Reading Between the Lines - What's Hidden in the New Iran Agreement: Dr. Rebeccah L. Heinrichs and Rich Goldberg

I want us to use this momentum and I think we have all this opportunity here to actually get a great geopolitical win. I'm host Michael Allen with Beacon Global Strategies. Today I'm joined by Dr. Rebecca Heinrichs, Senior Fellow and Director of the Keystone Defense Initiative for the Hudson Institute and Richard Goldberg, a Senior Advisor at the Foundation for Defensive Democracies. Dr. Heinrichs and Mr. Goldberg join us today to discuss the most recent developments in Iran and the evolving nature of the negotiations. Stay with us as we speak with Rebecca Heinrichs and Rich Goldberg. Rich, Rebecca, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having me. Absolutely, great to be back. Well, thanks for doing this, especially on short notice. I think the NatSec Matters audience is going to want to know our take on the Iran deal such as it is. Now I'll note that it's Tuesday and it's supposed to be a memorandum of understanding and we haven't seen it yet to my knowledge, although I know Rebecca has been briefed on it, probably Rich as well and we've all read a lot about it. So let's get into it. Rebecca, can I come to you first? What is your sense of what is actually in this document and when might it be released? So I don't think we're going to see it being released anytime soon because the hardest parts between the United States and this Rump Iranian regime have not been ironed out. And so I'm very skeptical that we're going to see anything in writing. Essentially, this memorandum of understanding is it's a document that prioritizes opening the Strait of Hormuz and then it has some kind of commitment on the part of the Iranian Rump regime and this is obviously where the two sides disagree tremendously about the future commitments to dismantle and remove the illicit nuclear program from Iran. Essentially, the Strait of Hormuz is the priority for the Trump administration right now. They want it opened immediately and basically the outlines of the deal are that the United States would remove elements of the blockade if the Iranians demonstrated that it was no longer holding the Strait hostage and it would do this obviously by allowing a certain number of ships through the Strait only then would you see the blockade slowly coming away and then the United States permitting Iran to export its oil. That's basically the first part and then you get into questions about when does the United States relieve sanctions. Obviously, the Iranians want them removed immediately. The United States wants there to be demonstrated action on the part of the Iranians before that happens but there's a lot of pressure and opposition from supporters of the president in the Senate, Roger Wicker, Tom Cotton, Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham and others who do not want any pressure removed from the Iran regime until the United States has all of our national security needs met first. So that's kind of where we stand. But last point I'd say President Trump pumped the brakes on the whole thing yesterday, clearly not happy with where things stand and so this momentum to get this memorandum of understanding, you know, wrapped up was really soft by President Trump when he became informed of the details. All right, fascinating. Rich, I'm going to come to you in a second. Just two follow-ups. You say we might release elements of the blockade. Is that just to suggest that we don't want to take the entire thing down because we want to make sure that they're living up to allowing all of the ships to go through? That's right. So my understanding from the senior official who briefed me was that when I very pointedly asked, you know, is this, are you, I mean, I'm very skeptical and the person who's briefing me knew that I was very skeptical. So, but this was just a conversation about, you know, me trying to understand how they were thinking. And I said, is it based on, are you anticipating these things? This is kind of like you're trusting these particular individuals you're talking to and this individual, the senior official said, no, no, no, we're not trusting, but we're going to see demonstrated action on the part of the Ron regime. And then we will peel back some of the blockade to let some of their ships through. And I didn't even got the impression it wasn't one for one. It was some number of, you know, of non Iranian ships, innocent ships, if you will, to getting through the straight and then, you know, and then we would permit some Iranian ships with oil through the straight, but the United States would leave all US forces that are currently deployed in the region. None of them would be leaving while all of this was being implemented. Okay. And did you say that you don't think we're going to see the actual text of the MOU anytime soon? Or we'll see you later. No, I do not. I'm very skeptical. I'm very skeptical because I do not believe that the individuals the administration is negotiating with have the ability to enforce it. The IRGC, of course, is still firing Sam's against ships. It still has these fast boats attacking ships in the straight. And that's obviously not helping inspire confidence in the sincerity of the negotiators. And so I'm just very skeptical that we're going to get to a point where you have both sides agreeing on the specific language of an MOU. So we may not see it at all. That's what I meant to ask. Interesting. Yes. That's my view. All right. And real quick, what did you mean by Trump pumped the brakes yesterday? He's hearing that we don't want to give up all of our leverage only to have the straights reopened. And so he's saying, send negotiators back. Yeah, I don't know specifically what the president was unhappy with in the MOU. I don't really know if I'm not really sure what it was that caused the president to do so. But what I mean is we got this truth that he posted that essentially said, I'm not in a hurry. I told my negotiators to basically cool their heels. And we're not going to. And then that's whenever you started hearing the the regular, you know, branding of President Trump on a deal, which I think is a good brand, which is that, you know, it's either it's either a good deal or no deal. And you hear Secretary Rubio echoing that as well. And so we it seemed like all the media was pushing reporting that there was an MOU. It