Trump's Hormuz plan / troops to Mideast / Iran peace ‘talks’?

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Once troops are amassed in an area,

President Trump tends to use them.

Thousands of U.S. troops are headed to the Middle East.

Is this an escalation or a warning?

This is sources and methods from NPR.

I'm Mary Louise Kelly every Thursday on this podcast.

We dive deep on some of the week's biggest national security stories with the NPR

reporters out there covering them.

Before we get started this week, a note makes sure you stick around.

At the end of the show today for details on a live event we are planning for next Tuesday.

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All right, let's get to it.

NPR Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman is back and here with me in studio 42.

Hi, Tom.

Hey, Mary Louise.

And Abitrawi is reporting from her base in Dubai.

Hey there.

Hi.

So we are recording this on Thursday.

It is a little after 10 a.m.

Eastern, which makes it what time for you?

In Dubai?

Just after six p.m. here.

Just after six.

Okay, so let's get to it.

Tom, kick us off.

I am confused.

And here's why last Thursday, President Trump is asked,

is he going to put troops on the ground in the Middle East?

Here's what he told a reporter.

No, I'm not putting troops anywhere.

No, he's not putting troops anywhere.

And then this week, we are hearing at least 2,000 pair of troopers.

This, they're from the 82nd Airborne.

They just got orders to deploy.

And they're joining thousands of Marines already headed to the region.

So we're talking thousands of U.S. troops, what, what, what gives?

Right, I'm not sure what the president is talking about,

but what we do know is that a couple of thousand troops

from the 82nd Airborne, the Devil Brigade,

I'm told they're expected to leave this weekend

and likely had to quate first.

And then they'll be joined in the next couple of days

by a couple of thousand Marines

of flow coming from Okinawa.

They'll be probably off Oman by this weekend.

So you're going to have a number of troops in the region,

at least several thousand.

And then additionally, there is a Marine Expeditioner

and you're coming from San Diego.

They'll be arriving probably in the next week or 10 days or so.

So there's going to be a lot of troops in the region.

And as we saw down in the Caribbean,

once troops are amassed in an area,

President Trump tends to use them.

So I want to get to what we know and what we don't

about what the mission is for all these troops gathering.

But to that basic question,

is this significant escalation or is this a warning

maybe to gain some leverage and say,

hey, Iran, we mean it?

No, I think it's an escalation.

I mean, the warning is already come,

if you want to call it a warning,

by thousands of targets being hit by US and Israel

and also killing their leader.

So I don't think the Iranians are going to look at this

and say, oh, no, several thousand US troops are coming.

What are we going to do?

But again, it looks like they will likely hit the ground.

I know they're saying it's not boots on the ground.

But if they do land on Iranian territory,

it could be this carg island

or it could be some of the ports along the mainland.

That by definition is boots on the ground.

You're invading someone else's country.

Have we gotten any more intel on where they're going

and what the mission might be?

No, and I talked to an official on Capitol Hill.

The lawmakers were briefed by the Trump administration

about where it's going, what are you guys going to do?

All they would tell lawmakers

in a closed-door hearing now, we have options.

That's all they told them.

We have options.

If the mission involves carg island,

which we've spent a fair bit of time talking about on this podcast,

it's very close to the mainland.

About 15, 18 miles off the coast.

It's a small island.

Looking at the map, it's about five miles long and two, three miles wide.

What would U.S. troops do there?

What would the goal be?

How long would they have to stay?

Well, it's Iran's main oil facility,

so you could seize that and basically deny them the use of that facility or that island.

There are two oil facilities in the south,

one on the west coast of cargo island.

So they could land there and just basically turn everything off,

so you can't use it.

That would be the goal.

Now, could the 82nd paratroopers land at the airfield on the island and seize it?

That's one of the things that paratroopers do, seize airports.

Could the Marines punch through the Strait of Hormuz and land there as well?

That's a possibility.

But again, at this point, all we have are options.

That's the most famous island on Earth now, cargo island.

But what people didn't know two weeks ago,

now everyone is talking about cargo island.

So that's clearly one of the sites they're looking at.

And again, there are a couple of places along the coast,

including Bonda Robas, this port on the mainland,

which could be taken as well.

