The Hormuz Pressure Cooker and Oil Price Roulette: Clay Seigle & Rear Adm. Mark Montgomery

My gut instinct tells me that this market wants to sell every chance it gets. I mean, the fact that we're not already 150 or higher tells me that speculators, meaning non-commercial players, are, you know, they're skeptical that there's going to be a long-term disruption. I'm host Michael Allen with Beacon Global Strategies. Today we have a special episode on the rapidly developing situation in Iran. I'm joined by two experts who have very different but critically important perspectives. First, we're going to talk about energy and the critical oil and gas choke point of the Straits of Hormuz. Clay Siegel of the Center for Strategic and International Studies will walk us through how the conflict is rippling through global energy markets and what it could signal for the broader geopolitical order. Next we'll talk to Admiral Montgomery on the actual mechanics of the U.S. Navy reopening the Straits to the oil and gas trade. Let's get into it. Clay Siegel, welcome to NatSecMatters. Thank you, Michael. Pleasure to be here, despite the seriousness of the topic. Well, this is quite serious. Did you talk a little bit about the Straits of Hormuz and why this is a historic energy supply crisis? Sure. While we are entering the third week of this war, between on one hand the United States and Israel and the other hand Iran, which has basically paralyzed energy exports from the Middle East Gulf, which is connected to the rest of the world via the Straits of Hormuz, which by now everyone has heard about relentlessly on news reports over the last few weeks. The reason why this is so important is because we get 20% of our energy. I'm talking about the world, not the United States, but the world gets 20% of its crude oil and refined products, which is 20 million barrels per day. It's about 100 million barrels per day global market. We get 20 from the Gulf. Then we also get 10 billion cubic feet per day of liquefied natural gas or LNG, which also happens to be 20% of that market. When you think about LNG and oil together, it's fully a fifth of what the world uses every day comes from this vitally important region of the world. The war that's been going on for three weeks now has disrupted the flow of traffic. Number one, because these ship owners and operators and naturally their crews are not enthusiastic about sailing through a hot war zone where the Iranians have said in some cases that ships will be targeted. We have seen, I think, a dozen or more smaller tankers, not a super tanker yet, but smaller tankers hit by fire during the course of this war. On the other hand, we have seen a few ships get out. It's selective right now, and it's just a trickle, but there are signs that certain ships with energy cargos are being allowed out. The reason this is so important for the world economy is if oil and gas prices, they've already spiked. I'm sure everyone's seen that on their local newscast, but if they stay high, meaning over $100 per barrel for oil, which translates to gasoline, translates to jet fuel, and business spending, it has ripple effects through the economy. I think that's what economists are really concerned about right now is how long we have this sustained disruption with negative impacts on the economy. Clay, can you talk a little bit about the big news from the weekend, which is that the United States bombed the military targets on Harg Island? What do you think this is all about? I think it's a big symbolic shot across the bow of Iran. It's saying that, so you're right, it was military installations on this small island that were targeted and not the crucial oil infrastructure, which is needed to load Iran's about one and a half, maybe two million barrels a day on a good day onto these ships. So they spared the oil infrastructure, which is really why Harg Island is important. But the attack on the military installations does a couple of things. Practically speaking, it does soften up targets in anticipation of, or at least to open the door to, a potential United States land invasion of Harg Island. Again, this is a small place. It's not big. Certain special forces or a relatively small Marines unit could probably take control of the island relatively easily. Now that those military garrisons have been degraded or destroyed, but the key to watch for Harg Island is whether the oil infrastructure is attacked or maybe even taken control of. However, when it comes to the outcome of the war, I don't really think it makes that big of a difference, to be honest with you. And that's because Iran just has this outsized leverage. And so if it's willing to have its exports offline for longer, it kind of has really big cards to play with everyone else's exports. As we've said, 20 million barrels a day and a fifth of the world's oil supply. So the basic equation that Iran has still had in kind of confronting the international community still holds today, even after three weeks of war, which is if we can't export our oil, the neighbors aren't going to be able to export theirs either, and everyone is going to feel the pain of this conflict. And that's going to happen whether or not Trump orders a seizure of Harg Island or even a destruction of Harg Island's infrastructure, making it impossible for a long time for Iran to resume cargo loadings. It's not really going to affect the outcome because Iran has really big cards to play as well. Clay, apparently one thing that's taking us a while is that our military has to destroy Iran's capability inside the Straits of Formus. What will happen to the price of oil in the meantime? The answer to your question is, if it takes another couple of weeks, I think that we're going to see both of those oil price indicators moving higher because an oil disruption has an effect on markets based on how much less oil the market is getting. So that's a function of two things. It's the volume that's disrupted, right? How many barrels? And then how long it lasts, the duration. So if it takes another several weeks to get an operation up and running, I think that oil prices will creep higher during that period. There will be some volatility around