was going to come out. You saw Vice President Vance at the White House, you know, and other cabinet officials going to the White House. And so it seemed like something was going to happen and be released. But then President Trump said, we're not in a hurry. And then we didn't hear anything else after that. Fascinating. Okay, Rich, you've been talking to people across the administration and elsewhere as well. What do you think is in the agreement? And do you think it'll ever be released? My understanding is pretty aligned with where Rebecca is at. So sounds like, you know, briefings are are similar as they as they go around. My skepticism is also at a level of Rebecca's, because it's not completely clear to me how you maintain this process of the Navy is there, we're deciding that some ships can get out. It's essentially a process that sort of leads to we relieve their oil buildup, we let them sell their oil out to market. Maybe there's a sanctions waiver, maybe there's not a sanctions waiver, maybe this is just illicit oil that basically goes to China, like it did before this stage of the conflict, which was one and a half to two million barrels per day at prewar levels. Maybe if we were smart, we would say here's the tankers specifically with buyers that we know, and you have to make payment into escrow accounts so they don't actually get the money. But I doubt the Iranians would ever agree to that. And so you get into this posture here, where this phase one, which is essentially open the straight and will give you relief on the blockade, at least on the oil side supposedly, becomes sort of a new normal, because if you take away the relief of the blockade, the Iranians take away the relief of the street of Hormuz, and taking away the blockade gets pretty complicated, because is it the position that we will shoot on tankers that try to pass that are not approved? Are we going to shoot on other vessels carrying other commercial goods that are not approved? Are we going to shoot on commercial vessels bringing things into Iran that are not approved, like gasoline or other goods and imports that they need? That would obviously mean that the deal would be over at that point, and the Iranians would walk away, and we would go back to square one of the straight of Hormuz being shut down. So you are sort of setting yourself up to understanding that you are locking in this phase one for an indefinite period, unless you want to go back to what I think is the preferable option, and that is obviously to maintain the blockade and move to something like project freedom. But if you got to this phase two at that point, what is the incentive for the Iranians who are already showing such bad faith and the lead up to even a phase one, once you have relieved their pressure and built this new normal of trading, it is quid pro quo, of trading their oil for the straight of Hormuz, you have relieved a significant amount of pressure on them, and I sort of view pressure to be like a balloon, the idea that there is temporary, reversible sanctions. That terminology is, if you go and search for it, will come up in 2013, November from the Obama administration announcing the joint plan of action, the JPOA, that is how they describe the sanctions relief for the interim nuclear deal, that obviously then took all the oxygen out, deflated the balloon of pressure that had built up from the Congress over many years, and they never got a better deal in the JPOA. So the idea that you are going to maintain your leverage after this phase one to get to phase two, which is supposed to be getting the enriched uranium either out of Iran or according to the latest truth social post, destroyed in Iran seems unlikely to me, but that is the setup here. So even with all the potential flaws in this arrangement and my concerns with how you would even implement this phase one, we are seeing the Iranians laying mines over the weekend, Rebecca talked about this, we intercepted that and then they fire their SAMs at our jets, and then we obviously also see them saying, no, we don't just want the oil sanctions relief, we want the billions of dollars that are held in escrow accounts too, we want to phase how you release that to us. So I mean, all of this, if I was the president, I mean, he's like the BS detector in chief when it comes to Iran deals, I mean, he's going to see this when it gets briefed to him, and he's going to have to understand like, I have no leverage to get the uranium at this point if I go through with this. So either you're just doing the deal to get the straight open, which could have its arguments in favor, but let's not BS ourselves and say we're going to have some big follow on. So I want to get back to laying the mines in just a second and what I'm about to say is conjecture, but it was based loosely on one of the tweets I saw over the weekend for someone who also said that they were briefed. And I thought that they had been pairing sanctions relief and or gradual unfreezing of assets with the HEEU leaving the country or being downblended. So to me, it went from a stick to a carrot type situation. Now, maybe your point still stands, we don't exactly have leverage, negative leverage over them to make them do it. But does that make sense to either of you or are you all able to rule that out? If you were to deny them significant revenue in that first period, and you got the straight open, and they're still feeling just tremendous impacts of the blockade plus the rest of operation economic fury, yes, I would say if you're still holding all their money and the revenue and anything they've gotten out of oil sales has still been held in escrow and they haven't gotten access to it, then yeah, everything that you see right now is still happening. Their economy is falling apart, they're running out of money. Banks are about to fail if they haven't already, they're just somehow propping them up and we don't know about it. The gasoline in the country is running out with long lines. And by the way, the internet just went on today, which is tremendous. And we'll see what that brings in store for risk for the regime. But if you don't do that and you don't really get to fire on ships that are breaking the deal and you don't want to see this rate of war moves reclosed and they do get to just sell a million and a half barrels or whatever it is, this and that and get the money, sure, you withhold the other $6 billion in cutter or $10 billion or however much money you're in escrow accounts somewhere that they want access to as your leverage for the rich uranium. But if I'm the Iranians, I've seen this movie before, then you're in a much stronger position to start shaking you down and say, well, well, well, well. Yeah, the six billion is only going to get you the 60% rich uranium sent to China. You don't get the 20% unless it's 20 billion. And actually, we need to see the following sanctions relieved if you want us to even down blend some to a lower purity level. And you want the IAEA into those sites, that's going to cost you this much money. And then what are we doing here? Because that's where this leads paying for performance. All right, well, that's a good point too. I mean, I can see also them loving all the relief at the front end, because presumably if the straight is open or not blockaded, they'll just continue to collect oil revenue, whereas the $6 billion would just be a one time type of deal. So maybe less attractive to it. So Rebecca, I was really surprised yesterday to see that they were finally, or it seemed to be the first time we actively had them putting a mine out in the straits. And I thought to myself, I've seen many media reports of it, but I hadn't quite seen it confirmed. But I thought to myself, on this day of all days, when we supposedly have an agreement that's in the offing for them to begin mining the straits. And so I mean, the obvious is, do they think we have an agreement? But what are they doing when we're supposedly about to have a deal taking a hostile act? Right, well, I mean, not to sound like a broken record. I keep bringing up this point. And I hate to make the same points over and over again when I talk about this thing. But I do think it is kind of the first thing's first is, the United States and Israel were very successful in Epic Fury and destroying command and control and leadership and the ability of these political leaders to have control over their apparatus. This was on purpose because in that initial stage of the war, we were trying to weaken the regime. And remember, we were getting regular briefings from Admiral Cooper. At one point, Admiral Cooper gave an interview to Iranian media, where he was telling the Iranians, don't come out of your homes yet. We'll tell you when it's safe and when we want you to do that. So it sort of I inferred from that we still have a plan to either arm an opposition or do something that the United States would, we would not be doing regime change, but we were weakening the political military leadership such that the Iranian people could over time or on some timetable finish the job. And because that was part of Epic Fury, I mean, here we are at this stage, whatever stage we're in, this supposed ceasefire that really isn't a ceasefire at all, and we're engaged in negotiations. And it's not surprising to me that we have basically the IRGC holding hostage the Strait of Hormuz. And anytime we hear from these guys, they say we don't take direction from the political leaders. We only listen to the Supreme Leader and we don't know if that guy is alive or dead at this point. So when I saw that, I thought, look, these people are laying mines at the same time. We've got reporting saying that one of the conditions for this supposed MOU may be that the Iranians themselves clear the mines that have already been laid. Of course, that just seems ridiculous whenever you catch these guys actually continuing to lay mines up until today. Fascinating. Well, let me get you to elucidate on one of these points. I think I heard you say this earlier today. Did you say that the United States negotiating counterparts or the politicians and not the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps? That is my understanding. My understanding is that we are speaking with political leaders. This is rich, would know better than me, but we're not speaking with these guys who are controlling the people firing into the Strait. Rich, are we talking to the wrong people? Not exactly. I mean, the way that their apparatus is working, they're having sort of a crossover effect. I mean, there's been a lot of things spilled on this that the foreign minister, Arachi, who has in the past been the face of these types of negotiations, you've seen him traveling to Russia, to China, etc. Alongside technocrats who are still doing the work on preparing for the deal. We just saw the head of the central bank of Iran and Qatar trying to work out the details of how they would get access to money. What I assume that trip, by the way, was is literally coming with their shopping list of all the things that they're building up payments on that they need help with and understanding to say, okay, we want a billion dollars here, we want a billion dollars there, and they're taking back to the Treasury Department to say this is where they want the money spent if we were to open it up. That's sort of what they did with the Qataris and the Omanis with the Biden administration back in 2023 when we moved these monies into these accounts. You remember the $6 billion hostage deal and the money moved from Iraq, the electricity payments that were building up that we moved into Oman. And some of that money was tapped, by the way, before October 7th. But in this case, Arachi is sort of this crossover player who is both with the political establishment, technically on the political side as this foreign minister, but also very much now inside taking direction from this other committee of IRGC leaders who are running the country and sort of giving the orders, Ahmad Vahidi, being the top of this committee. He's potentially the only person who's gone behind the curtain to talk to the Wizard of Oz, the invisible Ayatollah, and has been reportedly through some of the Iranian press and the opposition press, which I assume is leaks of intelligence that he's really gotten close between Vahidi and Arachi there. So Arachi has texted with reportedly with Steve Wittkopf and others in the past. They've had these types of negotiations before this operation. So it would make sense that that's their interlocutor, in addition to other potentially in the political system. Okay. So that's point one. We may have differing definitions on what a free and open straight of four moves means. None of us have seen the Iranians say anything other than that's under their sovereign