Mary Louise, the Marines have been studying this for 40 years.

Right, this is not here.

This is not here.

This is not here.

This is not here.

This is not here.

And how do they train for it?

Well, you know, they do amphibious operations all the time.

And in this case, I'm told you could move them in by Osprey's,

those tilt-rotor aircraft.

A more likely scenario I'm told is the Marines will just punch through

the Strait of Hormuz, get up to cargo island,

offload the infantry troops, some 800 infantry troops.

They're also equipped with Cobra attack helicopters,

F-35 fighters as well.

Artillery drones, anti-drone capability.

So, you know, it's a pretty formidable, you know,

a group here of Marines.

That's one scenario.

I mean, just one more note on the geography we were noting.

The size of this small island that suddenly everybody in the world

is paying a lot of attention to.

The location, we noted it is very close to the coast of the mainland Iran.

But it is several hundred miles to the north of the Strait of Hormuz.

So, if one of the stated goals now this war is we got to get the

Strait of Hormuz sorted and skewer and reopened to shipping traffic,

they're going to be a few hundred miles away.

No, that's right. I think this is an economic target,

again, getting back to the oil facilities area.

So, squeeze them economically.

It doesn't really do much for opening the Strait of Hormuz,

although bond or a boss that poured wood,

because that's closer to the Strait of Hormuz.

Right.

But, you know, I'm going to tell you,

I was talking to this other retired,

a rear-edible Mark Montgomery.

And he was kind of shaking his head over this whole carg island.

He said, if you want to deny the Iranians' carg island,

just send out a message.

The next oil tanker that shows up heading to carg island,

we're going to blow it up.

You've achieved what you wanted.

You're hurting them economically.

You don't have to send a bunch of Marines or a paratrooper

to grab carg island.

Do we know what Iran's response has been to this military build-up?

Maybe we know headed to the region,

maybe headed somewhere toward carg island?

Just as the Marines have been training for a scenario like this,

as Tom was saying for years and years,

so have the Iranians.

We've been hearing no confirmation on this,

but they've been mining the area that they too are ready.

And we've heard their officials say,

bluntly, come, we're ready for you.

And what about response in the Gulf

to this looking like?

It's escalating.

Like more troops are coming, not fewer.

So, you know, when President Trump just a few days ago

had put out that 48-hour deadline

about hitting Iranian power plants,

it was the first time that I started and others here in the Gulf.

I started seeing people posting videos of this as well

that they were looking for solar panels

and looking for generators.

We've never had to do that before

in these very wealthy Gulf cities and capitals.

So, that really caused a lot of concern

because Iran said that they would respond

by hitting power plants

and water decalination plants here in the Gulf

if their power plants were hit.

So, obviously, we know that Trump backed off

on that 48-hour plant,

but I'm speaking to you before his five-day deadline now

is approaching and nearing its end.

And so, there's still a lot of concern.

There's a lot of unease.

Just this morning here in the UAE,

there were 15 ballistic missile interceptions.

I heard several of them overhead here in Dubai

around 738 in the morning.

I can hear fighter jets outside now.

All right, let's take a short break when we get back.

Now that thousands of American troops are headed

to the Middle East,

is military force enough to secure the street of Hormuz.

That's ahead on sources and methods from NPR.

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We're back.

President Trump has been urging Iran

to reopen the Street of Hormuz.

He has begged allies to help secure it.

He has lifted sanctions on Russian oil,

and then lifted sanctions on Iranian oil.

And still, Iran has not budged.

It is allowing a small number of ships

to pass ships with no ties to the US or to Israel.

And now we have Trump's latest move,

sending in Marines, 82nd Airborne.

Tom, could Trump use troops to reopen the Street of Hormuz?

Like, is that actually a possibility?

Oh, yeah.

I mean, if you're going to open the street,

it's going to be a massive undertaking.

I talked to this retired rear admiral, Jamie Fogo.

Now, he ran naval operations

during the 2011 attacks on Muammar Qaddafi and Libya.

And we're back then.

And he said, listen, first of all,

what you have to do is you have to own the skies

around the Street of Hormuz.

