China to keep doing things

that they otherwise may not be able to do.

So just on that note, quickly,

US East is sanctions on Russian oil sales to India.

You'll recall that sanctions were put on Russian oil sales

to several countries, including India.

Now they're being lifted, as you mentioned.

Does this position, does this Iran conflict actually strengthen Russia

in the short term, you think?

You know, there's been a number of articles and experts out there

who said, you know, who's the big winner of this?

And they said, strings that may sound Russian may come out slightly ahead on this

because this is a big problem.

You know, India had stopped buying.

They had finally agreed after tremendous pressure.

They had finally agreed to stop buying Russian oil.

That was kind of a thorn in our policy side

was that India kept buying Russian oil.

And there were other countries that bought Russian oil as well.

But India was a big consumer of Russian oil.

Now this is lifted.

All right.

So they're going to start buying this kind of Russian oil.

The concern is, okay, so we're going to have to go to that same thing again

when this war is over in order to reimpose those sanctions.

And of course, the question is, will we go through this again

to reimpose those sanctions the way we did?

And of course, the Europeans are certainly concerned

because this now gives Russia a lot of revenue

that they're going to pump into the war in Iraq.

I mean, war will war in Ukraine in order to put more pressure on the Ukrainians,

which puts more pressure on the Europeans to support the Ukrainians

and stopping the Russians.

So there's a lot at stake with this.

I'm sure, you know, in European capitals, they're probably not pleased

with this policy decision by the US.

So with all the constraints that we've talked about,

what do you think is the most likely next step?

So I've read that there's a few options that the military could consider.

One, arming the Kurds, which apparently the president has been in communication

with Kurdish leaders so far that hasn't been confirmed yet.

Or putting boots in the ground, we've already discussed that at length.

Or number three, just withdraw, completely claim that strategic targets have been hit

and just pull back from here.

If you're revising high command right now, what would you say?

Well, first of all, let me just address the Kurds thing.

All right.

The reports coming out, the CIA had been in contact with the Iranian Kurds.

As you may know, on the Iraq side, they have a pretty much an autonomous territory

that they control up to the north.

Still part of Iraq, but it's completely self-gathering.

They run like a separate country up there.

Not, there is a lot of back and forth, but there are differences between the Iranian Kurds and the Iraqi Kurds.

All right.

So a lot of times, that's overlooked, but there are.

With the Iranian Kurds, to back them militarily, and certainly the Iranian Kurds

are very interested in doing that because they do not want to be part

of Iran.

They've never wanted to be part of Iran.

If we do that, then we're starting down the road of backing separatist movements in Iran.

The concern is that could complicate whatever we're trying to achieve with the government in Iran,

whether it's whatever this regime morphs into or a completely different regime.

You're still doing what territorial integrity, and if we back the Kurds,

you're going to, you've already seen Azerbaijan, which has been targeted by Iran,

has said that they will militarily support the Azeris.

The Azeri areas and the Azeris in Iran to be a separatist group.

And then there's always been a problem down by the Pakistani border with the Baluchis,

which want to be a autonomous territory.

So the fear is that you would kick off what is truly going to be a civil war

where you have these separatist groups trying to break off,

and you may have one or two other groups in the Mayhem turn around and say,

well, we'd like to break off as well.

There are Arabs that are primarily Sunni in some of the key oil producing areas

who have always said they do not want to be part of Persia or Iran.

They do not want to be part of this Shiite regime in this government.

So they might be encouraged to do something as well.

So the fear is that you could kind of un-cork this thing and start something bigger.

On the other hand, if you back the Kurds that will certainly divert

a lot of military resources for the Iranians to have to deal with the Kurdish issue

and put pressure on them to come sort of some sort of agreement

to end this war sooner or rather later.

That's the thought with that.

Now, as I will tell you, I have heard some rhetoric coming from the White House

to stuff where they say, first they said we want unconditional surrender.

And I heard that and I was like, I think I heard that before.

We'll work too, but it's been a while.

What does that mean?

Well, that was a trick.

That's exactly what everyone was asking.

So what do you mean?