control. So that's something we need to worry about. So Rich and Rebecca, I was in love with the idea of a tanker escort mission. I've been talking about it for weeks. I thought it was the only direct way to negate the leverage that the Iranians had over us, namely blocking the straight of four moves. We seem to do project freedom, which Navy people technically tell me that was just a guiding mission, not an actual escort, but close. True. Fact check, true. Fact check, true. And the Saudis and maybe the UAE maybe not said, well, we don't love this because we're the ones that are going to have to absorb the retaliation from Iran. So please stop doing that. So I think we've confirmed that a lot. But is there, Rich, you just sort of mentioned it a minute ago. Do you think there's any chance we go back to it? Would Trump go back to it if the Saudis and the UAE still have the same position that they previously held, or they say, please don't do this? In my view, we had 24 hours of a glimpse of victory and checkmate on Iran. Totally. And when we actually saw the U.S. Navy transit undercover of ceasefire negotiations that the Iranian side was messing around with in Pakistan, and we mapped the Gulf with all of our capabilities, and we developed a safe passage that we could give to the merchant community and say, follow these coordinates, and we will provide both sea base and air base cover for you in sort of a zone defense path. And then we tested that, and it worked. By the way, you would have to assume the risk that it won't always work, which is a risk that we don't talk about, but we need to acknowledge, if a destroyer actually gets hit by some sort of anti ship cruise missile, or obviously the tankers get hit, that's a problem. But in that 24 hour period, it didn't happen. We successfully defeated all the threats, we successfully defeated all the threats to our own forces upon transiting through the Strait of Hormuz, and then in a week when we departed the Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz, again, successfully defeated all threats against our naval forces and fired back on some of the islands and coastal areas like Bandar Abbas, which you just saw happen yesterday again when they opened fire on us, it meant to me that if the Saudis and whoever else may have pulled the rug out on that, were to hold firm and have our back and give us airspace rights and basing and hot pitting, whatever else needs to go on to make this effective. And of course, if you actually had the Europeans participating, which would be a whole other level of international support and participation, which they did for the Biden administration against the Houthis, you would checkmate the regime because you'd have the blockade, you'd be strangling them, and you would be getting oil to market on our own terms. I mean, that's over, that's game over for this regime. And they know that. What do you think on that? No, I'm like jumping out of my seat because I mean, he's totally right. So this was my, and this is why I think, you know, the entire American, well, I shouldn't say the entire, but many of those on the American right got so excited about the Gulf state, you know, being supportive of Epic Fury, and that's great. It was exciting when they were enabling that, you know, they were condemning the Iranians and they were supportive of the United States defending them in the beginning of Epic Fury and we were using their bases. But the, you know, and then, and then you saw all the American right beating up on the Europeans in the case of the Brits for not letting us use Diego Garcia for our bombing runs, just in the first couple of days until we have full access to Diego Garcia. But really, that our allies who have really, I think, toasted this thing are the Gulf states. I mean, project freedom, project freedom is how we end this thing. That is how we end it. We have, we have the Iranians totally economically squeezed. They cannot pay, they cannot pay the IRGC as long as we have the blockade in place. They, you know, the White House official who I spoke to loves to point out to me the data point, which I can understand why it's a great data point. We've essentially destroyed their, their steel industry, their plastics industry. I mean, this regime is in really bad shape. We have the capacity, we, the United States have the capacity with our, with our military to, to do these guided escorts to force the straight open. And we don't need permission from the Iranians, which is what it feels like we're in. These negotiations are us trying to seek and beg for permission from this Rome regime. But it was the Gulf states getting really nervous about the retaliation of the IRC against their salination plants. And that's, that's where they, they said, okay, you can no longer use our bases. That is far worse than anything the Europeans have done. And the Europeans, we are still operating out of the UK. We're still operating out of France when we need to. We're still operating out of Germany. We were still operating as we need to, just the Europeans, political class cannot publicly give support because the United States is so unpopular right now, but we have way more access in use of their bases than what the, the, the Gulf states are coercing or threatening us with if we resume anything that I think we need to do to end this war. So I think we've got to do project freedom at the bare minimum. And, and I do think we still have a couple more weeks of, of actually no kidding, much more robust military action inside Iran, but the bare minimum, it's project freedom. And was there nothing we could do to address their concerns? So I mean, I know missile defense and interceptors are, are, we're running out of them, but I can't believe this hasn't been solved over the last month. So we can, we can provide, provide more a defense. I don't want to talk to you my way, Richard, jump back in. Go ahead, go ahead, go ahead. We can, we can provide more defenses, but I also want them to go on the offense with us for crying out loud. This is their backyard. I mean, the, they, the, the, these Gulf states have been armed to the teeth by the United States. And again, I applaud them for siding with the United States, even though again, it's because compared to how they've been in the past, we're a little bit like, you know, where we get excited about things that should be a given, but they really should be going