A 50-mile radius combat air patrol

with scores of tankers and attack aircraft and so forth.

You have to own that, number one.

Number two, we have to send in minesweepers

to make sure you get rid of all those Iranian mines.

Iran says it has dropped some of those mines in the water.

We're not sure if that's actually happened,

but you want to make sure there are no mines there.

Number two.

And number three is you want to bring in destroyers

to escort the oil tankers

out of the Persian Gulf through the Street of Hormuz.

And I asked him, I said, okay, if President Trump said to you,

Admiral, I want you to put together something

that opens the Street of Hormuz.

How long will it take?

He said a month, just to get that underway.

I mean, I just want to pause for a second,

because we are almost a month into this war with Iran.

And it's an air battle, clearly.

Air strikes continuing on Iranian targets.

Iran continuing to shoot back.

We have major naval assets

in the waters around the Persian Gulf,

and you're talking about maybe boots on the ground

with Marines headed in.

And how you're talking about, I mean,

that sounds like it would be a significant naval battle

to force open the Street of Hormuz

and then to keep it open.

Absolutely. It's a huge undertaking.

And then the threat that you didn't have in Libya,

Admiral Fogo told me,

is you have all these drones now.

Small drones that could attack all these ships,

the oil tankers, and also the US warships.

You can clean up every mine.

They can lay as fast as they can lay them,

and you still got drones.

Right, and there's a lot of clutter out there

with your radar when you're trying to find out

who's doing what, what's out there.

So some of these smaller drones,

these Shahed drones,

which are small and fast,

and you could swarm some of these ships.

That could be definitely a threat

along with these mines.

Ah, back up,

because it wasn't so long ago.

It was two weeks ago

that Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Defense,

was saying we got this under control.

We have been dealing with it,

and don't need to worry about it.

We're on plan to defeat, destroy,

disable all of their meaningful military capabilities.

At a pace, the world has never seen before.

Don't worry about it.

And then a week later,

this is last Friday,

President Trump was asked

about opening the street.

He also seemed to downplay

what that would look like,

what it would take.

This is him speaking with reporters

just before he was leaving the White House.

You said the first one

called opening the street of the world

with a simple military maneuver.

Very simple.

Yeah, but what did you need by chance?

It's a simple military maneuver.

It's relatively safe,

but you need a lot of help

in the sense of you need ships.

You need volume,

and NATO could help us,

but they so far haven't had the courage to do so.

And others could help us,

but we don't use it.

You know, at a certain point,

it'll open itself.

It's not going to open itself.

No, no, no, no.

It's not going to open itself.

What's the disconnect, though,

between those comments

and what you're telling me about?

Well, to be charitable, let's say

the president is

in a military expert, number one.

And number two is, I think, you know,

I'm paying a dollar more per gal

and then I was three weeks ago.

And I'm sure some other parts of the country

is even more.

Number one, number two is,

it's very complex.

And I just laid out,

according to what Admiral Fogo told me,

will the, you know,

you need these minesweepers.

You need assistance from Europe.

Will they weigh in and help?

It's possible because for natural gas in Europe,

it's doubled in the past three weeks.

So they make it to a point in Europe

where the population says to their governments,

listen, you go, you have to help the United States

reopen the street of Hormuz.

This is hurting everybody.

So it's possible you could see Europe

at some point in the next month or so,

say, okay, we'll send minesweepers,

we'll send aircraft, we'll send maybe destroyers.

But I was talking to one European military officer.

He said, if we decided to send minesweepers, let's say,

it would take six weeks to get there.

Or they could come in and say,

we need to end the war rather than join it.

Because I mean, one thing, again, from the Gulf here,

the US bases have been hit really hard.

And a lot of these troops are now working remotely.

The New York Times just put out an article

saying they're working from hotels

and offices around the Gulf.

And we've seen residential buildings

and we've seen offices being precisely targeted

in Bahrain and other areas where it was believed

from early on in the war that US troops

were living in those hotels and residences.

So the US has already gotten a beating in the Gulf

on its bases here.

We've already seen like a massive fuel depot

just outside Riyadh hit last week.

And the Iranians say that was being used

for refueling of US jets.

