Strait Of Hormuz Crisis, Gas Price Politics, Iranian School Strike Investigation

President Trump says there's, quote, practically, nothing left to target in Iran as U.S.

and Israeli air strikes continued on to Iran overnight.

Iran is losing the war in the air, but on the water has strangled traffic in the

state of Hormuz.

I'm Leyla Faudel, that's Stephen Skipe, and this is up first from NVR News.

Gas prices are rising because of the war, and President Trump, who campaigned on bringing

them down, is now calling it a very small price to pay.

Is that a price Americans are willing to accept?

Also, military investigators say the U.S. is responsible for a missile strike on a girl's

school that killed at least 165 civilians.

And PR learned the school was walled off from a nearby military base years ago.

Why did the U.S. cut back on an office that helped to limit civilian casualties?

Stay with us.

We've got the news you need to start your day.

Support for this podcast and the following message come from Fisher Investments.

SVP Judy Abrams shares how their fiduciary duty comes to life while helping clients plan

for retirement.

Fisher Investments is a fiduciary, and I think one of the very important roles we have

here as a fiduciary is to help expand people's thinking about what this money is needed

to do for them.

Learn more at Fisherinvestments.com, investing in securities involves the risk of loss.

One of the hotspots in the war in the Middle East is the Strait of Harmoulos.

Yeah, there in the last 24 hours Iran struck several commercial ships.

Images of one ship in the Persian Gulf area show plumes of smoke rising above it.

The important passage for a lot of the world's oil is effectively closed, and Iran, therefore,

seems to have gained an advantage in the war at sea even while losing the war in the

air.

And PR National Security Corp. Greg Mayere is covering all this Greg good morning.

Hi Steve.

What do you think the campaign stands?

Well, Iran's air defenses have been so decimated that the U.S. and the Israelis are sending

warplanes over Iran whenever they wish with minimal risk at this point.

The Pentagon says that the U.S. has hit more than 5,000 targets, so we're talking close

to 500 a day.

President Trump is sending a bit of a mixed message.

He's suggesting the war could ensume, because as he said in an interview, there's practically

nothing left to hit.

The U.S. studies also said the U.S. needs to stay to finish the job.

So the U.S. and Israel could carry out these air strikes indefinitely, but they could

be approaching a point of diminishing returns when there's a limited number of targets

left.

Why is the story so different when we move out to sea?

Well, the Iranians have a very strong hold over the straight of Hormuz.

The U.S. is sunk.

Most of Iran's navy, including mind-length ships, but Iran still has other ways to hit

these oil tankers and cargo ships.

The straight of Hormuz is just 20 miles wide or so at its narrowest point, and Iranian

forces can fire drones or rockets or missiles at passing ships.

And as you mentioned, several ships have been hit in the last 24 hours.

What is the impact of all that, the economic impact?

Yes, Steve.

We're seeing higher oil prices.

They're flirting with $100 a barrel today in the latest surge upward.

The world consumes a little over 100 million barrels of oil a day.

Around 20 million of those barrels are 20 percent.

Come through the straight and the pressure on oil prices will just keep growing every

day.

Gregory Brue follows Iran and energy issues at the Eurasia Group.

He spoke on a panel hosted by the Cato Institute.

We are currently experiencing what is the largest oil supply disruption in history.

Energy prices will remain high.

The Iranian strategy of applying pressure to the United States will continue to play out.

And President Trump will continue to feel the pressure.

Greg, there's been a lot of crises in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf.

To hear someone say this is the largest disruption in history, that's news to me.

Wow, how long can Iran keep this up?

Yeah, we don't know, but Iran's strategy may be to keep the straight closed as long

as possible, to inflict as much economic pain as possible, with the goal of deterring

the U.S. and Israel from hitting Iran again in the future.

Here's Nagar Mortezavi with the Center for International Policy in Washington.

For Iran, they're essentially playing the long game.

The war continues until they achieve a ceasefire or a peace that ensures they don't become

the next Lebanon or the next Gaza or Israel with the help of the U.S. feel like they can

just come in and move along.

And Steve, as you know, that phrase mode the law and is how Israel often describes its

periodic attacks in Gaza or in Lebanon.

