Admiral Perplexed on Why JD Vance Considers This War Mongering

Summary

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Brian Kilmeade Show: "Admiral Perplexed on Why JD Vance Considers This War Mongering"

Air Date: July 16, 2026
Host: Brian Kilmeade
Guest: Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery, Senior Director, Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation, Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Other Voices: Brett McGurk (national security official/analyst), Unnamed commentary on recent events

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Episode Overview

This episode delves deep into ongoing US military operations against Iran, focusing on strategies for securing the Strait of Hormuz, escalating strikes, and recent diplomatic maneuvers like the controversial Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Iran. Admiral Mark Montgomery offers frontline insights, dispelling criticisms from figures like Vice President JD Vance and unpacking the realpolitik behind America’s approach. The latter part of the episode shifts to the Ukraine war, including political shakeups and battlefield innovations.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. U.S. Military Strategy Against Iran (00:00–07:15)

• Escalation Is Necessary:
  • Admiral Montgomery insists the U.S. must "continue to impose cost" on Iran, especially around the Strait of Hormuz, arguing only punitive military action—paired with blockades—will force Iran to entertain serious negotiations.
    • Quote: "I definitely think he should ramp up before he ramps down because we're going to need to continue to impose cost, particularly in that area… We've got to continue to work it over so that it is very difficult to launch drones or missiles or assemble small boats for putting in the water." – Adm. Mark Montgomery (00:44)
• Focus on Target Expansion:
  • The U.S. is broadening airstrikes beyond initial targets, including operations against Iran's regular army. The development of new "target decks" shows adaptability to Iranian responses.
    • Quote: "We've spent the last two months creating new target decks based on what survived our original targeting—14,000 targets—and… we're ready to go back at those again." – Adm. Montgomery (02:30)
• Impact on Merchant Shipping:
  • The goal is to reassure commercial shippers that traversing the Strait will be a "manageable risk" within a week, aiming to restore the flow of oil and goods to pre-war levels.
    • Quote: "I think that we'll tell them that it's a manageable risk within about a week... to get those 2 million barrel a day large crude ships and the large LNG ships going through." – Adm. Montgomery (03:34)

2. U.S. Policy, the MoU, and Vice President Vance’s Stance (04:19–11:04)

• Historical Context:
  • Montgomery notes the rare scale of current U.S. operations and scrutinizes JD Vance’s criticism, asserting these are standard, measured national security responses.
    • Quote: "This is the appropriate thing to do. I don't understand why Vice President Vance considers this warmongering." – Adm. Montgomery (05:35)
• Controversial Memorandum of Understanding (MoU):
  • Discussion centers on flaws in the recent U.S.-Iran agreement, especially its ambiguous wording about control over the Strait, unintentionally giving Iran perceived authority.
    • Quote (Brett McGurk): "It's one of the strangest international agreements I've ever read... there’s so many gaps and potential areas of misunderstanding." (06:19)
    • Montgomery adds: "The writing of the... fifth point of agreement... lends itself to the Iranians believing that in violation of international law, they would have some kind of control over transit through the strait." (07:15)
• Reaction to Iranian Calculations and U.S. Responses:
  • Hardliners in Iran view any concession on the Strait as giving up major leverage, prompting further aggression and U.S. counterstrikes.
    • Quote (Brett McGurk): "Hardliners in the Iranian system kind of freak out... 'Screw nuclear weapons. We just gave away...' So... there was this kind of freak out in their system. So they shot at a couple ships, we responded. I think that's entirely appropriate." (08:54)
  • Admiral Montgomery underscores the necessary response:
    • "I think almost all of us understand if we’re going to get this thing resolved correctly, we’re going to have to ... push back Iranian military capability—and do this for the amount of time it takes for them to break." (10:37)