And also the Rusla Fenn gas complex,

Mary Louise, that was just hit a week ago on Thursday.

That is a massive blow to Qatar.

I just want to say when we're talking

about getting oil and gas moving,

you've just taken 17% of one of the world's biggest gas producers

in the world's capacity to export gas off.

And they say that that could be for up to five years

before that that can be repaired and come back online.

They're saying $20 billion in revenue lost a year.

They're talking about the impact to China,

to Italy, to Belgium, to South Korea.

So this isn't just about getting ships through.

And also insurance companies may not want to get those ships

moving even if they have escorts.

Insurance companies and these ships are privately owned

and they may not agree to this,

even if you have those escorts in place in the best case scenario.

Let's take a quick break.

When we return, deal or no deal.

What's on the negotiation table between Iran and the United States?

That's ahead on sources and methods from NPR.

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We're back. And a note real quick,

we have had a busy week

on this show.

Two episodes are in your feed behind.

This one, they are good.

One is with the author of a new book

about how the Pentagon is using AI,

the book's Project Maven, I recommend it.

And another one with Sweden's top general,

general Michael Klassen, he gave us a European military perspective

on the state of NATO, the war in Ukraine, other topics.

So make sure you catch those if you haven't already.

Okay, back to this week's news, peace talks.

President Trump says they're on that they are happening,

that they're ongoing.

Iran denies that what do we know about these talks

starting with who's who's talking?

So we did get confirmation.

We reported this early, but then we also have official confirmation

now that Egypt and Pakistan have both said they were involved.

They're involved in passing messages now.

And that's because the traditional mediators,

which have been all men in Qatar in the past,

they came under attack after this war began.

Some retaliation attacks from Iran.

And so they're not involved in the talks at the moment.

Although all men says they are playing a role at this moment,

but the talks seem to be, or not talks.

Let's say the back channel efforts to get talks going

are being conducted by Egypt and Pakistan.

And Egypt foreign minister actually met with some reporters

in Cairo on Wednesday.

And he told our producer in Cairo that

and the other journalist there that actually it was President Trump

who asked Egypt to reach out and get this going.

So it was actually, it doesn't seem to be that Iran was the one

that asked for this, but rather it was the White House President

Trump himself who asked for this.

Got it.

And it's important to note, who reached out to who?

If the president is reaching out to Egypt and Pakistan to say

help us with talks, be the intermediary,

they're operating from a position of weakness.

Who is on the Iranian side of these talks?

Do we know, yeah?

I mean, we keep, every day there's a new report of some new senior

member of the government or the military establishment

who's been killed.

So Egypt's foreign minister was asked this question

by journalist in Cairo, who are you speaking with?

And he said all of their contacts are directly

with the foreign ministry.

So it seemed that the foreign ministry is like this,

still the public, forward face of Iran's very big and expansive

working regime.

But it doesn't mean that they're the ones calling the shots

or necessarily making the decisions

or putting forth the rebuttals, but they're the ones

that are involved in, you can say, the outreach

and in the back channel talks.

All right, so that is the who.

Let's get to the what?

What we know and what we don't about,

what the substances of what these talks to start talks may be.

We know President Trump came up with a 15 point plan

to end the war.

What do we know about what's in it?

One of the things is give up your enriched uranium.

It would now at 60% get rid of your enrichment program.

Also limit the amount of missiles you can build

and also stop supporting your proxies in the region

like Hezbollah and Hamas.

That's part of it.

That's what we know is in it.

But these have been on the table for a long, long time.

It's nothing new here.

Yeah, our colleague in Tel Aviv,

Daniel Estren has been reporting that his sources are saying

the proposal out of the White House to end this war is pretty darn close

to what was on the table before the war

when they were, when there were diplomats.

That's right.

Happy.

Okay, we also know that Iran has said,

yeah, thanks, but no thanks, right?

What are they countering with?

Yeah, I mean, first of all,

they're not even saying that there are talks.

They've just countered with, I guess, a response.

And what they're saying is that, first of all,

that the Iran will end this war when it decides to do so

on its own conditions.

And it says those conditions include attacks on Iran ending.