if speculators, if other market participants believe that an operation like that is going to have a big success and get those barrels moving again to market, then we could see wild gyrations in the price of oil as things play out in the field. But another thing to emphasize, Michael, is that it's not at all clear that initiating an escort operation is the end of our problems. I think it's going to be difficult to secure the number of cargoes, let's say between 60 and 80, that need to move through that straight each day. And then even the naval warships by the countries that are conducting the escort are liable to come under fire. So it's not a panacea. It's not a magic bullet to say that the escort operation is up and running. It's a good step in the right direction. The other thing to keep in mind is it's way more than just that narrow straight that needs to be secured from attack. It's also the ships throughout the Middle East Gulf that are kind of at anchor and they're sort of sitting ducks for these Iranian systems like missiles, like drones. And then of course, there's the facilities, the fixed infrastructure that loads the ships. Those are obviously sitting ducks as well. So it's really hard to get to a point from an energy security perspective to think about an end game here that secures our energy supplies sort of a ceasefire. Because if Iran wants to keep going, it probably has the capability to keep going. Well, also, it seems like Israel wants to keep this war going, I assume, longer than the United States. And so that leads me to the conclusion that even if Trump has in mind ending the war in two weeks and maybe restoring or believing that the Iranians may restore access through the Straits of Hormuz, they're not going to do it if the Israelis are still bombing them as well. So it just feels like this is going to be an oil crisis for some weeks to come. I think that's possible. I think that we probably will see how to put it diplomatically, variances between the approach in Washington and Jerusalem. It seems like in Israel, they're looking at, first of all, what we saw a couple of months ago with these uprisings and big demonstrations against the regime in Iran, now followed by these attacks on the regime as an opportunity, sort of like a once in a generation opportunity to confront this this longtime foe and knock it down to size. So it does seem that and the Israelis also have their eyes on the proxy forces that have been allied and supported by Tehran over the years and knocking them back too. I understand that this morning the Israelis have already initiated a multi-divisional incursion into southern Lebanon. Yeah, I think five divisions is what I read about, unconfirmed, but I just kind of read about this this morning. That would be the biggest in a long time and way bigger than the incursion we saw last summer. And so the word on the street is that they would like to control the part of south Lebanon at least up to the Lytani River and maybe even up to the Zahrani River. So without a lot of geographical background, it's basically the part of southern Lebanon that borders Israel, where they've incurred a lot of fire over the years. And so Israel has wider aims here, maybe than the United States, and it remains to be seen whether President Trump can eventually, at the right time, convince the Israelis to get on board with a de-escalation process. But for the time being, I don't even think President Trump is in that direction. So how long would you foresee, let's say this goes on another two to four weeks at a minimum, but for the, let's call it the medium term, how high do you see the price of oil going per barrel? You know, I think for that futures price that we all watch on TV and in the news, I think that you're probably looking at something like $120 plus dollars per barrel. And that's what we saw in that spike, basically last, at the beginning of last week, this time last week, prices spiked up to $120. And we've been lower since then. But I think that's the direction of travel, if this goes on for more weeks. And you have to remember as well that the futures market discounts what's already happened and is looking ahead. That's its job and its role. And so it'll also be thinking about after this active combat phase ends, how long is it going to take to get that supply chain of oil and gas going again to the rest of the world and causing countries that have already sort of dug a hole in their inventories in order to supplement what they're missing? How long is it going to take all that to get work through the system? Some stuff in the region has been heavily damaged. We need a battle damage assessment and figure out how long it's going to take to repair. There's a lot of workers that have been displaced that are going to have to get back in the country and get going again. And there are other things in the supply chain that will take a while to get going. So I think you're looking at at least another month of disruptions and maybe more, even if you have an announcement of an end of fighting in, let's say, two weeks. Yeah, amazing. Okay. If there's lags in the system is what you should keep in mind. What if we are in the process of seizing Harg Island? What will energy markets do there? I mean, my gut instinct tells me that this market wants to sell every chance it gets. I mean, the fact that we're not already 150 or higher tells me that speculators, not meaning non-commercial players are, you know, they're skeptical that there's going to be a long term disruption. So I look at it like, remember last summer, the highest point after which prices kind of collapsed was when Iran actually fired a missile at our base in Al-Odeid in Qatar. And as soon as Iran actually launched an attack on a Gulf country, prices completely unwound. Why? Sounds counterintuitive because traders see the beginning of the end and nobody wants to be left holding a long position if everyone's going to be running for the exits because their money is going to evaporate. So it's a rush to the exits at that point. So I think that a lot of participants in the market will try to sell a big geopolitical event like an attack on Harg Island or a seizure of Harg