The U.S. initially said its goal was to stop Iran from getting a bomb.

Are they doing that?

Trump keeps saying Iran will never get a nuclear bomb, but we're just not getting much information

on whether the military is targeting nuclear sites, which Trump said were obliterated last

year.

Now, the biggest single question is the status of nearly a thousand pounds of highly

enriched uranium.

Nuclear experts believe this is buried inside a site outside the central city of Isfahan,

and this material would be the critical component for a bomb.

But international inspectors haven't been to Iran since the U.S.-Israeli attacks last

June.

It's not clear if the U.S. and Israel want to bomb this site again or possibly send in

ground troops to seize it or negotiate its removal after the war.

Okay, and Pierce Grigmyrie, thanks so much.

Sure, thanks, Steve.

The Trump administration is tapping into the strategic petroleum reserve to try to bring

down gas prices.

Those prices have spiked since President Trump launched the war with Iran.

According to the popular app Gas Buddy, the gas station is not your friend lately.

The average cost of regular unleaded is now up to $3.61 per gallon.

The president has described this as a very small price to pay for safety and peace, and

he becomes the latest president to tap this emergency supply of oil that the United States

stores underground in multiple sites in Texas and Louisiana.

And Pierce, senior White House correspondent Tam Raquith is covering this tab.

Good morning.

How much oil is coming out now soon?

The announcement was 172 million barrels over four months starting next week.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright went on Fox News last night to talk about it.

The release is certainly out of the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve, but they'll go over

about four months.

But this conflict I don't think goes that long.

I think we all have the Straits of Hormuz open well before then.

Exactly when I can't say, but we are working 24 hours of every day to get there.

But as he makes clear, this isn't really a quick fix.

It's a play President Biden tried after Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 disrupted oil

markets.

But then gas got to $5 a gallon.

Consumers were mad.

Jared Bernstein was on the President's Council of Economic Advisors, and he says there was

a lot of pressure from the President and everyone else to find a fix.

But he says tapping the reserve only brought prices down a little and reduced the price

at the pump by maybe 20, 25 cents a gallon, which made a difference to people.

But it certainly didn't change how they were feeling about that increase and how it really

took a big dent off of their impression of the overall economy.

I look this up and I can see why it doesn't make a big difference.

172 million barrels to be released is a lot of oil.

But we heard Greg Myrish say about 20 million per day is being stopped from going through

the Straits of Hormuz.

So the world is going to use up that extra oil in a matter of a few days.

So how's the President talking about this situation?

Yeah, he was at a campaign rally yesterday in Kentucky where he tried to put a positive

spin on this challenging situation.

But oil prices are already coming back down and it's going to come down.

But we're not leaving until that job is finished.

And then the oil markets immediately contradicted him.

Price has surged overnight.

In recent days, Trump has called the war a short term excursion, signaling markets that

maybe the conflict could ensune.

But this is all a sharp turn from the way Trump talked about gas prices before the war.

And he took every opportunity to boast about $2 gas, even if he was exaggerating.

In fact, bringing down gas prices was something he campaigned on and was a key way he talked

about addressing affordability as president.

Where is this all going, Tim?

Well, I called up former Trump economic adviser Stephen Moore yesterday and he said, Trump

is making a bet that this conflict really will be short.

This will come back down and voters will forgive or forget.

Part of the problem for President Trump is that we already had people complaining about

prices.

He said the risk is if this drags on, there will be spillover effects to the rest of the

economy with other things that people need getting more expensive because of fuel costs.

The political challenge is that Americans see the price of gas every few blocks on big

glided signs.

And when prices go up, people feel it.

Republicans have to hope that gas prices aren't a big factor come this November when they

will be defending their majorities in both the House and the Senate.

It's a midterm campaign where affordability was already the top issue.

And press Tamar Keith.

Thanks so much.

You're welcome.

A preliminary assessment by the Pentagon has determined the U.S. is at fault for a missile

strike on a school in Iran on the first day of the war.

The attack killed at least 165 civilians, mostly children, according to Iranian officials.

We have a description of the U.S. investigation findings from a U.S. official who spoke on

condition of anonymity because they're not authorized to speak publicly.

