David Blair (6:15)

The crunch for the global economy from the loss of oil supply through the Strait of Hormuz is now almost upon us. In fact, for some countries, it is upon them already. Big Asian countries like Indonesia and Pakistan, which are heavily dependent on supplies coming through the strait, are already taking various measures to reduce demand. And Europe is next. This idea that the Strait can be closed and we can sort of weather it, you know, it's not going to last that much longer. So Trump has to do something to reopen this crucial artery of the world economy. Now, you'll remember his first answer last month was, well, I will counter blockade Iran. If they won't let tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, well, I won't let any of their ships leave any of their ports at all. And so he imposed that blockade. The problem is that Iran's threshold, Iran's breaking point, if you like, is still some way off, but the world economy's breaking point is about now. So time is on Iran's side and not on Trump's side, hence his latest moves.

Roland Oliphant (7:27)

So far, as we know, you wrote he's grasped the imperative of reopening the Strait. I mean, they have got two ships out by the looks of them. We definitely know that Maersk vessel got through, which means the Iranians are lying about not letting any civilian ships through. Maybe this will succeed.

David Blair (7:43)

Anything is possible. It's also possible that behind the scenes, Iran and America could be making progress and that Trump's latest announcements are a pressure tactic designed to wring some more concessions out of Iran. And talks will resume in Islamabad and a deal will be announced and everything will be fine. I mean, it's not impossible, but it's highly improbable. The most likely course now is that Trump is going to have to take stronger military action to try and reopen the strait. Simply escorting tankers and hoping for the best won't be enough because Iran is bound to start shooting at those tankers, and therefore, Trump would have to take retaliatory action. Now, Yesterday, Iran fired 15 missiles and four drones at the UAE, one of which, as you say, got through and struck the port of Fujairah. Now, if that kind of thing carries on, it's going to be very hard for Donald Trump not to retaliate by striking targets inside Iran. The uae, if this carries on, one would imagine, will be demanding a response. They will be demanding that those missiles are destroyed on the ground before they're launched. But the moment America starts bombing targets in Iran, then we're back to war. Then the whole thing restarts. So I think we're one step away from that happening.

Roland Oliphant (9:05)

Are we still in a ceasefire? Can you call it a ceasefire when ships are getting hit and oil refineries bombed and seven Iranian fast boats sunk? According to Donald Trump, there's still a

David Blair (9:16)

ceasefire for as long as America and Israel are not launching airstrikes against targets inside Iran itself. You can claim that there's a ceasefire of sorts. Now, of course, as you say, you know, Iran fired 15 missiles at the UAE yesterday. Not much of a ceasefire if you happen to be in the vicinity of those. And it wasn't much of a ceasefire for the ships that had been shot at recently in the Gulf. But we're not where we were a month or so ago when America and Israel were striking hundreds of targets every day inside Iran. But if Iran carries on as it is and continues to fire missiles at the uae, then someone is going to have to strike back. And the moment that happens, and the moment targets inside Iran start getting bombed again, then we really are back to war.

Roland Oliphant (10:07)

You're absolutely right. We're on the brink of this all blowing up again and going back to war. It all hinges, I suppose, on if the Americans keep trying to do this and the Iranians keep trying to punish them for trying to break the blockade,

David Blair (10:23)

Iran is not just going to relinquish its grip on the strait. Iran has discovered that being able to control who goes through and who doesn't go through is the greatest strategic card it could have. And that lesson, now that it's been learned, will never be unlearned.

Roland Oliphant (10:38)

I suppose if we're talking about whether this American operation could work or not, it might be worth flagging this comment today. This is Tim Wilkins, the managing director into Tanko A trade body representing independent tanker owners and operators speaking to the BBC this morning. And he says about this question that it was one vessel that was closely escorted under certain very tight circumstances. For the rest of the ships stuck in the Persian Gulf, it's not going to dramatically change anything. There is no structured convoy or coordination mechanism in place. So our members are simply asking the basic questions. Who initiates these transits? Who communicates with the authorities on behalf of the vessel? And a critical one, what is the fallback if a vessel is challenged by Iranian forces during the transit? And he says these are critical questions that owners are asking, conferring with their crew on board vessels. But from his comments, it's just they don't have an answer to those questions yet.