Island. But I think that there's going to be a lot of whiplash because if people then realize that that's not necessarily an end of the war and that things could continue to get worse before they get better, you can see another move higher. That's my base case for if we attack Harg Island. It's not going to cause the Iranians to let up on what they're doing. And so it's not going to alleviate the shortage. Yeah. Let's talk about the geopolitical knock on effects of this supply disruption. The United States, I think, is thought to be able to fare well because we've at least got oil reserves and the rest. The Chinese, however, seem to be the major importer of oil and gas, especially from or through the Straits of Hormuz. Talk a little bit about these issues. Sure. So Asia, generally speaking, the region has an outsize dependence on and concern for energy exports from this region. So just a few percentages to keep in mind. Yeah, China gets 45% of its 11 million barrels per day. It has a huge import burden. So about half of that, let's say, fivish from the Middle East Gulf. So they have a lot at stake. Japan even more, 78% of their oil comes from this region, almost all of it. South Korea, I think, 62. So that part of Asia, Northeast Asia is really dependent on this. And in order to last, to endure through a disruption like this, they're going to have to cut into reserves. That's one reason why the International Energy Agency has announced a historic drawdown of energy inventories, 400 million barrels in the coming months. And the United States is participating in that in a limited capacity. But so Asia is really dependent, India as well. And so India most recently has been trying to, or let's say, taking steps toward weaning itself off of such reliance on inexpensive discounted Russian barrels to try to comply with our sanctions, get bilateral trade back in a good way. And now they're having the whiplash because all of a sudden the Middle East Gulf, which was supposed to be a substitute for those Iranian barrels, is now offline. So from an Indian perspective, it's like guys, which make a decision. If we're going to get off the Russian, we need other supplies in the world like Middle East. We have before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. So if that's also going to go offline, you've got to cut us some slack on the Russian stuff. And that's what the Trump administration has done with Treasury granting a license over the last week for all of these Russian barrels that are sort of, we say on trading just distress, basically means barrels that don't have a home. They're kind of out there on the ocean floating at sea on these tankers, not knowing where they're headed. So we've released those from sanctions and allowed the Indians to take those on. Again, though, it can help, but it can only buy you more time to get the export flows going again from the region because none of these sort of bandaid temporary solutions can hope to offset a 20 million barrel day disruption. And by the way, Michael, it's not exactly 20 anymore because some barrels are getting out through the street, but some of the countries in the region have managed to redirect a small portion of their golf flows through kind of a plan B export routes. And particularly Saudi Arabia has this East West pipeline that connects the Eastern region where the oil is produced and exported through the Gulf to their West coast to a port called Yanbu, which is near Jeddah. And they've probably managed to bring two and a half, maybe even three million barrels a day over. It's still the minority. The majority is still trapped in the Gulf, but it helps. And so that 20 is now probably closer to 15. And so the redirects are useful, but they're also not a replacement and they too can come under fire. You know, a lot of us analysts are just waiting for the Houthis in Yemen to open fire on shipping just like they did from kind of 2023 forward. And so if they do that, then even the East West pipeline, the redirect could be at risk of attack by pro-Iranian forces. The U.S. Navy is going to have its work cut out for it in multiple theaters here. Yeah. If you could discuss what policy options the United States has to address higher oil prices. I read somewhere over the weekend that there really isn't a policy response that is possible short of the full restoration of oil through oil and gas through the straits. Is that about right? I'm afraid it is, Michael. And you guys probably look at us oil security wonks. Guys, you've been looking at these challenges for decades. The writing was kind of on the wall here. Where are the alternatives and the measures that policymakers can put on this? And I think that they are doing quite a few things from giving confidence to the reinsurance market, which has been a little bit of an obstacle to potentially waiving some regulations that could make it easier for fuel manufacturers to do their thing efficiently. Those could help. And then, of course, the release of reserves can buy really important time to get the main exports flowing again. So it's an important tool in the toolkit. But the main thing that people really have to keep in mind is that none of them are substitutes for having the mid-East Gulf closed to energy exports. We got to get it going again. And the analogy that I use is, if you're between jobs, unfortunately, hopefully you have an emergency rainy day fund in the bank so that you can pay the bills for a period of months with some cushion while you get a new job and you get that paycheck going again. But that rainy day fund is not a substitute for getting a new job. You still need to get a new paycheck. And the world still needs to get that oil and gas flowing again from this region of the world. There's no substitute. Well, Clay, thank you so much. We've really enjoyed having you on NETSecMatters. And we'll have you back. My pleasure. That was Clay Siegel. Now, we're going to take a quick break. And we'll come back with Admiral Mark Montgomery, who'll discuss the situation in the straights. Admiral Mark Montgomery, welcome. Welcome to the NETSecMatters. We're here to talk about the NETSecMatters. We're here to talk about the NETSecMatters. We're