Guarantees that the war would stay ending.

It wouldn't come back.

They also want sanctions relief.

They want reparations for what's happened.

They've made clear even before this war began

that missile production to them was a matter of national defense and sovereignty.

So that seems to still be off the table.

You're reminding me of a sign that I saw when I was reporting

from Iran, the funeral for General Kasim Soleimani,

who the US had just assassinated.

And Iranians were angry and out in the streets.

And I remember a guy holding up a sign that I took a picture of and it read,

hey, US, you started, we will end it.

So that sign is, that's pretty much sounds like the official response from Tehran

to President Trump's plan to end the war.

It sounds like Iran thinks they're winning.

Is that right, Aya?

From where I'm sitting, Iran isn't losing.

Yes, their population is being hit hard.

Yes, they've lost a lot of civilians at school.

We now believe that the US was behind that attack them in abschool.

I mean, these are tragic.

The girls school.

Yeah, and there's a lot of people suffering in Iran because of this war.

Their propaganda machine out there on the internet now is proud.

It's projecting this strength that they're able to take on the global super power in this way.

Again, they've hit US bases.

They've hit Israel very hard.

They're also able to send those oil prices really high because the whole idea was that

they can't hit America back on American soil.

But what they could do was they could inflict so much pain on America's allies in the Gulf

and on energy markets that this war becomes unsustainable.

And that seems to be where it's headed.

Prices are going up so high.

There's problems now and real concerns about fertilizer and other stuff that's

required with the gas and oil production here.

In the Gulf countries, their economies are hurting.

And like I said before, it's not just about getting oil tankers and gas

moving through the straight of her moves.

It's also about stopping the attacks on the actual energy facilities that are required for that

production.

Like I said, Qatar's gas production is 17% less now and it could take five years before it comes

fully back online.

And it's important to note that the Iranian regime is still in power and they could win just by surviving.

Yeah.

So let's land here closing it on a month,

nearing 30 days of the war, do either of you see an off ramp?

I don't see it in the near future in the coming weeks.

The US will still press Iran to come to the negotiating table.

Again, from a position of weakness,

they'll continue to bomb.

Israel will continue to bomb.

And also the Iranians will continue to make a tag.

So particularly in the Gulf countries as well.

And it's important to note, remember the long range missile they shot to Diego Garcia

in the Indian Ocean.

Now it was knocked out by your defenses, but that tells you something.

The range of that was 2500 miles.

And the concern is that they're basically holding on their rationing

some of their more, you know, long range missiles.

That has to be a real concern, particularly the US military.

Yeah.

Yeah, off the back of that, you know, we talk about off ramps.

Let's just go back to day one.

The first hours of the war, the opening salva of this war was

killing and decapitating the regime.

And that meant killing Hamani, the supreme leader.

After that, it was almost as if it was designed

so that there can't be an off ramp.

You know, and now we have his son as the supreme leader

after he's lost his wife, his child,

and both his parents in that attack.

So when we talk about an off ramp, you know,

we have to think about also who we're dealing with

a new supreme leader who we don't, we haven't heard from yet,

we haven't seen, but we do know what happened to his family and his father.

And so what kind of off ramp can we possibly imagine from this?

And then just the other thing like I'm saying about the oil and gas prices,

they've been able to inflict global economic pain

for the pain that they has been inflicted on them.

And so whatever flexibility we saw in the last two rounds of negotiations,

they now say there's no trust because they keep saying,

the Iranians keep saying, how can there be talks

and how can there be any diplomacy?

When the last two times we were in the middle of diplomatic

negotiations, we got bombed and a war was launched on us.

We got attacked.

All right, with we will end with Ocent,

open source intelligence, the not so secret, not classified,

but very telling details.

We stumble across in our reporting.

Aya, kick stuff.

Okay, so one thing I wanted to bring to everyone's attention,

there's been sort of data compiled by different people online.

One of them is an analysis firm called Horizons Insights.

And they collect data from government statements

and Ministry of Defense statements across the region.

And what they found was that 37% of all of Iran's counter-attacks

have been on the UAE, then Israel, 15% of the attacks,

and then Kuwait and Saudi.