David Blair (11:36)

That's very interesting. The picture we have is, first of all, Trump tries to impose a counter blockade of his own to force the Iranians to relinquish their grip on the strait. That doesn't work. So now he announces this Project Freedom, which is sort of an escort scheme, except with all the drawbacks that you've just described. He's inching towards what is the only possible outcome, which is a huge military operation to reopen the Strait, which is an extraordinary venture and one with huge risk, which he clearly doesn't want to launch. So he's exhausting every alternative.

Roland Oliphant (12:14)

First, Trump is exhausting every alternative. What about the Iranians? We've got this comment from Gallubouff today. The continuation of the status grows intolerable for America, while we have not even begun yet. Now, this is his Twitter account, and there's some questions about whether or not he actually writes that, whether it's run by somebody else in the West. But what do you think he means by that?

David Blair (12:36)

Well, there's a lot of bravado there. We've not even begun yet. I mean, of course, they've been doing all kinds of things for weeks. But the point is that Iran understands that it has a crucial strategic asset in its hands. Its ability to decide who goes through or does not go through the Strait of Hormuz provides them with vital leverage. It allows them, in good measure to take the global economy hostage, and they're not going to relinquish that grip. They're certainly not going to do it just because Trump asks them to or because their neighbors ask them to. In the end, their grip is going to have to be broken, and it's probably going to have to be broken by force, unless there's some extraordinary diplomatic solution, which is going to surprise us.

Brian Clark (13:19)

All.

David Blair (13:20)

And you can sense that Trump understands the risks of any operation to reopen the Strait by force and doesn't want to do it. Hence, he began by announcing a counter blockade of Iran. And when that didn't work, he announced this Project Freedom, this sort of semi escort system, except not properly organized for ships to go through. And if that doesn't work, that's his last throw. He's going to have to launch a big operation to reopen the Strait. But as you say, he'll exhaust every alternative first.

Roland Oliphant (13:53)

Well, it doesn't sound very optimistic for those of us hoping for a peace or return to normal. We've got over the weekend peace in the ft, citing a man called Frederic Lassare, head of research at Gunvore, one of the largest oil traders in the world, who says the tipping point is clearly June. This is the point at which something will have to give. So there you have it. End of this month, it really is coming close. David Blair, thank you for joining us on Iran. The latest. Well, while we were talking to David, Pete Hegseth and Dan Kaine, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs have been speaking to the press in Washington, shedding a little more light on this. Well, the top line, I think has to be that this is relatively cautious, restrained language, not what you would call blood curdling. And in fact, Pete Hegseth himself makes clear, says explicitly, we are not looking for a fight. He was asked if the ceasefire is over. That question we just debated with David. Pete Hegseth's answer is no, the ceasefire is not over. This is a separate and distinct project talking about Project Freedom. But he urges Iran to be prudent in keeping their actions beneath the threshold of restarting the conflict. Right now, he says the cease fire holds. That's echoed by General Kane, who says that US forces have been attacked 10 times by Iran since Donald Trump ordered the military to reopen the Strait. But he says these attacks were below the threshold of restarting major combat operations, meaning the ceasefire remains intact. Here's a clip of what the two men had to say.

Pete Hegseth (15:27)

Well, as you know, President Trump has directed US Central Command to restart the free flow of commerce through the Strait of Hormuz under the umbrella of Project Freedom. To be clear, this operation is separate and distinct from Operation Epic Fury. Project Freedom is defensive in nature, focused in scope and temporary in duration, with one mission, protecting innocent commercial shipping from Iranian aggression. American forces won't need to enter Iranian waters or airspace. It's not necessary. We're not looking for a fight. But Iran also cannot be allowed to block innocent countries and their goods from an international waterway. As a direct gift from the United States to the world, we have established a powerful red, white, and blue dome over the strait. American destroyers are on station, supported by hundreds of fighter jets, helicopters, drones, and surveillance aircraft, providing 247 overwatch for peaceful commercial vessels. Except Iran's, of course, which is why our ironclad blockade remains in full effect as well. In fact, six ships tried to run the blockade out of Iranian ports as Project Freedom commenced, and they were all turned around. This is more than strategy. It's also humanitarian. By breaking Iran's illegal stranglehold, we're protecting the lives and livelihoods of sailors from dozens of countries, securing global energy routes, and preventing shortages that hit the world's poorest people the hardest.