here to talk about the NETSecMatters. We're here to talk about the NETSecMatters. We're here to talk about the NETSecMatters. We're here to talk about the NETSecMatters. We're here to talk about the NETSecMatters. We're here to talk about the NETSecMatters. We're here to talk about the NETSecMatters. We're here to talk about the NETSecMatters. We're here to talk about the NETSecMatters. We're here to talk about the NETSecMatters. Admiral Mark Montgomery, welcome back to NETSecMatters. Thank you very much for having me, Michael. Mark, let's go straight to the straights of Hormuz. What does it take militarily in order to escort tankers through this choke point? Yeah, thanks. You know, they said this is an important issue. It's one that's being treated by some like, oh, they didn't have a plan for this. I promise you, I've worked on this plan. I have not seen the current version, so I'm not seeing any in classified, but I'll just say the idea that Central Command was not, US Central Command was not planning for eventually having to secure the straights of Hormuz is contravenes all observations I've had. They were ready for this. Now, the problem is it's a hard thing to do. I was part of teams that did it 40 years ago. You know, we had to convoy repeatedly, you know, in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It's a complicated thing, especially as you have a more capable adversary. Iran has evolved significantly since 1986, 1988, 1990. And so the first thing you have to do is establish the conditions that lower the military risk to a manageable risk level for the unit commander, the Commodore or their carrier strike group commander that's going to overall manage this, you know, lead this convoy process. And that means you have to knock down the missiles, the anti-ship cruise missiles, the drones, the surface attack, unmanned service attack craft, and mines that the Iranians have. They have all four of those weapon systems. They had all four of them in pretty significant numbers at the start of the war. Now, you know, 17 days into it, we have absolutely significantly degraded all four of those, but not eliminated them. And there's some people who get confused. You've sunk 80 ships, you've sunk 60 ships. I think the president has repeatedly said we've sunk their navy. You know, the Ukrainians don't have a navy, but they're able to assert sea control over the Black Sea with different weapons. So we have to be, we actually have to eliminate all those other things. So first you have to do is break those down to a manageable level. I think we're doing that if you had my estimate. And Mark, I mean, I'm just, forgive me for interrupting. These were necessary steps that had to occur in the campaign anyway, right? Even if you weren't going to do the Straits of Formus operation, you had to knock down and degrade their ballistic missile capability, their drone capability. And so is it, well, is it fair to say that this is just steaming ahead as planned? Yes. And so look, what I tell you in the broader scheme, they're not just taking out ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones and their facilities. They're also taking out production lines. Like it's part of the, I'm going to assume for a minute that this team entered with two strategic aims and not resume change. The two strategic aims were change the ability of the regime to impact its neighbors, Israel and the United States and threaten them and terrorize them as they have over the past 40 years. And do it for three, five, seven years. And that's exactly what's happening right now. For things like their Navy and their ballistic missiles, we are knocking back their ability to use them five or seven years. For things like drones, we're not going to, in enemy air defenses, we're not going to back three years. These are big numbers. These are numbers that allow the rest of the Middle East to prosper, to work on their other issues, to, you know, make the Abrams a core dream. Make the Abrams a core hole. You know, so from my point of view, that's a big number one objective. There is a number two objective, which is be, be in charge, secure, be able to secure safe transit through the straits of her moves. That's your second exit, mostly because that would be the Iranian counterpoint. So you're absolutely right. This attrition of their cruise missiles, mines, a fast attack craft and drones were part of the broader air plan. And it's, and Admiral Cooper and General Cain have said that's a four week, you know, plan. The Israelis just started. Starting when? Starting already? From February 28th. Okay. You know, but now, for the first time, Israel kind of hinted it's a four to five week plan. Now, I have to be honest, these plans, normally if you told me of a four week attack plan, I think you have a three to three and a half week attack plan with four or five days of re-attack and new attack, you know. Things you didn't get right and things you kind of see, they kind of fill in an extra three or four days at some point in the air plan. It might be that the Israelis are looking and, hey, there's more than we thought. This is five weeks and that's okay. Okay. That's the kind of thing the president has to be patient for. Okay. So a four week campaign to degrade, let's just call it, let's shorthand that is degrading Iran's military capability significantly was going to have to happen anyway. And so at that point, then it's just sort of the decision tree. Do you need to do Hormuz or do you not need to do Hormuz and then if the answer is yes, we do. Yeah. Yeah. And let's get to that in just a second. But back on the military capability in the region, I mean, we have the capability, right? It's just busy with prosecuting attacks. It's just not in the escort mode, right? So you need four things in my mind after you do establish the right military risk, you know, by degrading, as you said, so many degrading the adversary. Those four things are a really committed persistent stare, you know, that kind of unblinking eye really on the straits and the, you know, 50 miles on either side of it and 50 miles, 100 miles deep into Iran, where you're really looking for any kind of movement there, missile