on the offensive with the Iranians are firing into their countries. And so they should get, you know, get mad about it and help us destroy, especially what I believe is these IRGC operating along the coastline. We see them during this supposed ceasefire. We know where they are. We've got good targets. If we had the Gulf states helping us go on the offensive, I think it'd make a world of difference. And I agree with Rich. We should have an international armada here. And the Europeans can help us do this, but they want to make sure that we have the bulk of the offensive operations behind us before they do that. So Rich, is this where we get to a difference between the UAE and Saudi Arabia? I mean, the UAE has struck the Iranians in with missiles inside. They supposedly were willing to join us more formally in some sort of, if not escort or guiding, some sort of activity out there. And is it just Saudi Arabia who's who's dragging their feet? Or do we know? No, I mean, listen, I think the Saudis are a disappointment in this regard. I think it's hard to lay full blame at the Saudis, because if I put the full picture in context and fairness, they are also ironically one of the relief valves that has kept us in the game this entire time because of their East West pipeline, you know, running at full capacity into the Red Sea. And between that and the UAE's Fujaira pipeline being able to recoup one third of pre-war flow through the Strait of Hormuz via overland pipeline that bypasses the Strait of Hormuz, our price pressure would be higher if we didn't have those pipelines running. And they've obviously actually taken the hits on the pipeline by the Iranians or by their proxies in Iraq, and, you know, moved very quickly to repair to keep to keep the flow going. But at the same time, their decision to get cold feet or whatever to sue for peace right at a pivotal moment, much as they did in a very different context back in 2023. Remember, they cut a deal via the Chinese to get into a truce with the Houthis in Iran early 2023. But the context of that was a Biden administration, you know, throwing sanctions relief money at the Iranians, taking the Houthis off the terrorist, pulling missile defense assets, you know, turning their back on MBS. I mean, it's a totally different world in which they made that deal. But now, and maybe it's because they're worried that the whole proposition, I mean, let's put another elephant in the room on the table. And I'm just sort of hypothesizing the Houthis have not entered this conflict. That's always been a very interesting piece here that nobody talks about. If they had done things right now to fire nonstop on the area of the Red Sea, where the east west pipeline jets out and where all the loading is taking place, that would be very problematic. If they were to just nonstop start attacking the Red Sea and the Battle of Mandab there and force the tanker community to not just go quickly from Asia, you know, through there into the Red Sea, but have to go all the way around Africa, like what happened during the Biden administration that would stress the economy and the global market even further. They haven't done that. And I think it's because of this arrangement that the Saudis have had with them for the last few years, where they're basically buying them off. And the fact that politically, this goes to your question, now the division between Saudi and UAE, which has erupted right before this conflict, also hinged on what was going to happen to the future of Yemen. And that was part of the proxy battle going on between the Saudis and the Emiratis. And I think there's basically an agreement where the Houthis are going to take control of Yemen pretty soon once this is over. They're going to launch this big ground campaign in the south. And they want to preserve that option. If they enter this conflict, they potentially lose the money they get from the Saudis. And, you know, we open holy hell on them as the Israelis do as well from the air. And, you know, where are they going to be after that with respect to a ground operation to take control of the rest of Yemen tacitly with Saudi permission and approval, which is crazy. But that's where that sits. So maybe the Saudis started getting cold feet or worried that, you know, they were going to see Yonbu come under attack pretty soon and to deal with the Houthis somehow is in jeopardy. Okay. They want to, okay, so all these possibilities. But the bottom line is, if President Trump goes through all this process, you know, this week, which is Hajj week, we should note, and the Saudis, for a very good reason, may not want any hot military action going on during Hajj week with missiles coming in and the inability to, by the way, make a lot of money for their country off of Hajj week in addition to actually hosting the Hajj, you know, which is important in terms of religious sleep. And the President comes to them and says, look at these guys. Look at what they're doing. I mean, we've offered them basically like billions of dollars of relief for oil sales and they're laying mines. They're coming out with speeches about death to America. There's a plot we just disrupted to kill Ivanka Trump. I mean, what do you want us to do here? We have to do project freedom. Otherwise, you're screwed forever. Yeah. You know, and at that point, you hope that they get on board and we actually do it. We're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back with more of our discussion with Rebecca Heinrichs and Rich Goldberg. Beacon Global Strategies is the premier national security advisory firm. Beacon works side by side with leading companies to help them understand national security policy, geopolitical risk, global technology policy and federal procurement trends. Beacon's insight gives business leaders the decision advantage. Founded in 2013, Beacon develops and supports the execution of bespoke strategies to mitigate business risk, drive growth and navigate a complex geopolitical environment. With a bipartisan team in decades of experience, Beacon provides a global perspective to help clients tackle their toughest challenges. Rebecca, Rich, let me ask one more question here about the guiding or project freedom or any of this sort. So, a friend of ours, all of you know this person who worked in the first term, says he doesn't like my idea, the idea of an escort mission because the throughput would be so low