Brian Clark (17:07)

Let me give you an update of the last few days of activities, and if you take a look at the map here, as the Secretary said, the United States has established Project Freedom to open up the Strait of Hormuz. Since the ceasefire was announced, Iran has fired at commercial vessels nine times and seized two container ships. And they've attacked U.S. forces more than 10 times, all below the threshold of restarting major combat operations at this point.

Roland Oliphant (17:36)

Pete Hegseth and General Dan Kaneleff speaking to reporters in Washington earlier today. A delicate line being walked there. Then after the break, we'll be talking to a former U.S. navy captain about what this might mean in practical terms for the seafarers trying to get out of the Persian Gulf. Welcome back. You're listening to Iran, the latest with me, Roland Oliphant. We've just been told by Pete Hegseth and US General Dan Kaine that the ceasefire in the Strait of Hormuz is still holding despite Monday's attacks by Iran on shipping and an Emirati oil refinery. Today's guest is Brian Clark, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, himself a former US Navy submariner. I asked him how he saw this operation to reopen the Strait of Hormuz unfolding.

Brian Clark (18:37)

It's sustainable if you're willing to put the kind of effort that the US has already put into this fight. The US Is not escorting ships. They'll tell you. They'll say that they're guiding them and they're providing area defense to protect the strait. And so what they're hoping is the zone defense approach, where ships and aircraft sort of patrol the area around the strait and intervene to stop attacks against shipping and then maybe go back and attack whoever is doing the attacks from the Iranian side. This kind of zone defense will be sufficient to convince shipping companies that they can start using the Strait again. So it's a different approach than maybe during the tanker war back in the 80s when we actually escorted ships. So we had a Navy ship right next to a tanker and we would drive out and that the tanker would be protected by that ship. This approach is trying to keep the risk down for the US Navy ships by having them a little bit farther away and not having them in proximity to the ships they're protecting, but kind of do the zone defense over the area and hopefully catch whatever the Iranians throw at the shipping lanes.

Roland Oliphant (19:40)

Not many ships seem to have managed to get out. I think there's still several thousand, I think vessels still stuck in the Persian Gulf, and it doesn't look like many of them are taking the risk of getting out soon. What's the chances of this Project Freedom actually working in your. I know in your view, in terms

Brian Clark (19:59)

of, like, big commercial ships, I think there's a couple hundred that are still inside the strait of various sizes. And like you said, a couple made it out, two US Flagged ships and one South Korean ship was hit by a drone, which that deterred anybody else from trying to come out. For the US to be able to really make this happen, they're going to have to mount an even more capable defense of the area so that the, you know, you don't get the South Korean ship getting hit by a drone, which will be challenging. You'll have to put more forces at risk. They'll have to use a lot more aircraft and helicopters in particular to try to take out drones that are coming across the strait and trying to hit merchant ships. And they might even have to put some air defense ships in the middle of the strait to guard the shipping lane. So it would require a much more robust effort than what the US Is undertaking. Now. That's certainly doable, but it's, it's an expensive proposition and it'll certainly result at some point in US Ships getting hit. And the question will be how popular that will be back here at home with an already unpopular war that just seems to be dragging on. So I think the US Is trying to kind of get by on the cheap here by doing the bare minimum to secure the strait maybe, and then having some ships come through and demonstrate to the Iranians that their leverage is starting to erode and then maybe get the Iranians to the negotiating table.