movement, drone launcher movement, movement of mines, fast attacks being on some kind of, you know, tow vehicle to get in the water. You're looking for all that. And look, do we have that unblinking eye right now? Yes, but it's spread out all over Iran. I'm saying really focused on the straits of Hormuz, some high quality intelligence. And you also have to look at the strait that they would have called the transit schemes heading into the straits for about, you know, just north of Jabali, which is Dubai, Asharia, towards the straits and then coming out of the straits out into the North Arabian Sea. Okay, unblinking eye number one. Number two, I would put up and you can, you know, brilliant airmen can fight this number over, but somewhere between two and four cap stations. That's a combat air patrol that each have two fighter jets in them. She either have four or eight, you know, jets up, and these are F-15s, F-18s, F-16s fighter jets with the advanced precision kill weapon system. That's that 2.75 inch rocket that we've given to the Ukrainians to use for the last year plus that we've used to attract drones going to Israel in the past. It's a cost effective way of knocking on drones, 25, $27,000 a rocket to shoot down on your head that probably costs more than that. You can flip in the cost curve, so to speak. But you got those up there, those dudes, now they also have some strike weapons on them. So if they see a bad actor, you get a strike weapon, if you manage to get your missile or drone off, we shoot that down with something else, right? But you need a bunch of them to kind of patrol. Now, the good news here is the drone defense and missile defense of this is focused, right? It's focused on the ship, the destroyers that we're going to talk about in a second, and the merchants that you're escorting. You know, it's not like trying to defend all of the Gulf Cooperation Council against a drone launch, which is 500 miles wide and 500 miles deep of territory. You know, they've got to come to the convoy if they want to interrupt the convoy. So, you know, that gives you an advantage. So I have those four caps up. They do a lot. They shoot down rockets. They could shoot down cruise missiles. Okay, so that's two. That's two. Persistent stare and cap stations, okay? Number three is I would have armed helos that are going to launch from the destroyers I'm about to mention. And those armed helos are kick-ass because they can take out the fast attack craft. They could also maybe mess with drones, but I'd really be using them with their rockets to take out fast attack craft because ships are not good against fast attack craft. You know, just trying to get the gun position right, trying to maneuver the ship and all that, trying to get in front of a merchant with that. It's a pain. The helo goes 150 knots and has no problem getting in front of that fast attack craft and giving them the business, right? So, you know, that's number three. And number four is the thing most people are talking about. You know, I say 10 to 14 destroyers to really do this right. That means people monitoring a bullpen kind of guarding the area where you can't tell merchants, hey, come to this area and we'll pick you up and leave that area unguarded, right? The Iranians will show up there. And you kind of got to have them on the back end as they kind of get out of the convoy. And then you have pairs of ships going through, you know, two on this, two here, two there. And I think that gives you 10 to 14 destroyers. And these are not any kind of warship. These are air defense capable. I love our age of ships, the Arleigh Birks. The president and I kind of disagree on whether they're the most beautiful ship in the world. I think they are. He thinks they're the ugliest. Right now, I bet he thinks they're beautiful ships. We have nearly 80 of them in service. We have, you know, in public reporting, we have 18 to 20 in this combat right now in different places. You know, either defending Israel kind of in the Red Sea, defending the carrier strike groups, you know, kind of all around. They, as you've heard, they have Tomahawk missiles, other things, but they are excellent escort vessels because they have a great air defense system and they have a good anti-summarine system that has a kind of rudimentary mind detection capability. I see. All right. So what if I said, well, all this was foreseeable and President Trump just simply should have had more destroyers, more warheads. More planes, more capability in the region, and they could have started the tanker escorts through Hormuz two weeks ago. Just tell me why that's wrong again. Because the first thing I said was you got to get the risk down to a manageable level. And the way to do that was the ballistic. That was the only four. Yeah. So that was anti-ship cruise missiles. Yeah. Everything. Missile. Wrong. That takes four weeks. Okay. Look, you're right. I'm going to say right now, go escort Brad to Brad Cooper. Go escort those ships. The problem is Brad's going to go back. Hey, sir, my likelihood of losing a destroyer just went from 1% permission to 15% permission. And we have hundreds of sailors on those ships. Is that really what we want to do? That doesn't constitute a win. Yeah. Okay. Using ship doing this. So no, establish the conditions first, then conduct the escort. There's two sets of establishing conditions. One is a trading the enemy. The other is getting your own forces in play. I think they beautifully meet around week four. They'd meet even better around week four if an ally or a partner were lending some ships as well. But we can do it without them. All right. Mark, before we get over to Harg Island, let me ask you this. At one point, I've heard people suggest that Trump wanted to end this sooner rather than later. And therefore, if he's done in two to three weeks, maybe we don't need to do a tanker escort because operations will have ceased. However, I think it's probably wiser to assume that the Iranians are thrilled with how much quote leverage this has given them. They may continue to make things complicated in the straits. If we don't do an escort operation, Israel's still going to be hitting Iran. So it feels like regardless