3. Regional Risks & Future Projections (11:04–12:26)

• Israel’s Role:
  • Montgomery advises U.S. unilateral action unless Iran escalates against Israel. If that happens, expect a much broader response.
    • Quote: "If there’s any shots fired from Iran towards Israel… they're going to come down hard on all the nuclear and ballistic missile. But at this point we can handle... ourselves." (11:08)
• The Houthi Threat in the Red Sea:
  • Renewed concern that Iranian arms shipments to Yemen will enable the Houthis to threaten global shipping in the Red Sea soon.
    • Quote: "I fully expect the Houthis will be back in business in the next weeks or month." (11:44)

4. War in Ukraine: Leadership Shakeup and Battlefield Innovations (12:26–15:03)

• Ukrainian Defense Ministry Turmoil:
  • Ukraine’s Minister of Defense fired amid protests despite battlefield successes, particularly advances in drone warfare. Montgomery suggests political motives, but highlights the vibrancy of Ukrainian democracy.
    • Quote: "I think at some point Zelensky viewed Fedorov as a threat… But in this country, in the middle of this war, this leader, Fedorov, was seen as a change agent." (12:42)
• Battlefield Developments and Russian Logistics:
  • Successful Ukrainian strikes—enabled by U.S. technology and weaponry—have made Crimea nearly uninhabitable for Russia due to disrupted supply lines, energy shortages, and targeted attacks on infrastructure.
    • Quote: "The Ukrainians have made the logistics line from Russia, you know, the land bridge to Crimea untenable... Crimea has limited power, limited food, tough to get weapons." (14:00)
• Notable Achievement:
  • The success of the U.S.-provided "Hornet" system and precise strikes is specifically credited for Ukraine’s advances.

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• Admiral Montgomery on JD Vance:
  • "I don't understand why Vice President Vance considers this warmongering. This is what I would consider a normal US national security response to a threat from an authoritarian regime." (05:35)
• Brett McGurk on the MoU:
  • "It’s one of the strangest international agreements I’ve ever read. It’s... signed by the President of the United States and the President of Iran, the first time ever... since the Iranian Revolution." (06:19)
• Montgomery on the essential U.S. role:
  • "I just think for him to say we’re probably gonna have to keep doing this bombing and then accuse Vice President Pence of being a warmonger... that's kind of inconsistent." (10:37)
• On Ukraine’s Democratic Difference:
  • "The beauty of democracies. Stuff like this happens. People get pissed, they go in the streets... Could you imagine the United States? The Secretary of Defense gets fired and thousands of people are protesting... I just, I don’t see it happening." (13:16)
• On Crimea:
  • "The Ukrainians are doing fantastic damage... Crimea has limited power, limited food, tough to get weapons, and gas for their gas for their weapons, ammunition for their weapons." (14:00)

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Important Timestamps

• 00:44–03:34: Admiral Montgomery breaks down U.S. operational strategy and the logistics of securing the Strait of Hormuz.
• 05:35–07:15: Critique of Vice President Vance’s “warmongering” claims and analysis of the MoU’s weaknesses.
• 08:54–11:04: Analysis of post-MoU events, Iranian reactions, and the persistence needed to ensure maritime freedom.
• 11:08–11:44: Contextualization of Israel’s potential role and impending Houthi threats in the Red Sea.
• 12:42–14:00: Ukraine update, focusing on Zelensky’s political challenges, drone warfare, and the ongoing fight for Crimea.

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Summary Flow

With an authoritative but conversational tone, the episode paints a picture of a high-stakes Middle Eastern military confrontation paralleled by rapidly evolving challenges in Eastern Europe. Admiral Montgomery’s strategic clarity, combined with critical reflections on U.S. policy and diplomatic missteps, provides listeners with nuanced context and a front-row seat to military and geopolitical decision-making.

This episode is a must-listen for those seeking to understand both the rationale and controversy behind the current U.S. military doctrine in the Gulf, the complexities of new diplomatic efforts with Iran, and the on-the-ground changes in Ukraine’s fight for sovereignty.

