Now, on 105.9 FM and streaming worldwide on the WMAL app, O'Connor and Company. 607 on this Monday morning, the second day of March, coming off of an incredibly monumental weekend, frankly. A historic weekend as the United States, along with our ally Israel, engaged in military strikes against the terrorist regime in Tehran. how that affects our lives here and what the future may hold for the region and for the planet. It's kind of the topic of today's discussion. Coming up in 30 minutes, General Jack Keene on the further use of the United States military and whether that may involve ground troops as well. 705, Joe DeGenova will be here. 735, Daniel Hoffman, former director of the CIA, Middle East and North Africa Division. 805, Jonathan Shanzer with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. And then at 835, Jack Carr, former Navy SEAL and author. It's a loaded lineup. Glad I got Bethany Mandel to help me. Good morning, Bethany. I feel like I choose the best mornings to be your co-host. Or the mornings choose you. It's like a wand in Harry Potter, you know? Yeah, that's a good analogy. Best wishes for Julie Gunlock, who would normally be here, as this is her Monday morning slot. She's still recovering, and I often get requests for updates on Julie. I can just tell you that she's in good spirit. She's moving along well. She's going through her recovery and therapies. And if you want to find out for yourself, go to GiveSonGo.com slash Julie Gunlock, and we cannot wait. We're holding a place for her. Cannot wait to have her back. Joining us right now is Daniel Turner. He's the founder of Power of the Future, and he tracks all things energy and oil and gas. And, well, Daniel, there are some grave concerns. not only because of the military strike in the region against Tehran and their sort of stranglehold on a good chunk of the world's oil reserves, but also shipping lanes in the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf and the retaliations against oil interests in Saudi Arabia. We saw some pretty significant explosions. Make it all make sense, Daniel. How is this going to affect global oil prices and at home here the gas prices? Yeah, good morning to you. And it will have an impact, there's no doubt. If you contrast what happened this weekend to a couple weeks ago when the Venezuela operation happened, there was really no change in crude oil prices worldwide. And it shows that this was very well contained, and it showed a resiliency in energy markets a little different now. Crude oil opens up on the world market Sunday night at 6 p.m. Eastern time. And so I was waiting to see what would happen, and oil did jump considerably, almost 10%. And it will take a day or two or three days for it to trickle down to your gas prices. But no doubt you'll have an impact. And the reason why is what you just said. So much of the world's oil flows through this area. All the oil from Kuwait, most of the oil from Iraq, from Saudi Arabia all goes through there, not to mention Iranian oil. So it is a volatile area. If anything, it demonstrates the importance of American energy dominance. We don't need that oil, thank God, so we'll be okay. But it will have an impact on our global pricing. And the more America produces, the more dependent we are of what's happening around the world. Is there any impact on what's going on in Venezuela on oil prices? Do we have access to that market yet? We do. And the Secretary of Energy last Friday announced some 80 million barrels of oil have already been purchased from Venezuela and have gone on to the world market. So that actually may work towards our advantage a little bit in just acting as a stabilizer. Again, we don't need the oil that comes from the Middle East. But if you just look at the overall global supply, having more come from Venezuela will bring stability. And that could be a good thing for everybody. In the long run, I mean, obviously there's going to be an initial impact. But listen, you talk about destabilizing the region. Iran for the last four plus decades have destabilized that region. Should we get a more peaceful and cooperative government, a pro-freedom, pro-Western government in place there? What could the long-term effects be? I mean, you look at old school Iran. It's funny, I have a number of friends whose parents lived there for various reasons, some in the energy field, some just in international travel. I know women in their 70s who used to be flight attendants that would talk about going to Iran and how glamorous a country it was. Iran has all of the potential to be a great country again, and oil will be a huge driver of that. They are a very oil-rich nation. And sadly, though, since the revolution, they've used their oil revenue for bad. President Trump realized this in his first term. You know, I will never pass the opportunity to dunk on the Biden administration and the worldwide damage they inflicted. But but and we have to do it for this moment. When President Trump left office in 2021, Iran