of where we are, we're going to have to do this tanker escort. It's just not foreseeable that everything goes back to status quo ante. Correct. I mean, if you're Iran and the United States stopped shooting and you still can control flow in and out of the straits or hermoos, I would say you won. This is part of winning. And look, I know we have cultures where our kids aren't supposed to win and lose, but in war, you're actually supposed to win. And winning means two things. Look, I don't know if they ever had a strategic end state of resume change, but they needed, I know two strategic end states. One was prevent Iran, the regime in Iran from being able to impact its neighbors, its Arab partners or Arab neighbors, Israel and the United States and terrorize us as they have for 40 years. And two was take control of the straits or hermoos. And that's clear whether they said it articulately or not is irrelevant. It was clear that we're going to have to do this. And the thing is, cheating it, trying to go early or not doing it would be either too risky or leaving control in the Iranian hands. So I don't think those were options, Michael. I think the option has always been beat the crap out of them for four weeks, seize control of flow through the straits or hermoos. Okay. So back to timing. From February 28th, we were going to go three to four weeks. We'll come up on that before too long. And it sounds like for some period of time, we may be in some sort of continuing hostilities and we'll continue to need a big presence to make sure they can get through the straits. Okay. Fine. Let's also talk about how they would complicate things through the straits. Some people say, well, they're going to mine the straits. But on the other hand, they want to get their own ships through. I've read that they've gotten as many of tenants their own ships through. So they probably won't mine it. But just the act of talking about it has the same effect. Is that about fair? No, I think that's a great point. So, and again, I want to make sure we all understand that I think it's four weeks and that I've heard the Israelis say four to five weeks. Okay. But in any case, you know, for major combat operations, that's what we're going to call it. Yeah. And then you chipped over to this mission. Okay. And look, you're still doing combat operations. You may, you know, I would assume we're still going to have air control at points over Iran. You know, we'll establish that whenever routinely needed and then punish them when they do something stupid. But or we see weapon systems that we want to destroy. But back on this, you know, I think that Iran's number one, the number one thing that could really threaten us is mines because of the challenge of removing them. Right. It's not going to be done by any of those four things I just mentioned. You're going to have to bring in mine sweeping gear. Look, a single floating mine, you can handle with a special helicopter and a diver, you know, an ashtray cutcher jumps into the water, put some Semtex on the mine and you lift them back out and you know, somebody hits the explosive. I'm paraphrasing what happens there quite a bit. Yeah. I think it takes about two hours to do what I just said in 15 seconds. But you know, they do that kind of stuff, you blow them out. But the vast majority of mine sweeping and minefield clearance is an extremely deliberate, slow, repetitive process that drives everyone literally freaking crazy. So you don't want to get into that. What you'd like to do is a try, you know, destroy any mine like objects you see starting to evidence themselves along the shoreline, destroy any vessels that could come out to do it. And there is some likelihood, as you said, that Iran will talk about mines, but not actually mine it for fear of cutting off their own shadow fleet shipments that are moving through right now. We'll have to see on that. That's one issue. The second one is we don't get all the drones. We don't get all the fast attack craft. We don't get all the cruise missiles. Now I think the cruise missiles is less likely because, you know, Michael Allen's not parking a cruise missile launcher in his garage. You can fit a good number of she-head drones in your garage and you and I can carry them easy. You could put a lot of mines in your garage and you and I, well, we couldn't carry them, but we could wheelbarrow them along pretty easy. So those two, I think, worry me in terms of their ability to break them out. And the drones, again, if they fired two or three drones at a convoy, I think the planes and the helicopter and the ships would take care of it. Yeah. We'd have much trouble. But mines would be a little different. Or if they were able to, like, sally together like 50 drones simultaneously, I think that's very unlikely. I think we'd be that persistent eye would stare, would give us some, you know, reasonable warning about that and would strike it heavy. All right. Before we go to Harg Island, what if the president is feeling even more uncomfortable about the price of oil? And he looks at his military and he says, I'm just not waiting until the first or second week of April to start tanker escorts. You just need to go faster. And they say, well, that's not our best military advice. And he says, well, too bad. Do it. Is that, I mean, is that even operate? Can you operationalize that? Look, I'm not a Donald Trump expert. I've seen him not stay with him, but this is going to take persistence. Premature termination of this operational plan has significant risk. Premature starting of convoy operations when you haven't established the conditions has significant risk. I will say this about the president. He has more than, I mean, at a high level, at a very, you know, promising level has not wanted American casualties. He's made that clear. I mean, you can say a lot about him, but he's always been clear about that. He does not want American casualties. I think they would be telling him, sir, you're increasing the likelihood of American casualties significantly by accelerating this convoy operations. And I think, I think Admiral Cooper and General Cain will be able to talk him out of it. All right. And by the way, I