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Danny and Derek discuss the latest developments in the war in Iran, including the U.S. bombing military targets on Kharg Island; Iran’s retaliation in the UAE and strategy around the Strait of Hormuz; the status of Iran’s new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei after reportedly sustaining wounds; Israel’s possible plan to occupy southern Lebanon and reports of interceptor shortages; China’s muted response to the war; and the U.S. deploying Marines to the region.
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Hello Prestige heads and welcome to American Prestige.
I'm Danny Bessner here as always with my friend and comrade Derek Davison on this Sunday,
the I'd of March, March 15th, RIP Caesar.
And we are here to give you an update on the Warren Iran.
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Derek, let's jump into it and let's start with the barming of Carg Island.
Right, this was late Friday, Donald Trump popped on social media to declare that the US had bombed Carg Island.
We've talked about Carg a little bit.
And past, it is the oil terminus for almost all of Iran's exports.
I think it handles somewhere around 90%.
If, according to most estimates of Iran's oil exports, go through Carg,
they get loaded onto tankers there and send out through the straight-up hormones,
which is continuing because the Iranians obviously are not closing the straight-up hormones
to their own oil shipments.
In fact, they seem to be exporting more oil right now than they were before the war started.
Trump claimed in his social media post that the US had totally obliterated every military target in Iran's Crown Jewel Carg Island.
I don't know about the Crown Jewel part, but yes, apparently this was an attack on military sites.
It hasn't affected any of the oil operations, and it seems that they intentionally left the oil facilities untouched for any variety of reasons.
You can pick one, you know, Trump still wants his Delcy Rodriguez take over in Tehran.
He wants the oil facilities to still be functional when that happens, you know, hoping against hope, I guess at this point.
Alternatively, you know, there's nothing to stop the Iranians if the US were to destroy the oil facilities on Carg, which is possible.
Let's conceivable to do certainly from the air.
There's really nothing to stop the Iranians from escalating their attacks in the Gulf against energy sites.
They've hit a few of those, they keep sort of disclaiming some of the attacks that they've made on energy sites, but they could certainly hit more of them and take a more scorched earth approach even than they've taken so far.
So that's something the US would probably like to avoid.
I've seen people suggest that the US was attacking Carg because they believe that the military assets on Carg are being used as part of the operations to close the straight of Hormuz.
That seems a little geographically strange to me, but there have been attacks on tankers in the northern and cargo ships and the northern Persian Gulf near Iraq, for example, and that that's the kind of thing that could theoretically be conducted from Carg, but it could also be conducted from any number of other places.
If the US were to take the next step and destroy the oil sites on Carg, I don't know what contingencies the Iranians have in place for something like that.
I assume they do have contingencies in place because this is not the Trump administration.
The Iranians do actually plan for things and try to game out scenarios instead of just sticking their finger in the wind and going wherever it leads them.
So I assume they have some contingencies for continuing to get oil out, in that case, how effective that would be.
I don't know.
Their response, the immediate Iranian response was to attack the UAE more heavily, claiming that the attack on Carg, the air strikes on Carg were launched from the UAE.
They struck a number of targets, including Fujaira, which is an oil port or in part an oil port.
In the UAE, it is located outside the Strait of Hormuz and was created, the oil port of Fujaira was created in part with the idea that the Strait of Hormuz could be easily blockaded.