was producing only around 300,000 barrels a day. The sanctions were that tough. by the time Biden left office, they were producing 3.2 million barrels a day. And what did they do with all of that revenue, right? They didn't build schools for girls, right? They didn't push diversity and pride parades. No, they set up the Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis in Yemen. They fomented terrorism worldwide. They launched the attack on Israel on October 7th. So I will unequivocally lame a lot of the blame on the Biden administration because releasing those sanctions made a very evil regime rich. And when evil regimes have money, they do bad, bad things. So, you know, if Jake Sullivan pipes up today or if Antony Blinken decides to chime into the conversation, you need to verbally beat them down with the damage and the lives that were lost because of their feckless foreign policy. We will do so. We're speaking with Daniel Turner, Power of the Future. Yes, the Iran did have their pride parades. I believe they took place on the rooftops of 10-story buildings and then walked people straight off of them to their death. there have been sanctions in place. Who's been dealing with Iran on the global market? Who's buying their oil? It's all China. China buys almost 80% of their oil. And kind of like Venezuela, this is another effort of the administration to weaken China without saying the name China. China bought almost 50% of Venezuela's oil. So if you Chairman Xi right now You lost two really big markets or suppliers of your country oil And China does not produce oil It is their weakest vulnerability on the energy front They don have a domestic supply of oil, so they have to import everything. Sadly, and this is where sometimes you want to blow your brains out because you're so upset about the weakness of the world. Sadly, the prime minister to our north, Carney, is trying to make deals with China to make sure they get oil, right? So here's President Trump taking out Venezuela for good, taking out for the cause of good, taking out Iran for the cause of good, weakening China for the cause of very good. But then we have some of our allies saying, don't worry, China will come to your aid. So, boy, oh, boy, you've got you got enemies on all sides, don't you there, folks? Yeah. Yeah. In the short term, should people be going to the gas to the pumps right now? Nah. Now, don't be nervous. And any of that would actually probably hurt prices because it would create this fake impression that we have a supply shortage. We have no supply shortage. America produces plenty of oil. It refines plenty of oil. So there's no reason to be nervous. Yes, you're going to see a little blip. But if people see a little blip and they start to complain, remember, we are still around $30 a barrel cheaper than we were under the Biden administration. When Biden and co. were making their brilliant foreign policy and energy decisions, we were comfortable with oil at $95 a barrel for years. So I don't think we're returning to the date of $4 a gallon gas, but the national average may go from $2.40 to $2.65, and we're still in good shape. And by the way, in a strange way, that may help the U.S. economy because if we're pumping so much of our own oil, if global prices do tick up a bit, that actually helps American concerns. It allows American oil companies to have more capital to work with to do further exploration and further investment and more hiring. I mean, in a strange way, even if prices go up a bit, that actually helps us. It does. And I think what happens in Iran will help us as well. President Trump has made it clear that he can use oil as leverage to set the stage for good. You know, something remarkable that happened is OPEC promised to continue to increase production. Not long ago, if Iran was under attack, OPEC would have cut production to see prices drive even higher, knowing that they needed the money to fund their regime. And here's OPEC. So who's in charge now? Trump is in charge. And, Daniel, we also saw Russia make indications that they might be ready to make a peace deal with Ukraine, and that could very well be because of the volatility in the global oil market because that's all they've got to fund their tanks. And that's why, Larry, when you call me the world's biggest oil shill, it's such a compliment because oil is everything. Oil is world peace. It is geopolitics. It is human dignity and our national security. And it's why anytime these little oil protesters pipe up, you got to smack them down, too. Let's get it right, Daniel. You're a shill for big oil. That is that is your title. And I say it with great admiration and affection. Daniel Turner, Power of the Future. I love it. Shill for big oil. Thank you, Daniel. And 617, by the way, as we continue covering the dominant story on the planet, the military engagement with Iran on behalf of the U.S. military and our allies in Israel. We'll talk about the military aspect of it in particular coming up at 635 with General