mean, what does this look like? It's, I don't think it's destroyers literally escorting every single tanker, right? It's a bunch of stationed every, I don't know, a few miles and. They got their choice on this. They can try that. You can either, when I did it, it was escorting like we had a couple with, you know, is, the numbers change a little bit, but you know, you could do three or four merchants with two destroyers, two merchants with one destroyer. I wouldn't do that. I'd probably go with the first. I like the idea of a pair of destroyers. That way if you have a, you know, like a perturbation or a, in your, in your, or a disruption in your age system for a minute, you know, you're not defenseless. You know, so I'd probably do two destroyers with three or four merchants at a time and take them through in packs. However, if we take out eight VLCC's with two million gallons of. What's a VLCC? Okay. What's a VLCC? The very large container ship. If we took out eight of those a day, you know, two convoys of four, that's 16 million barrels of oil that gets you really close. If you add in the Saudi workaround and the UAE workaround, you're at 20 million. Yeah. You know, you're at the pre-war flow. Now look, you still have fertilizer ships. You got LNG ships. Even as you get this started at a low level, you can get yourself very rapidly to relief for the oil, the oil market. Mark, Friday night, President Trump announced that the United States had bombed military targets on Harg Island. Harg Island is of course their export terminal, the exit spigot for the vast majority of their oil. What is the president trying to do here? Is he saying that Iran needs to stop blocking the Straits of Hormuz? But they're going to say no. They aren't going to quit threatening to do it. And what does this mean? That we're going to put ground troops on Harg Island to take over oil? So I don't think that's necessary. Look, the same reason that I hope he doesn't rush this, which is the increasing likelihood of American casualties, putting boots on the ground in Harg Island, which is very close to Iran, has a very short range for being attacked by things. I mean, if we think Bahrain was close, Harg Island's 7X closer to the mainland of Iran. So you're going to be hit by things that are fired at you. So I would not recommend that. I would recommend is look, right now he's removed all the military equipment around Harg Island. That was a purpose of that attack. He did not destroy their oil pumping capability. What I would do is say to the next Iranian cargo ship that attempts to pull in, we're going to sink you. And then when one starts to pull in, you come by with some fighter aircraft, give them a couple little demonstration of what it looks like when I sink you. And then if they three or four minutes later, they haven't healed to, you know, stopped and reversed course, you then sink the ship. And all the other Iranian shadow fleet captains will get that message very quickly. If they keep it up, sink one of them pier side at Harg Island and say, all right, now none of you can go there. I mean, you had to do that multiple times. I would send signals to those ships and say, if his goal here is, if you're going to threaten other ships trying to come out and virtually block them, I'm going to actually block you. I don't think we need to seize Harg Island to do that. Okay. So I hope we don't. What was the point of the whole announcement? Remove the military gear around it. That's what they... But to make people nervous, to say that we may do a lesser operation like you just described. I mean, if I'm an Iranian cargo ship, I'm not sure I need a warning right now to stay away from Harg Island. I think I got that warning the other night. Okay. All right. That's good. We're not sinking merchant tankers, right? Not yet. Now, what I wish we were doing is, as a Iranian merchant ship heads out into the great wide ocean, right? And heads into the Indian Ocean, we should seize it. Okay. Now, we owe you your violation of a existing Sanctuary regime. We have sanctions against Iranian oil ships. I would seize them. So Mark, the president has asked for countries from around the globe to join us in a coalition to keep the straits open. Does that seem like it's going to work? You know, I've seen a report that maybe the British have drafts that are planned. I guess I was surprised that the president invited the Chinese to come do this as well. This is interesting. Look, on the criticisms, you could say, we might have wanted to ask this a lot earlier, knowing this was coming. And you know, his whole way he treated the British with the two carriers being offered up or not offered up, you know, and he was so dismissive of them just a week and a half ago. And now he's like, yeah, I'd like a destroyer too. You know, this is not how you treat your partners, even you and your partners, right? You got to treat them professionally in with respect. And the British military is far alongside us in war after war after war. And the idea and his treatment of them is inappropriate. Now, I would say I expect I'm disappointed in Japan. You know, they're very reliant on this oil. They believe in in freedom of transit and international law at sea. And you know, and keeping the straits of hormones open is part of that. They have excellent ages destroyers. But maybe this isn't where they want to cut their teeth on the new interpretations of the yam of their constitution. And I'm also disappointed in the Australians. Again, a country that's far alongside us, a country that's, you know, proximate. You know, they they are they've been they have good ages ships. They've been a good partner of ours. And I know the president hasn't been great with them, but he has reaffirmed AUKUS. I would have thought they would show up. Other countries I'm not so worried about, you know, like when Pistorius from Germany said, we're not going to help. You know, my answer is noted. You don't have any ships I want. Right. You have some frigates and your newest frigates don't really have good weapons systems on them yet. So it's OK that you're not coming. But I think the Brits in the French have systems that will be useful. The Japanese and