Fascinating, since it's Israel that's attacking Iran,

not the UAE going.

One thing I would say about the UAE,

so they have had to intercept well over 2,000 of these missiles

and drones, most of them have been drones.

And you can't possibly use interceptors for all of that.

There's just too many to intercept with traditional interceptors.

So what we've seen and what we've heard

is that the UAE's actually been going after these drones,

chasing them with helicopters and fighter jets

and trying to chase them out into open spaces like the desert

and then firing at them in order to get them to not fall

and cause fires and debris and cause deaths here

on residents in places like Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

Although as I'm speaking to you,

two more residents of the UAE were killed today

from debris in Abu Dhabi.

So it's not a perfect process,

but that's what they've been doing at least for the drones.

That's wild.

Using fighter jets chase the drone.

But you're expensive.

Expensive, I was just going to say, Tom,

expensive, that's not a cheap thing to do.

Wow.

Tom, what you got?

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

and President Trump have sent the same message

to the Iranian people.

Rise up and take over your government.

Very easy to say because the protesters don't have weapons,

the Iranian Revolutionary Guard,

they do have weapons.

But Mary Louise, there was a time

when the population did rise up to overthrow its government.

That was a 1979 when the Shah's government fell

and Ayatollah Khomeini came to power.

The only reason the people rose up

was because the military stood back.

The top general, in Iran at the time,

General Abbas Gharabaji put out a message saying

the military would quote,

be neutral in the current political dispute

in order to prevent further disorder and bloodshed.

So all military personnel went back to their bases

effectively yielding control of the entire country

to Ayatollah Khomeini.

Now, the general worked with the Ayatollah's government

for a time.

And then things got a little sketchy with him.

And the government, he fled to Paris.

And today he is buried in a cemetery in Paris

alongside Oscar Wilde

and the door's frontman, Jim Morrison.

Jim, I know the cemetery, Parallelish is.

That's right.

Okay.

All right.

I will end with in Qutel.

Do either of you know what that is?

Yes, it is.

In Qutel.

Okay, so in Qutel, it is.

A CIA-backed venture capital firm.

It's like the innovation shop for the CIA

and they see spy gadgets, spy software.

And the issue is CIA-backed, I said,

that Tulsi Gabbard, who is the DNI,

the Director of National Intelligence,

wants to yank it away from the CIA

and put it under her domain

to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

This is per story, four bylines in Politico, by the way.

They've sourced it to six people

with quote, knowledge of the effort.

And apparently the rationale for doing this

switch would be the thinking that in Qutel,

the way it's currently set up,

Cater is too much to the CIA

that there are all these other spy agencies,

defense agencies who could benefit.

So let's put it under DNI.

I don't have visibility into whether

this is a good idea or what all the implications would be,

but I will say the reason it caught my eye

is it's such a reminder of just the baked intentions

over who runs the US intelligence community.

You know, for many decades, it was the CIA

and if you were the director of the CIA,

you were also the director of central intelligence.

You ran the whole Shabang.

That changed after 9-11

because there was seem to be a need

to have someone steering the broader enterprise

and bashing heads together

and forcing the CIA to share what it knew with the FBI and vice versa.

I remember sitting in those hearings,

not far from where you and I are sitting today, Tom,

over at the Senate Heart Office,

building where all these people came in and testified

and the top recommendation that came out

of those 9-11 commission hearings

was let's set up a director of national intelligence

but they left so many questions

unresolved over what that would look like

and how that would work.

Today, you have a CIA director

who reports to the DNI

but who has a way bigger workforce and budget

and field offices around the world.

And is it just one more layer of bureaucracy?

Is it more efficient?

That's always been one of the questions.

So here you have what looks like

just a little bureaucratic, you know,

squabble who should in-cute tell ultimately report to.

But I suspect it reveals much deeper tensions still

over who's in charge of the 18 U.S. spy agencies

that make up the U.S. intelligence community.

18.

Wow.

18, that includes the DNI and the CIA.

All right, we have been speaking with Aeabotrally,

reporting from her base in Dubai

and Pentagon correspondent Humbleman here in Washington.

Thanks to you both.

You're welcome.

Thank you.

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