Jack Cain. Larry O'Connor here with Bethany Mandel. Meanwhile, Pope Leo, the American pope, if you're waiting for him to come out on the balcony there wearing a MAGA hat, waving an American flag, screaming, F yeah, Team America, you know, not really what you're going to get from a pope. He is very concerned about what he calls the spiral of violence in the Middle East now. with many statements that he made, including a speech from the balcony there, a warning of the unbridgeable chasm that violence will beget in the Middle East and in Iran in particular. He condemned the president's apparent, quote, zeal for war following these military operations in Venezuela as well as in Iran. And he said, if I can quote him here, Faced with the possibility of a tragedy of immense proportions, I make a heartfelt appeal to all the parties involved to assume the moral responsibility of halting the spiral of violence before it becomes an unbridgeable chasm. May diplomacy regain its proper role and may the well-being of peoples who yearn for peaceful existence founded on justice be upheld and let us continue to pray for peace. Listen, peace is one thing, but that statement there, peaceful existence founded on justice, I think is the key here. There has been no justice in Iran for the people of Iran or for her neighbors. And peace without justice, peace without love and respect and dignity is not peace at all. It's subjugation. And the pope knows that. He knows that. But sadly, oftentimes in times of war, since Pope John Paul II, we've got nothing but empty bromides from the people who sit in Peter's chair. And this is no different. I was really disappointed with the Pope's reaction because he never said anything when tens of thousands of Iranians were being massacred in the streets by their government. And this is when he's decided to sort of chime in. And I think it's a mistake for any religious leader anywhere at any time to make a political statement. But this Pope's statement was, I thought, so divorced from reality. He said in a tweet 24 hours ago pretty much, Peace is not built with threat and arms, which will only result in destructions and death, but only through reasonable dialogue that is also authentic and responsible. I seem to recall Hitler being stopped by reasonable dialogue that was authentic and responsible. Right, exactly. It's totally divorced from history. It's very frustrating because the Catholic Church has a just war doctrine. It's actually been a doctrine. Just war doctrine, I believe, was sort of solidified by St. Thomas Aquinas, a doctorate of the church. And it's been something that has become a model for the moral use of military power by Christians and non-Christians alike because it's, frankly, logical, moral, and undebatable. And why that just war doctrine cannot apply to ending this horrific regime, I'll never know. By the way I just realized I was quoting the pope because I so used to just reading what a pope has to say because it rarely you know in our language and understandable But we could actually hear this guy himself instead of me reading what he said Here here one Poplia A diplomacy that promotes dialogue and seeks consensus among all parties is being replaced by a diplomacy based on force by either individuals or groups of allies. War is back in vogue, and a zeal for war is spreading. The principle established after the Second World War, which prohibited nations from using force to violate the borders of others, has been completely undermined. Peace is no longer sought as a gift and a desirable good in itself or in the pursuit of the establishment of the ordered universe willed by God with a more perfect form of justice among men and women. All right, listen, I think it's a pope's job to sort of live in a utopia sometimes and ask for, you know, peace at all costs, etc., etc. There was a lot to unpack there. The good news is, as an observant and practicing Catholic, I respect the pope, and I can also respectfully disagree on matters like this, which I will exercise the right to do. It's 624. Now on 105.9 FM and streaming worldwide on the WMAL app, O'Connor and Company. 637. Good morning. O'Connor and company here this Monday, second day of March. As we unpack a incredibly busy weekend. Bethany Mandela just occurred to me a week ago. We were talking about the men's hockey team winning the gold medal and preparing for the State of the Union address the next day. What a week it has been in the world and on this program. I was thinking about that last night because I thought to myself, Larry needs to take a victory lap because he was right about the women's team. I was wrong. And you should take that victory lap. And I should apologize for not thinking the best of our women's team. I wasn't going to bring it up. You should always take that victory lap. 705, Joe DiGeneva will be here. 735, Daniel Hoffman, former director of the CIA in the Middle East. 805, Jonathan Schanzer of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. And 