Trump: US ‘Locked And Loaded’ For Potential Massive Strikes On Iran & Yemen

This is a live look here at a map courtesy of Marine Traffic. This shows you the ship movement in the Strait of Hormuz, or perhaps the lack thereof, as President Trump yesterday vowing major military punishment for Tehran and its Houthi allies in Yemen after the Houthis said they had struck two Saudi tankers in the Red Sea on Thursday. Now the Houthis have declared a naval blockade of Saudi Arabia. The kingdom has been diverting millions of barrels of oil by pipeline each day to the Red Sea to skirt Iran's near total blockade of the Strait of Hormuz on the Gulf. The Saudi-led coalition has been fighting the Houthis in Yemen and said that it struck Houthi military sites in recent days after attacks on the Saudi tankers. Now this also comes as the U.S. military had launched airstrikes on Iran late on Thursday and early on Friday, the 13th consecutive night of attacks. There have been no reports of fresh U.S. strikes today so far. Two weeks after the collapse of an interim truce meant to end the war, Iranian armed forces had responded by firing at U.S. bases in neighboring Arab countries on Friday and warning that they could strike non-military buildings they're used by U.S. personnel. This also comes as the U.S. said yesterday that it fired on another merchant vessel that was trying to breach its blockade of Iran's ports while the Islamic Republic targeted American strongholds across the Persian region. To talk more on this we are joined by John Hanna from JINSA who has been a frequent contributor here to Live Now for Fox and John we appreciate you joining us once again. Thanks so much for having me pleasure to be with you. So once again we are keeping a very close eye on the Strait of Hormuz as President Trump threatens major punishment for Iran in Yemen and we've been seeing the rhetoric from President Trump continuing to ramp up also by the Iranian regime there as well. We've also seen rounds of strikes. What do you make of the latest escalation between the two countries? Well I think you're right that everything the last week from the President and from the U.S. military in terms of the amount of personnel and logistics being sent into the region suggests that we're sort of on the cusp of a huge U.S. escalation against Iran either to try and liberate Hormuz. Obviously we now have this problem in the Red Sea as well with the Houthis which is only going to add to the stress on the global economy or the President. There's also talk about a major operation deep inside of Iran to go after some of these newly emerging nuclear sites inside of Iran that are even more deeply buried than some of the sites that we bombed last year. So either one of those going after liberating the Straits of Hormuz or going deep into Iran to destroy nuclear facilities is very high risk potentially enormous cost operations and the President right now seems teetering right on the edge of whether he's going to do that or just continue to go for tit for tat strikes keep the economic pressure on Iran and hope that they break before the the American people break in terms of the the impacts of this war on on their economy and their pocketbooks. So John what do you think might be the tipping point for President Trump because he has continually tried to go the route of peace and negotiations that has not seemed to work and it almost seems like Iran is feeling empowered to escalate things on their end. Where do you see this going in terms of what will ultimately be the deciding factor or perhaps multiple deciding factors for President Trump? I think the President you know has been in a bad way because there are two fundamental problems that I don't think he's heard from his military advisors. There are real compelling solutions to at an acceptable cost and risk to the United States that the American people would be prepared to to pay and the first is Hormuz. How do you open it when Iran can and keep it open when Iran can so easily with a single drone a single mine hitting a single ship shut down effectively shut down shipping through that major major commercial waterway and I don't think the President has heard the answer. How does he open it at an acceptable cost and keep it open and stop Iran from being able to shut it down and the second thing if he does do a major escalation Iran has demonstrated an ability to devastate the economies and critical oil infrastructure of our Arab allies in the Gulf and even though I think our air defense has done a very good job there's just too many targets to protect. We can't do it adequately and we would face and those Gulf states would face potential real devastation and major humanitarian disasters if their desalination plants that they're so dependent on were to be hit and we can't. I don't think the President has an adequate answer of how do I protect and prevent disaster from happening in the Gulf as a result of these very deep magazines of missiles and drones almost inexhaustible that the Iranians have that we've tried to degrade and yet every night they're prepared to go after and hit both American targets and the targets of our Gulf allies. I think the President's kind of been checkmated so far and that's why he ended up with an MOU that was so unsatisfactory to him and he's now looking and thinking and and reviewing again whether or not there really are credible military options at an acceptable cost in the middle of a very unpopular war that he could actually liberate Hormuz and adequately protect against potentially devastating Iranian retaliation. That's his problem. And John you really just mapped it out very clearly just in terms of just how fragile everything is and this is not just as simple as Iran you were talking about Iran now targeting some of these you know this the the Gulf allies of the United States desalination plans so important in that region. You know we've also put up a live poll there on the lower portion of our screen for viewers to participate in as we have this conversation there's this QR code on the lower right hand side. The question that we've posed to our viewers John is this do you think President Trump will direct the U.S. to strike Iran tonight? So that is what we asked our viewers right now 72 percent say yes. As we take a look at this there were 13 consecutive days of strikes. No new strikes right now according to Reuters today so far but do you see this resuming a little bit later on as President Trump has threatened to widen the range of targets. We've heard this from him before but again Iran's new energy plants as well as bridges and and the deep underground nuclear site known as Picsax Mountain. Yeah I think you know whether we had a pause last night or or not right now it just looks like the calm before the storm because we do seem to be very much in a escalation dynamic right now in which the president that MOU and Iran's control of Hormuz is something that he doesn't think he can accept and therefore he's hoping that by increasing the pressure hitting Iran a little bit harder maybe even much much harder Iran will finally reach a a breaking point and that their breaking point will become will come before the American breaking point in terms of the global global economy and so right now it without a lot of major effort going into producing any kind of of