NPR's Kat Lonsdorf is here.

Can't good morning.

Hey, good morning.

What is this investigation?

So now the Pentagon has opened what's called a 15-six investigation to determine not

if the U.S. did this but how the mistake happened and also confirmed that it was indeed civilians

who were killed.

That's expected to take months.

In a statement, the White House reiterated to NPR that the investigation is ongoing and

quote, the United States does not target civilians.

But if this is all confirmed, Steve, it would make this one of the highest, if not the

highest number of civilians killed by the U.S. in a single incident in 35 years.

It's interesting that they're still investigating.

How could this have happened?

Well, NPR was the first report that the strike on the school was part of a larger precision

strike on a compound of buildings and was likely the result of outdated intelligence.

Our colleague, Jeff Brumfield, reported that a previous map of targets in Iran showed

it that the building housing the school was once part of an Iranian revolutionary guard

naval base in the southern city of Manab.

But somewhere between 2013 and 2016, the school was separated and walled off from that

base, according to satellite imagery that we've reviewed.

Just makes you cringe to think about it.

And then there's these videos which appear to show a Tomahawk missile hitting the compound.

What do you learn from that?

Yeah.

Iran also published images of parts of the missile.

It says struck the school.

Those appear to have come from a Tomahawk as well.

Tomahawks are U.S. main missiles and only a handful of countries, including the U.S.

use them.

A few days ago, President Trump suggested that Tomahawks are quote generic and may have

come from Iran.

That's not possible.

Several munitions experts we talked to have said the U.S. is the only actor in this war

using Tomahawk missiles.

What does it mean that last year, sometimes, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth made a

cut, major cuts, to an office that was in charge of what they call civilian harm mitigation,

trying to avoid civilian casualties?

Yeah.

I mean, Steve, as you know, there have unfortunately been many other civilian casualty incidents

in previous wars and administrations.

And those are hopefully mistakes that the U.S. can learn from.

A few years ago, Congress mandated an office in the Pentagon to do just that.

But shortly after Hegseth took office, he cut it by about 90%.

He also fired a lot of military lawyers.

Here's what Ona Hathaway, a professor of international law at Yale Law School, told

me.

At every level, civilian protection has been deprioritized, but a modern army has to fight

according to the law, and the law requires that you protect civilians.

That same U.S. official who told us about the preliminary assessment also told MPR that

now all of U.S. Central Command has only one staffer assigned to civilian casualty mitigation

operations.

We reached out to the Pentagon about this, but didn't get a response.

And I want to be clear, Steve, we can't say that this strike was a direct result of these

cuts.

Civilians are, unfortunately, always the worst and most affected in modern war.

Yeah, and in recent wars, U.S. military officials felt that mitigating civilian casualties

was an important part of the war because there's an information war, a war for hearts and

minds.

You don't want to lose people's support.

And P.S. Kat Lonsdorf, thanks so much.

Thank you.

And that's up first for this Thursday, March 12th.

I'm Steve Inskeep.

And I'm Layla Faldin.

Today's episode of First was edited by Andrew Sussman, Rebecca Metzler, James Hyder,

Muhammad D.C. and Alice Wolffley.

It was produced by Ziyad Butch and Nia Dumas.

Our director is Christopher Thomas.

We get engineering support from Misha Heines.

Our technical director is Carly Strange.

Our deputy executive producer is Kelly Dickens.

Join us again tomorrow.

This message comes from the International Rescue Committee.

In Gaza, Sudan, and crisis zones around the world, the IRC is working to deliver emergency

aid to those who need it most, donate today by visiting rescue.org slash rebuild.

This message comes from Capital One Commercial Bank, access comprehensive solutions from

a top commercial bank that prioritizes your needs today and goals for tomorrow.

Learn more at capitalone.com slash commercial, member FDIC.

This message comes from Midi Health, introducing age well, longevity care designed by women

for women.

Women can feel overlooked by the healthcare industry, especially when it comes to aging.

Midi Health offers personalized services conveniently accessible through telehealth visits

and covered by major insurance providers.

Your health is worth it.

Mark your virtual visit today at joinmitty.com.

That's joinmidi.com.