835, former Navy SEAL and author Jack Carr. A lot of that, obviously, is going to focus the conversation on the events this weekend in Iran and use of military force along with our allies in Israel. To that end, joining us now is a retired four-star general, former vice chief of staff for the U.S. Army and chairman of the Institute for the Study of War, General Jack Keene. General Keene, thanks for joining us. Yeah, delighted to be here with both of you and your audience. So give us an assessment here in terms of how this operation really happened, or at least what's your assessment on the effectiveness of this operation in the first 48 hours and what the next steps forward may be? Yes, certainly. Well, we're 48 hours in, and we have complete air superiority and freedom of disguise to fly all over Iran. Obviously, that's a very large country, a couple of times the size of Texas, to put it in perspective for our audience. We've been attacking in 17 different provinces throughout the country. The good news is we do have Air Superior. We've completely defeated their air defense systems within 24 hours. The ballistic missile attacks are down 50 percent, 48 hours in. And that is a result that we really wanted to achieve because we have been conducting massive attacks from day one on that infrastructure, the launch systems, the transportation systems to move them around, and also the missile storage sites themselves. and any part of the defense industrial base that's making weapons, missiles, short-range rockets, you name it, drones, et cetera, is going to be stripped away as well. So this part of the operation has been very successful. The Navy essentially is ineffective. We were concerned about their ships being able to get into the Straits of Hormuz and mine them and certainly shut down the Straits of Hormuz. Obviously, we'd be able to open it up, but there would be a significant delay until that operation was completed safely. And we've taken down essentially most of their Navy and it's no more effective. And what's in front of us is for our audience to really understand. I mean, we're so used to a day or two of airstrikes. And what the plan calls for is three weeks of airstrikes. and that's hard for us to get our head around. It even dwarfs what took place in Desert Storm, Iraqi Freedom, because of the kinds of weapon systems we have, the sortie rates that we can generate much faster at the precision of it, etc. And so what's on the menu here to continue is one, obviously continue to focus on ballistic missiles, short range, as well as medium range and also take down as much of the drones as possible. The drones are more of a threat to our U.S. bases than the missiles are because they're using the Shahhead drone, which they developed for Russia, and they built a manufacturing center in Russia for those. And when you hear, as you've been reporting for more than a year, of the Shahhead drones, the killer drones, swarming into the cities and energy infrastructure in Ukraine. That is what the Ukrainians, excuse me, the Iranians are using on our bases. They have flown some drones to Israel, but it takes six to eight hours to get there, and everybody sees it coming, so it's not difficult to defeat it. But given the short range from Iran to where our bases are, the drones are our preferred weapons system, that they're using. And the soldiers that died the other day, and we honor their service, and suddenly our heart goes out to their families and friends. They were Army soldiers, and they got hit by drones as they were offloading some ammunition. But we're defending against that, obviously, and defending effectively as well. Adding to the coalition are four Gulf state countries. I think Iran made a strategic boneheaded mistake in attacking them. Interesting enough for our audience to understand, they have attacked the UAE more than they have attacked Israel in the first 48 hours. Why that is a reality is beyond my comprehension I mean I obviously get their thought process They want the international community to put pressure on the United States and Israel for starting this war because they have expanded it to the Gulf states And what that has done is the Gulf states, you know, have always been a heavy lift for us because the amount of disagreements they have and friction has always been a major challenge. That has united them. And now we have four of them conducting offensive operations under the guidance of Admiral Bradley Cooper, who's in command of Central Command for our audience that oversees all military operations in the Middle East. By the way, he is very capable. He has huge experience. He was a deputy to the CENTCOM commander, Eric Carilla, who did the midnight hammer operation to take down the nuclear enterprise. So we are providing the intelligence. We're selecting the targets for those countries. And believe me, the UAE and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia both have significant air capabilities that they're going to bring to the table. And