diplomatic off-ramp that gets us back to a path of of diplomacy and negotiation looking for a ceasefire. All the signals are pointing in the opposite direction. Both sides seem to believe that if they can ramp up the pressure and pain on the other side they'll break before before they do. And John you were saying right now it's increasingly unlikely that there is the possibility of negotiations. You know just how unlikely is it that both sides will try to resume? We've seen you know countries such as Qatar, Pakistan trying to mediate trying to find some sort of middle ground that really has never gone anywhere. I know there was the MOU but that you know has ended. How unlikely is it or is there still a very slim possibility? Well I think diplomacy is always a possibility. We don't know what's happening behind the scenes. We don't know what the exactly the discussions are within both Washington and Tehran about how much pain they're suffering and whether or not they really need to find an off-ramp. But as we've said I think the the all the all the signals right now are pointing towards escalation as each side believes you know that a a a diplomatic off-ramp right now at this point sort of surrendering to the other side giving in crying uncle is is is going to be more painful than withstanding some kind of military escalation and believing that you're going to be able to to withstand more pain than the than the other side or inflict more pain than the other side. So it's hard for me to to be particularly hopeful now that that that a negotiation is going to emerge here. Both sides seem set on a on a different course. And John this conflict isn't in a silo. We've also been hearing that Iran has been speaking with Russia and China. You know Israel is also a part of all of this. How much do other countries factor in? I have to imagine as we're taking a look at the Strait of Hormuz you know this is impacting almost every country. So much of the oil you know in the world goes through this particular area. So what what are those conversations like? I mean obviously we don't really know but what might that be when you're talking about Iran speaking with China and Russia and all of these other countries that are you know involved in some respect? Yeah well the Chinese and Russians are a real problem. Obviously they they don't they're they're not stupid enough to be sending major military platforms to Iran right now and fueling the war directly. But there's almost no question that Iran is accessing major intelligence platforms and targeting information from certainly from the Chinese and probably from the Russians as well. That you know those three or four Americans that died last week, particularly the ones in Jordan when that base were hit, that was exquisite precision by Iranian missiles right on targets in terms of American troops, their sleeping quarters. And I think you know there's no doubt there's a direct Russian and Chinese hand in some of this and fueling this conflict that we have to have to worry about. At the same time the Chinese have huge interests in the free flow of navigation through a commercial waterway like the Straits of Hormuz. They have major economic interests in all of the Gulf states in 40 to 50 percent of their oil imports Chinese come out of Hormuz. Now if you add the Red Sea to that and their ability to send trade up the Red Sea through Suez to Europe, Chinese have huge interest in freedom of navigation. So you know one hopes beyond hope that there's a lot of diplomacy between the United States and and the Gulf states and China going on that could maybe loop China into bringing a little more pressure on Iran to free up things for from in Hormuz. On the Israeli side we obviously have Prime Minister Netanyahu coming this week for the funeral of Senator Graham. He'll have a meeting with the president and I think topic number one will be getting on the same page about Iran. If there is going to be a major escalation, how will it proceed? Is there an Israeli role in resuming their own attacks against Iran? Are there important targets and that Israel could could help facilitate? And of course then Israel would again be on the receiving end potentially of Iranian retaliation and I think they'd want to coordinate and make sure that the defense of Israel is going to be adequate and the United States is obviously helping out there. So all very important these other international players are making a difference and having impact on the course of this war. And John you were mentioning that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Trump will very likely be talking about strategy and what all of this looks like in the coming days. As you're taking a look at this and as what we've seen in the past months, when we look ahead to a potential time frame, is there any window that you're keeping a very close eye on or is this just evolving so quickly that we really don't know when, one we don't know when there might be further escalation, but two when this may end. Is there just not a clear view of what that looks like right now? Yeah, no. If you ask me now whether this is going to continue for another month or another six months, I'm not sure I could really give you fair odds on those probabilities because it is very, very uncertain. One issue is obviously how long can Iran, despite its huge determination to resist this any kind of American onslaught and give up this major leverage it has now under Hormuz, at some point every society under this kind of economic stranglehold that the American blockade is putting on it under the pressure of being hit, having important infrastructure and military sites hit every night. Even a regime as brutal and authoritarian as the Iranian one, when presumed, they have a breaking point. But whether again that's in a month, six months, a year, it's very, very hard to tell. As for the United States, I think this question of how long can we withstand? How long can energy markets withstand the deficit from the lack of flow of oil through Hormuz now through maybe Bab el-Mendeb in the Red Sea? At what point in time? We haven't seen it yet to the surprise of a lot of oil analysts. We haven't seen that real crunch point where oil, even though it's been rising the last few weeks, when does it really take a qualitative jump to $150 a barrel, to $200 a barrel? Because there are no reserves anymore. There are no inventories to make up the difference. Does that come sometime in August or September, the early fall that would require fundamental reevaluation by the United States, by all of its allies around the world who are suffering, that we're headed for an economic depression? President Trump has said, I don't want to be Herbert Hoover in the middle of having caused a Great Depression. I don't want to be that president. That's not my legacy. He said that just a month ago, maybe. And if the oil markets get to a place where that kind of crisis really erupts, then I think the United States probably has got to think about where's the off ramp that we can get out of this war. All very going to be very interesting to see what happens, John, as you mentioned. So much constantly changing, and we'll just have to wait and see. As always, we appreciate you joining us here on Live Now from Fox. Great. Thanks so much for having me. Have a great weekend. Thank you.