Koreans have systems that would be useful. The Australians do. I mean, a few other countries do. Canada and Norway have ages destroyers. I don't think either one of them is going to pony them up. But I would have. I think we should have asked earlier. I think if we'd spent the last year in two months being a little more kind to our allies and partners, we'd be getting a very different response right now. When you threaten to take Greenland and you, you know, and you yell at everyone extensively and marginalize them, you know, this is probably not an and not a an unexpected reply. Yeah. Mark, let's talk about the USS Tripoli that's on its way from Asia. What is this Marine Expeditionary Unit coming for? So look, the Marine Expeditionary Unit is coming. I've been I'm on record is not a big fan of Big Deck amphibes in high end warfare because I think their targets. But I think by the time these guys arrive, major combat operations will be secured, the will be secure from the Iranian threatened. We won't have to put too many of our destroyers that should be doing convoy duty, protecting the amphibious readiness group, which are the ships that are with the Marines. The Marines always have value. My problem is my beef is never with Marines. They're they're fantastic warfighters. I don't know with a kind of a thought that there really are no boots on the ground. I'm not 100 percent sure where these guys are going. But this might just be a cautionary play against some need to evacuate somewhere else nearby or do do some kind of not, you know, in need, what's called noncombatant evacuation order and NIO, you know, it's not it's not unwise to have 5,000 high end infantry, you know, personnel at sea ready to go. Yeah. Well, there's, of course, been the suggestion of ground troops on Harg Island, which we covered. But I know you've seen the articles, you've seen the discussion that the intelligence community is assessing that the Iranian 400 kilograms of 60 percent enriched uranium might be accessible. It was thought to be deeply buried in the rubble after the June strikes. Now they may have an opportunity or they may have a line in to pull it out. So we've seen the suggestion that we may do a special ops raid. It wouldn't be like a body bod. It would be presumably thousands of troops and for a series for a long period of time to pull this off. What's your view? Well, I hope it is more the short, small, sweet, you know, title 50 forces, intelligence committee forces doing it. If there's some kind of mission to be done, I would prefer it was title 50 and not title 10. I'd keep it. But it's too big, right? It's going to. I don't know. I mean, this is a lot of presumption, right, to know what the mission is. If you describe the mission set to me, I'll tell you if it's too big or not. I would say this about ground forces. We have fantastic ground forces, but when we put a thousand war fighters ashore, that that's the tooth, the tail to support them is amazingly large. It becomes risky and then you have to defend the tail. You know what I mean? You get into pretty soon, you're, you know, you're at a significant troop level. So I would be averse to that and I would try. I would hope my hardest, you know, that that it's something you can handle with either title 10 or title 50, either military or intelligence committee, special forces with a deep preference for title 50, intelligence community. So, Mark, let's just zoom the lens back here as we begin to close. What is your view on how the overall campaign is going? Talk a little bit about the, the military objectives and even some of the nuclear objectives. I think they're doing a good job on these objectives. It's hard to say some very specific ones on saying the, the, how far back have they gotten the missile production, you know, the ballistic missile production, you know, the secondary and tertiary supply chain, I'm not sure yet. There's some questions on the nuclear that you would need some pretty exquisite intelligence to sort out. But what I'm watching over the first 18, 19,000 strikes is pretty impressive. I think they did a good job. You know, here's a shocker. SENT counts been, US Central Command has been planning for this on and off for 20 years. And they were then told to execute it and they did a good job. And then, you know, our Air Force and naval aviators alongside Israeli partners and high end fifth and fourth generation plus aircraft have done fantastic. Our precision guided munitions have worked well. Not everything's gone perfectly, but it's gone very well. Overall, I want to congratulate Claude, I mean, anthropic and Claude on, on planning things really well and helping. It's going to be, I really questioned. You're stirring the pot. You're stirring the pot. Well, but I mean, do you ever watch the movie Anchorman with Will Ferron? It goes, hey, that, that got out of control fast. I mean, the whole beginning out of anthropic got out of control fast. And I wish we could set the clock back and say, hey, thanks for what you did. Let's talk about how we move forward on this. Because I think that's a complex issue that was handled poorly by both sides and could be rectified. But I mean, certainly all of that's gone well. So, but look, in the end, you know, our ability to secure the search of her moves is going to, is going to dictate whether this is successful. I think we're going to go ahead. We're going to move all those programs, nuclear, ballistic missile, drones, shipyards, enemy air defense all back three, five, seven years. We're really going to, we may not change the regime, but we're going to change how the regime can act in a major way. But this part of that's the straight to her moves. And we got it. We got to get that secure. Yeah. All right. That's a great note to end on. Mark Montgomery, thank you so much for joining that sec matters. Thank you for having me, Mark. That was Admiral Montgomery. I want to thank Clay Siegel and Mark Montgomery for joining the podcast today. I'm Michael Allen. Please join us next week for another episode of NatSec Matters. NatSec Matters is produced by Steve Dorsey with assistance from Ashley Berry. NatSec Matters is a production of Beacon Global Strategies.