Roland Oliphant (21:14)

Before we spoke to you, I spoke to our chief foreign commentator, David Blair. He was making the case that is kind of akin to what you're saying, that more force is going to have to be used to make this happen, and therefore we're on a kind of escalation spiral to this ceasefire completely breaking down. Sounds like you're kind of on the same page. It sounds like you're also saying this is going to require more force than is currently being used if the straits are to be unblocked.

Brian Clark (21:40)

Right. It'll require more forces that are currently in the region. They'll have to kind of push into. Towards the straits. So the US has plenty of forces in the region to do this. It's just they're going to have to put them closer to Iran and put them in. Into the strait to be able to defend the shipping lanes. The problem is the Iranians can keep this up indefinitely because they have a large supply of drones and missiles. They can just continue to take periodic shots at shipping to convince the shipping companies not to use the strait. And that could go on for a long time. I think the US calculation has been that the blockade against Iran is going to impose enough economic and political pain on the leadership as food supplies maybe start to dwindle and obviously money starts to run out, that they might eventually get them to come to the table. But I think the Iranians can probably hold out longer than the US will be willing to do this.

Roland Oliphant (22:29)

I was wondering if you could tell us something about how long. I mean, blockades are long things. We think back to think about the Royal Navy's blockade of France and Napoleonic wars, which went on for, God, I don't know, decades, and the Royal Navy's blockade of Germany in 1914-18, another several years and so on. I mean, these things can go on for a very long time. I was wondering if you could tell us about. If you think the US Navy can sustain that for such a long time. Because a lot of these ships, I mean, they've already been at sea for a very long time. Right. Are there supplies and morale problems here?

Brian Clark (23:04)

They're already starting to rotate new ships in. So the Ford and its carrier strike group left, and it's been already replaced by another carrier strike group. So what is happening, though, is that the US is taking ships that would have otherwise deployed to other parts of the world, and they're all deploying to the Middle east. So the US can keep this up for a while. The problem is that it's not deploying ships anywhere else. So the ships that would normally go to the Indo Pacific are not going there. They're coming all the way to the Middle East. Ships that might go to Europe or might have stayed around the US Western Hemisphere, those aren't going to those deployments. They're also coming to the Middle East. So the US Navy is having to deploy most of its forces to the Middle east to support this operation. It could certainly keep it up for kind of of, I mean, certainly for the next year if it needed to. It just means that the Navy's not going to be anywhere else, which erodes the US Ability to deter other actors like China.

Roland Oliphant (23:54)

I was wondering if speaking to you as a former seaman yourself, I don't know if this is demanding that crews stay at sea for longer or whether it's putting more strain on people and whether you could talk to us about what the atmosphere might be on board these ships.

Brian Clark (24:08)

When you get to extended on deployment like this, usually morale is still pretty high because you feel like you're doing something useful. You're usually not extended for no reason and so you're usually doing something valuable. So I think after the first extension and then maybe the second extension, you feel like you're doing something. And then I think at a certain point, especially now, where these carriers are not really doing very much, they're enforcing the blockade, which doesn't really require a lot of activity at this point because the Iranian shipping is generally not trying to come out, the morale starts to go down, people are getting tired, you're not as active, you're not really doing anything day to day as opposed to where you were earlier in the war when there was a lot of flight operations and strike operations. So I think at this point is when people really starts to get. The morale really starts to degrade because you're not doing anything useful. At least you perceive it that way. And then you're also extended on deployment and away from home. So I think this is the point at which the US The Navy leaders are going to have to really be careful about how do they manage the crew as this begins to become more protracted.

Roland Oliphant (25:08)

I was thinking specifically about the USS Gerald Ford, which I think was already. Was it already the longest deployed aircraft carrier in history or second built one?

Brian Clark (25:17)

I think yeah, the Midway had a longer deployment. So to depends on when they actually get home. They're certainly going to be the second longest deployment and it may end up being the longest deployment at least post World War II.

Roland Oliphant (25:28)

You were a submariner, you said.

Brian Clark (25:29)

Yeah, yeah.