the first of those to attack was actually Qatar, which kind of surprised me, to be frank about it. But they were the first ones to fire on the Iranians from a Gulf state country. So a lot of work ahead. The other targets are the entire infrastructure on the governance side, as well as the military and security side that sustains the regime. And that is going to be systematically stripped away deliberately and methodically so that there is no capability at the end of the day for this regime to be able to sustain itself. And that is what is taking so much time in addition to obvious military targets like weapon systems and munitions and whatever the beginning stages of their nuclear enterprise recovery is taking place. That is also under attack. That's kind of where we are headed. What is the latest status with Saudi Arabia? Because I've seen some reports that they're entering the war on the part of America and Israel. But I wasn't really sure what that entailed. That entails mostly air power is what that largely is going to be. And they're very good at it and they're capable and they have a lot of it. And same thing with the UAE. General Rulfaust, based on your understanding of what the various war plans have been for Iran, Is there a next step that we should be anticipating utilizing ground troops from the Marine Corps or from the Army? No, there's no plans whatsoever. I mean, if we put a force in at all, it would be to take down a target and do a raid in and out, because that target was for some reason more difficult to access that target by air power. We have contingencies for that, but there is absolutely no ground troops going to be involved in seizing terrain, holding terrain, or occupying the country. No plans whatsoever. General Cain, thanks for joining us, as always, and bringing your expertise to the table for this conversation. Thank you. It is 645. While the citizens of Israel were sheltering in place and going to their now very familiar bomb shelters in their neighborhoods as rockets were raining across the sky from Iran, most of them, I believe, intercepted by their defense systems. But sadly, nine people have been killed, 27 injured in missile strikes in the city of Beit Shemesh. before we get into the other aspect of the culture that ensues in those shelters, can you shed a little light on Beit Shemesh for us? Yeah. You're our go-to Jew, as you know. I know. So Beit Shemesh is probably the most American of all of the areas in Israel. It's a pretty large community. We went there a number of times. So I was there the entire month of December and half of November. So I was there pretty recently. And we went to Beit Shemesh because they have a great mall. There you go. Yeah, with a McDonald's in the food court that's kosher. It's a beautiful neighborhood. And so from what I'm hearing, they had an alert and folks ran to their shelters. And there's this funny thing in Cambodia where I used to live where there's multiple words for rice in the Cambodian language. Sure. And it kind of speaks to the importance of rice in their culture, the fact that they have so many different words for it. It's the same in Hebrew with bomb shelter. There's lots of different kinds of bomb shelters. There's a mamad in your home. There's a miklat. There's ones on the side of the road. So bomb shelters are to Israelis for everyday life. what rice is to cambodians correct correct amazing and so um the a lot of the older homes don't have a strong enough bomb shelter and so people have to go into public bomb shelters um because you know if it's a hamas rocket they were not so big uh but if it's if it's an iranian missile yeah it's it's significantly stronger and so um which which brings me to the story about the culture in these public bomb shelters because the Israelis have developed an app. As you go into the public bomb shelter, you can scan a QR code and other people who have scanned the QR code who are single and looking to hook up basically while you're down there chilling, waiting for the all clear sign. You can meet your new squeeze, I guess. What is going on over there? I guess. Actually, I think I know what's going on over there. Yeah, it's pretty wild. So folks for these larger missiles are having to use public bomb shelters. And so you're really getting to know your neighbors. And so perhaps this is too scandalous to say it's 6.52 in the morning on morning radio. But one of my friend's biggest complaints is that they have to sleep with a bra on during a war. Because they don't want to run into their neighbor in their pajamas without a bra on. Sure. So they're sleeping with a bra on. And they find that to be one of the worst aspects of war. Yeah, you don't want the headlights on while you're cowering there. All right. Well, listen, there's a reason why, of all Western nations, Israel is far ahead in fertility rate and replacing the next generation. I guess, you know, don't let a good moment go to waste. Shelter in place. And, hey, baby, how you doing? It's 653.