because there would still be a threat and therefore the insurance companies wouldn't let all of these commercial vessels go through. And he said that's the flaw with the escort mission. What say you, Rebecca, and then Rich? Well, I mean, I would just say the escort mission is just a it's just the first I mean, I mean, I think ultimately I've been very, very, very happy with the results of Epic Fury militarily. I mean, I agree with the assessments that, you know, setting back the Iranian Air Force, Navy, even the nuclear program for years. And I think that's great. But you have to convert this military success into a political win for the United States. And I think that the criteria for a political win for the United States is that the Iranians do not control the Strait of Hormuz. Yeah. And that's it. So, yes, you have an escort mission first, but that's just to get oil flowing. It's to get these 1000 plus ships that are trapped. Yeah, just take the willing. Maybe we start with the willing and then build everyone's confidence. That's exactly right. You just got to get it open. And I'll just say the other thing, just to pile on what Rich was saying about just this glimmer of hope and this you can see this victory through this first day of Project Freedom. It wasn't just that we saw the success. We even heard from the administration a theory of victory that was coherent and encouraging. I mean, when you saw Hegseth and General Cain and I think you saw Secretary Rubio, I think the other one was really describing that this was a humanitarian mission. It was purely defensive, that the United States has a right to ensure free and open traffic, that only United States can do this with our military capacity, that we have a leadership role to play internationally and that others will join us. I mean, this was like home run, coherent strategy, communications. And then the whole thing just came crashing down. As soon as President Trump said, we're at the request of our partners in the region, we're going to stop doing this. I mean, it was just, that was, I think, the first real gut punch for me when I thought, oh no, the Gulf States are going to throw a wrench in this. And so I really do, if I could just, my thoughts on where we need to go from here is, I'm not confident that, I'm well, I'll just put it this way, that's very diplomatic. I really, I do not think that diplomacy with the Iran regime is going to work. I think that we need to focus our diplomacy with the Gulf States and with the Europeans. And we need to be, President Trump has been very frustrated with these guys and I get it. But it's been a hard, long, hard year with the Europeans for a variety of reasons. And it didn't just start with this administration. I mean, Obama, Obama years, I mean, created a lot of problems that we have with the Europeans today. And I think, but, but, but I think that that's where diplomacy needs to be focused because the Europeans together collectively, no one single European country can bring a lot to bear, but collectively they can. And you create a lot of complications and problems for the Iranians. If you have a bunch of different flagships doing this escort mission that are armed, that have demining capabilities, that have electronic warfare, and even the Baltic States have a lot to bring. And so that's my hope is that we really, I mean, America, we can't do this alone. President Trump has said that, but it feels pretty lonely right now. And that's the thing that's got to change. All right. Well, that sounds right. I mean, it sounds like we would do the heavy lifting at the beginning and then bring others into it as we go. Rich, when I'm asked to sort of predict what's going to happen, I've seen the president's rhetoric, this is speaking retrospectively now on, he's going to obliterate them. He's going to end their civilization. He's going to use force. And at one point I thought, well, you know what, he's going to get to Obama Red Line territory. He's really got to make good on this at some point. But if anything, I've just been forced to accept that the base case prediction or the number one thing that either he or maybe it's his advisors cares about the most is not resuming the war, quote unquote. There will be some kinetic action short of the ceasefire threshold, as they said. But do you see it like this too? Are they just not going to go back to war because it's, I don't know what, politically damaging, economically damaging? Well, there is a rumor that that statement after Fugaira was hit, I think, right before the plug was pulled on Project Freedom, that in that briefing, which was a powerful briefing, I think, laying out the case, I think General Cain was asked about responding to such attacks. And would we consider this a ceasefire violation, etc. And he said there's a lot of people who are not in the audience, and I think the description of attacks on the UAE probably didn't sit well with the UAE is not rising to a level of a ceasefire violation. Now, obviously, we ascribe the pulling the plug to the Saudis. So I, you know, who knows exactly where that goes. But I don't know the answer to that question. Obviously, I'm not in the president's mind. The president has said he is not in a rush. He is not in a hurry that he understands the importance of the blockade and the power of the blockade. He's seeing the intel and the assessments on a real time basis on an ongoing basis of what the blockade is doing, which has probably given him this encouragement of, I don't have to make a deal. I can still hold on. They're the ones who are running out of time. Meanwhile, this diplomacy has obviously driven down the price of oil significantly just by talking about having a deal, which is itself a short term benefit while we see what happens here. While the blockade today still is in place and oil is $10, $15 cheaper than it was before he announced that there might be an MOU. So even if that's the only thing that happens here, and they just keep talking for two weeks about this while keeping the blockade, at some point, the Iranians start to figure out that time is not on their side. It's actually on our side. But sure, if he's getting a briefing from Kevin Hassett, the head of the NEC, if he's getting a briefing from the Council on Economic Advisers that says, we think Asia's only got a month left, they're going to collapse and then Europe, and it's going to be a cascading