Roland Oliphant (25:30)

I was wondering if you could talk to us maybe in that case. We don't often have submariners on the show, for some reason, about the submarine aspect of this war. I don't know if you worked or operated in this part of the world when you were in the service, but is there a submarine aspect to the Strait of Hormuz? Can you get a submarine through the Strait of Hormuz for a start? That'd be the first question, I suppose.

Brian Clark (25:52)

Oh, yeah, definitely. So submarines do deploy up there. It's very shallow, though, so it's not a great environment to operate in as a submariner. So what I found is that I think what we normally don't have a lot of deployments up into that region, but submarines do go up there because the Persian Gulf is only a few hundred feet deep in most places. So normally they keep the submarines outside the strip.

Roland Oliphant (26:14)

What is the role of the submarine force in this conflict?

Brian Clark (26:18)

Well, it mostly has been surveillance and gathering intelligence in a way that can't be detected. Obviously, they had a submarine go and sink an Iranian warship that was coming back from an Indian exercise. But the submarine role is relatively limited here because most of this is enforcing a blockade, which you generally do with surface ships, because then. And the other guy can see you. And then they stand by to maybe do missile launches. So I think they have done some Tomahawk launches from submarines, but that's a pretty minor contribution to the overall number of fires they've used against the Iranians.

Roland Oliphant (26:55)

Well, can you tell us about the Iranian submarine capability, particularly these midget subs they're meant to have?

Brian Clark (27:02)

Yeah, the Iranians have some midget subs that they developed based on a North Korean design and that the Yano class, they're very small and they operate mainly inside the. They have operated in the past mainly inside the Persian Gulf. I've seen a couple of them operating out there. They use them essentially to do ambush attacks against ships that are inside the Persian Gulf, or they would use them for that. I think a lot of them got taken out early on because they can't deploy very long. They're very small, and you can't be at sea very long. So most of them were in port when the war started, and they couldn't get out and stay out very long. So the problem is, at this point, the war has gone on long enough that those midget subs will all had to surface and return to port because they would have run out of fuel and food and air. So they made themselves vulnerable to attack. And so a lot of the air attacks that they've done against Iranian ports have taken out small boats like the midget subs and their fast attack craft and of course their navy ship ships.

Roland Oliphant (28:02)

Did they have any other more conventional submarine capability? Have they got diesel electrics or something?

Brian Clark (28:07)

They did have a couple of diesel electric submarines and those were destroyed at the pier. The Iranians have two different navies. They've got the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy, which operates inside the Strait of Hormuz, so inside the Persian Gulf. And then they have the regular Iranian navy that operates out at sea. And the Iranian navy had some of their ships deployed. As you could see, we sank one of them off the coast of Sri Lanka and a few of them were important. They were destroyed in port. So pretty much the Iranian navy that operates outside the Strait of Hormuz has been eliminated. The IRGC navy is somewhat intact in terms of the smaller boats that they still have, but all of their larger ships have been taken out. So at this point the Iranians don't have any submarines or I doubt they have any midget submarines because they would have all had to return to port. So I think at this point the Iranians have few options in terms of regular navy ships or midget subs.

Roland Oliphant (28:58)

That was Brian Clark of the Hudson Institute talking to me there about the Strait of Hormuz conundrum. That is all for today's episode of Iran the Latest. We will be back tomorrow as usual. Until then, that was Iran the Latest. Goodbye. Iran. The Latest is an original podcast from the Telegraph, created by David Knowles and hosted by me, Roland Oliphant and Venetia Rainey. If you appreciated this podcast, please consider following around the latest in your preferred podcast podcast app and if you have a moment, leave a review as it helps others find the show. For more from our foreign correspondents on the ground, sign up to our new daily newsletter, Cables via our website or listen to our sister podcast Ukraine the Latest. We are still on the same email address battle lineselegraph.co.uk or you can contact us on X. You can find our handles in the show Notes. The producer is Peter Shevlin. The executive producers are Venetia Ray and Louisa Wells.

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