And Carol Levin, the White House press secretary says the president will decide

when they have unconditionally surrendered.

And so the US would unilaterally decide when the other side has unconditionally surrendered.

I have to tell you, I'm like many others.

I am not quite sure what they mean by it.

It does sound a lot to go back to your question.

Are we simply going to clear victory and go home as a phrase that we've always used?

If you say that they unconditionally surrender, but the regime still in place,

the question is, what have we really accomplished?

And then you need semantics of what does unconditional surrender really mean?

And at this point, like you said, the regime hasn't really changed.

So what does the military need to do to tiptoe around the issue of not alienating the Iranian people

and getting them against operations?

Because so far, we've seen reports of Iranian people celebrating the AOTOla,

the initial AOTOla being removed.

But now his sons in power and we, you know, we don't want to piss off the Iranian people here.

Well, let me use a case in point.

You may have seen where the Israelis hit a bunch of oil storage areas in around Tehran.

Build the atmosphere full of thick, accurate oil smoke.

Oil rain is another phenomenon that comes from this.

And I have more than passing knowledge of that because of my experiences in Kuwait during desert storm.

I know what oil rain is.

I understand an atmosphere that is just absolutely almost some breathable hydrocarbons.

So that is a huge, huge issue that we apparently did address with the Israelis saying,

don't do that.

Whatever advantage you think you're going to get from that,

could backfire on us and actually get people to rally around the current government.

So we don't want to do that.

On the other hand, it made a statement.

And I think that's what the Israelis are trying to do to say,

hey, look, we have capabilities.

We can affect you in many, many ways.

And you might want to get this regime, which is responsible for all these strikes.

There's arguments to be made both ways.

Really, the whole thing is, what will the Iranian people do?

And that's the problem with this is you want to diminish the ability of the regime

to control the Iranian people, to stop future protests, to stop them from overthrowing government institutions.

You want to stop their regime's ability to do that.

But you got to be careful.

If you hit certain target sets, you will also incur collateral damage.

And that's a problem as well.

And so, in case in point, we don't know, but it's looking more and more like that was a US missile strike

that took out that girl school.

Mistakes do happen to war, horrific mistakes happen to war.

But those are the sorts of things that can shift public sentiment.

And I ran very quickly if we do too many more of those.

Just in 15 minutes ago, well leaders were racing on Wednesday to shore up the global oil supply accordance in New York times.

32 member countries were released 400 million barrels of oil from the strategic reserves.

This would be the largest action since 2022.

Ultimately, do you think that Americans and Western citizens would face an oil shortage,

the likes of which we've haven't seen since 73 in 1979?

I think it's possible this could have, it depends on how long the war lasts.

Obviously, this can have a big effect with 400 million.

And you know how much oil is actually being blocked by the street of her moves.

So, you know, a couple of things.

Number one, you got the East West pipeline in Saudi Arabia.

You also have another pipeline that runs through the UAE,

which actually goes into the Gulf of Oman.

Both of those have excess capacity.

I think the East West had 2.6 million barrels a day capacity,

plus there's a corresponding natural gas pipeline.

Same thing with the UAE, I think it was like 700,000 barrels per day,

with a corresponding natural gas pipeline.

So those are ways of bypassing a street of her moves.

I understand everything is at full tilt now.

There is no excess capacity anywhere.

So that alleviates some, but the question is,

okay, what about all the rest?

That's why I think that 400 million can make a big difference.

I think it can make a big difference for maybe 10 days, two weeks,

and then we're right back where we were.

So we really put pressure on us to get the street of her moves back open again.

Final question, how do you think the US military is going to evolve from this experience?

So especially facing asymmetric warfare from drones, for example,

hypersonic missiles, everything we've talked about so far.

Obviously, the military has prepared for this,

but going into this experience based on what you've seen so far.

What are the next steps you think the military will take to evolve?

Well, I think first off, you're going to see what will happen here.

We're going to deal with what we're dealing with right now.

There is a side of truth.

I don't like to quote Donald Rumsfeld,

but you kind of go with what the army you have.

In this case, you go with the military you have.

We can bring in some of these systems that were not fully filled with air defense

and going after drones and also putting low cost drones in there.