effect. We're going to have to actually raise interest rates instead of lower interest rates. I could imagine somebody coming up with a PowerPoint like that. It's enough fear mongering out there in the media that I can see every day from people who are paid to fear monger. Does he see that and say, oh boy, we got to do something fast to get the straight open faster than the blockade? And we don't have the Gulf support for project freedom? Or Sencombe said, wow, they can't believe they had hypersonic missiles and they fired them at a destroyer and the President says, I don't want to lose a destroyer and that's why he doesn't want to do project freedom. I don't know the answer to that. But I hope he sees the economic data and the assessment on their side and says, I actually do have time here. Prices are on my side. The market is showing that I have time and at least keeping the blockade plus is better than doing a bad deal. All right, well, let's get into that because maybe I'm underestimating the power of the blockade. Many people say that, well, you know what, pressure on the Iranian people isn't the same thing as pressure on the regime. They feel under an existential threat. Therefore, no amount of economic pain is going to harm the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps ideological contingency there. But Rebecca, you mentioned, you seemingly began to dangle the idea that the blockade is working pretty well when you mentioned that their plastics and steel businesses have collapsed or that market has really suffered. Talk a little bit about the blockade or we or others in the media, maybe not you too, but others around town giving short shrift to the blockade? I think so. I also just think that there's so many people wedded to this idea that any type of military force against Iran is going to fail. And so they seem to just be trying to will it into existence? And so, I mean, I've been hearing about this since Rich and I were young Hillstaffers, that you cannot solve the Iranian illicit nuclear program with military action. And there's a lot of people, I think, just really wedded to this idea. And so they discount the effects that our military action has actually had on the regime and that the blockade continues to have. My understanding is it's not just that the blockade is squeezing those particular sectors of the economy, it's that we hit them militarily with kinetic action. They're a lot of their defense industry. So whenever you hear, you know, heard those briefings, the beginning of the epic fury, we were not just hitting their launchers, their drone production facilities, but their defense industrial base, their capacity to rebuild. And so we were hitting a lot of this, a lot of this stuff. So I think that their economy, and I'm talking about the economy that in particular that the regime is specifically, you know, cares about. I mean, you, I've been trying to be really careful to differentiate between the pieces of the economy that directly, you know, affects the Iranian people. It's very hard to separate them. But obviously, you don't want to do things that directly and disproportionately hurt the people because the people are opposing the regime. And we want to free the people to be able to finally overthrow this regime that's been oppressing them. But but I think that the regime is being squeezed. You know, you can look at all kinds of data points that demonstrate that President Trump likes to say about $500 million a day that we're taking out of their coffers. They can't pay their, you know, a lot of the IRGC leaders, you know, that in combination with, again, in the beginning of epic fury, you would periodically hear that the United States was even incentivizing trying to pay off members of their army to see if they had any information about where some of these other IRGC leaders are. And we were offering like huge bounties on people. So we're incentivizing defections and turning people in while people aren't getting paid. To me, that was a great combination. We don't really hear much about that anymore. So, I mean, look, I mean, I think that the United States, I mean, we're on a political time clock that some people seem to have in their mind. I don't know how much that's affecting President Trump at this point. He says it's not affecting him. He says that he wants to do the right thing. And, you know, I think good policy, good strategy in winning is how you have good political outcomes. And so I think that that's the way to go. And so I agree that time is on our side. It's not on the side of the regime. So, Rich, as we will begin to wrap up in the next few minutes, but you began to talk about where the United States might go next. We've all complimented the blockade a little bit more than most. But let's assume project freedom is not in the offing, nor is the resumption of concentrated military force that's designed to give us additional leverage over the Iranians. Where do we go from here? And, you know, the allies would come later, seemingly, and help out. But what's a prudent path if given those parameters? Yeah. I mean, I think under those parameters, you need to do something that provides structural change, systemic change, and relief for the global market, both in the short term and then in the long term. Because if you've taken all of your ability to do other things off the table, and you just want to sort of manage crisis, you know, at some point you will have other price shocks, supply shocks, something else happens. You don't want that, I think, for a sustained period of time. You want to change the dynamic in your favor. You could trust that, you know, we'll just wait it out another month or so. We'll see how the blockade goes. We'll see if we get better terms in 30 days and, you know, we'll still be at that point towards the end of June, before July 4th. There's a lot of things the president wants to be able to celebrate and have focused on, you know, this summer World Cup, you know, America 250, things of this nature. If the entire summer is just people screaming about the price of gas, it's probably not his desired outcome. So that is one option. Well, that sounds like figuring out a way to get more oil out on the market. Well, that's basically correct. And, you know, we are at maximum production and export in the United States. Venezuela is on an upward trajectory, which is good from an energy market perspective, and it's under our auspices, not under China's or anybody else's. But the numbers are just not there to compensate for the volume you're talking about that is offline from the Gulf. And the pipelines don't exist to augment the existing pipelines to get that product to market, not through the Strait of Hormuz. The long term fixed here, by the way, whether we go into phase one permanently or not, is to partner with the Saudis and the Emiratis and the Qataris and everybody else to have a consortium of pipelines that gets constructed as fast as possible. The Emiratis have already announced they have that second pipeline coming online. There will be another 2 million barrels per day, 50% complete already in secret, and supposedly will be ready next year. We don't have any news from the Saudis on a similar, you know, duplicate East West pipeline. But that alone in a year or two years can change the entirety of this conversation and take away this new extortion lever for the regime, hopefully while President Trump is still in office. You could go into this phase one, eyes wide open that you're never getting to phase two, understanding that it's temporary, that you will go back to conflict, but you may not do it until after the midterm elections. You'll get as much oil to market as possible. You'll try to contain as much as possible the relief that the regime gets out of this. And then maybe bring the Europeans into the Gulf undercover of this being this extended phase one and peace for our time. And then, you know, sort of jokes on the Europeans, their Navy's already in the Gulf and we're bringing the blockade back in November and bringing the hammer back down. And at that point, we've refilled stocks in different places. There's logic to some of this, by the way, from economic perspective, you know, driving prices down where we have sold the SPR at very high prices right now and then repurchasing at lower prices after, you know, a big dip in oil prices if the straight opens up. There's a nuance to that, which is we can't refill our SPR as fast as we can draw on our SPR. It's something that the Trump administration has been working on since it came into office. But we can certainly take a page out of the Iranian playbook and fill as much up everywhere as you possibly can and max out storage options. So, you know, I would leave you with this and that is no matter what, no matter what. And we've unfortunately, the process of negotiations creates a media environment and a strategic communications environment where you solely focus on this process and whether or not the straight's open and you make this all about, you know, the deal and is a good deal, a bad deal, are we getting hosed? And you totally lose sight of everything that has happened over the last year between midnight hammer and epic fury and the massive setbacks to this regime. So, don't make comparisons to the JCPOA. Don't make, you know, there are no comparisons that make sense because the nuclear program of Iran is a different place today. The missile program of Iran is a different place today. It will be unfortunate if in this round we have not been able to use the moment of maximum leverage to get maximum concessions and change in a major threat that will be disappointing. But it will not wipe out the strategic gains we have had. And it doesn't mean that we won't be able to re-attack the problem in other ways down the line. Okay, Rebecca, let me just ask you this. That was a pretty comprehensive from Rich. But let me just ask you as we wrap up here, is it realistic that we could get the Iranians to part with their uranium? And as Rich says, not just the 900 pounds of 60 percent uranium, but all the 20 percent and 3.67 percent uranium that's seemingly in other sites around the country. You're a veteran of nuclear negotiations and studied these sort of rogue regime negotiations for years. Is this likely or is this just a ridiculous thought to think that they're actually going to part with their national patrimony? It is in theory possible when Gaddafi was pretty terrified that George Bush was going to take his WMDs by force, he decided it was better for him to give it up willingly, of course. He still ended up losing his own life after that happened. I mean, there is some precedent for this, but I just find it so incredibly unrealistic with this ideological regime. I think we're going to have to destroy it further and tune it or take it. And I don't think that that is impossible. I agree with Rich too, and I have to remind myself of this too, because it is all of us are susceptible of essentially a little bit of mission creep in our own minds, and we have to go back to where we were before epic fury. And I agree that no matter what happens now, the United States has just done something remarkable in weakening the Iran regime and setting them back and then making it safer for the United States and the region. I want us to use this momentum, and I think we have all this opportunity here to actually get a great geopolitical win that is much more lasting, and especially with President Trump in office, not knowing who is going to follow him. I think we've got a great moment here. But I think just to answer your question, I think that in my mind, the most realistic scenario where we actually finally dismantle or remove this nuclear material is when the United States has launched another military operation, and we do a pretty significant ground operation, and we establish a perimeter and we remove it by force. I don't think that that's totally implausible. People scoff at me, but I remind them that how weakened the Iranian military is and how when we did that rescue mission of those two downed F-16 airmen, I mean, that is not the same degree of fully taking apart the illegal nuclear program, but goodness, we did two very different kinds of operations in different times of the day with different kinds of military forces inside Iran and did that successfully. And so I think that that's a little bit of an indication of what the United States may be able to do, especially on the heels of another couple of weeks of pounding, where we what we need what we know now that we need to take out that still remains inside inside Iran. Great. That's a perfect place to end. Rebecca Rich, thanks so much for joining NatSec Matters. That was Dr. Rebecca Heinrichs and Rich Goldberg. 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.