We don't have enough of those.

I will say coming out of this, the military,

and this is a fundamental change, philosophically, and it's been slow and coming.

We're going to have to embrace drones and counter drone capabilities in ways

that we knew we had to do.

We understood we had to do,

but we hadn't put the full amount of resources and effort into doing it.

I think that's something you're going to see change in a very big way,

as you're going to see drones,

not just air, air, sea, subsurface ground across the board,

being incorporated in a much more advanced pace,

same thing with artificial intelligence.

You're going to see that being pushed forward very, very quickly as well.

Trump and Donald Trump wants to propose a $1.5 trillion military budget

to expand the Pentagon's budget by $600 billion for 2027,

fiscal year 2027.

What do you think that money should be additional budget should be spent on?

Well, a lot of it obviously, I just talked about drones.

I think a lot of it's going to be used on space.

Sure, I have no doubt that a lot of that they're looking at

is going to be used for this golden dome thing they want to build over North America.

And that thing is going to cost a phenomenal amount of money.

25 billion is already been put forward toward it.

But I've seen numbers that get close to around $150, $200 plus billion,

maybe more to put that thing into effect.

North America is awful darn big.

In fact, if you really get into some of the dynamics,

like with the US situation with Greenland,

and I went to school at the University of Copenhagen for a while,

and I've got friends in Denmark.

Obviously, they're not thrilled with the US ball sailing Greenland for the last year.

But one of the things is,

why is the US pushing so hard?

Because if we put all these advanced systems for interception and other things in Greenland,

we do not want a situation where Greenland can do what Spain and Britain just did,

which is say, hey, you can't use our territory to do something.

We want a situation where we'd have greater autonomy.

Now, I'm not here to defend the administration's position.

I'm just explaining that would be the rationale behind it.

If we're going to spend all this money, we want to make sure we have complete control.

That's the same thing with you who are seeing the Indian Ocean.

We want a greater degree of control of being able to use those bases no matter what we do.

Do you think we should have AI weapons systems? What's your view on that?

Well, you know, I grew up watching all the apocalyptic movies

where artificial intelligence launched the thermonuclear war and destroyed it.

So I'm familiar with all that.

I do think that AI can do some amazing things.

And I think AI is getting a lot smarter, a lot faster.

On the one hand, I look at the potential, I go, wow, what we can do,

particularly in science and technology and things like that,

some of the leaps we can make.

On the other hand, I look at it and go,

you give too much control.

There are certain qualities of moral behavior, ethics, other things.

How do you ensure that happens?

And even though, and I will say this, this is a problem with the Western world,

I should say, you know, with, you know, with certainly, you know,

the G7 countries around the world and stuff.

We go, well, you know, we need to do this, do this.

It's like, we can say all we want, but China and Russia and other countries,

they don't feel this moral, qualm restriction with artificial intelligence.

They may go a completely different direction.

So whereas we're holding our self back, they're actually enabling their systems to do things

and we won't let our systems do because of, you know, some ethical concerns that we have,

that's a big challenge.

You know, and I think that's the challenge going forward in AI.

I wish I had a simple solution.

I think it's going to become a very, very difficult thing to manage.

Doctors from a technology standpoint, we're from an ethics standpoint and human control standpoint.

Thank you very much.

How I appreciate your insights and we appreciate you lending us your time.

Where can we find you?

Where can we follow you?

Obviously, you go to how come for TV on YouTube and I post a lot of my, you know,

we call them hits or whatever my interviews and the stuff we're on there.

You can also go to Stratt, STRAT, that's for Strategic Risk Assessment Talk podcast.

Pretty much anywhere podcasts are found.

You can find those.

I just did a thing.

Obviously, on Iran and I just did one on this, you know, what's going on with Cuba and also

with the Western Hemisphere with the shield of the America's concept.

So those over a couple different places you can find me.

And of course, you can always go to my website for a grip, global risk and tolerance of planning at www.gripsa.com.

Okay.

We'll put the links down below.

So make sure to follow hell there.

Thank you again.

We'll speak against it.

Take care for now.

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