Transcript

[A]

I mean, game is on now. The administration realized they're not going to meet the objective of opening up the straits or solving the nuclear weapons program by negotiations.

[B]

Five straight days of intense bombings on an expansion of targets have Iran absorbing tremendous damage. But the US has yet to control the strait.

[A]

Why?

[B]

I think Trump ramps up before anything comes down. I'll bring that to Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery. He's senior director of the center on Cyber and Technology Innovation for the Freedom of Defense of Democracies. Admiral, welcome back. I believe the President's going to ramp up before he comes down. Do you think so too? And what do you think of the targets he's picked so far in this, on this internation, on this fight?

[C]

Well, thank you for having me, Brian. And I definitely think he should ramp up before he ramps down because we're going to need to continue to impose cost, particularly in that area. 75 miles, you know, from Bushir to Bandar Abbas, 75 miles either side of the Strait of Hormuz, center line, 50 to 75 kilometers deep in Iran. We've got, we've been working that over for five nights. We've got to continue to work it over so that it is very difficult to launch drones or missiles or assemble small boats for putting in the water. Because what you want to do is create, is minimize the risk, minimize the number of effects that are coming out towards ships that are doing the southern transit scheme closest to Oman so that that U.S. navy shipping from the and aircraft from overhead and from the fringes can reasonably protect those ships without putting our ships in an unrealistic danger. To do that, you're going to have to continue to strike. I don't believe Iran, after 47 years is going to negotiate with us in any kind of good faith short of being punished like this. And of course, I know we'll talk about it, but you combine this with a blockade to get maximum effect.

[B]

So he's also expanding targets to. The 388th Brigade is located around 200 kilometers from the Iranian coast. Most of the strikes in July have been concentrated around its southern coast. The artes has conducted operations throughout the war and most recently claimed on July 15, that's yesterday, that it conducted drone strikes targeting US forces in, in and around Jordan. So they're trying to find where the stuff is emanating from. So they're opening up the target list. So this is regular army, right? 308th Brigade. That's regular or is that RAGC?

[C]

No, that's correct. That's Artesh. And it's regular army. And look, I mean, I'm not sure with this president I'd go bragging online about attacking America or its allies and not expect that the next evening you're gonna get some steel. Because we have all these things targeted and we've spent the last two months creating new target decks based on what survived our original targeting 14,000 targets and making, you know, and seeing what. Where we were wrong or where we missed. And so we're ready to go back at those again. Like as you said there, I would concentrate on the southern targets. But if there's stuff that's clearly hitting out at our allies, we should strike that as well. I expect this to go up to 3 to 400 strikes a day over, over the next week. I don't think we'll stay down around

[B]

140 at one point will we be in the. Not to just like a week, within a week be able to tell merchant ships, we can protect you, do you think within a week. I'm not saying we're going to win in a week where they're going to quit, I'm not saying that. But is it going to be at a point where we. Okay, we got your back here.

[C]

I think that we'll tell them that it's a manageable risk within about a

[D]

week

[C]

whether they accept that manageable risk and start going through it. The numbers we want, which is about seven or eight large carriers a day, which is 14 to 16 million barrels. There's 2 million barrels.

[B]

We had about 100, though we had about 100 prior to the war.

[D]

Right.

[C]

We had about 20 million barrels a day. So about 10 ships a day going through 100 ships overall. That's LNG fertilizers, all kinds of other things. But 10 of these really big ones, not all ships are definitely not all ships are created equal in this transit plan. We really want those 2 million barrel a day large crude ships and the large LNG ships going through.

[B]

So that'll be an interesting point. But Admiral, it's always easy to get caught up in the day to day and not realize the significance of what's happening. We watched for the longest time and you studied. This was what you were doing for a living. What happened? What are we. How are we going to handle Iran? How are we going to keep Iran in line? What are they going to do next to Israel, to our neighbors? How are they going to circumvent us in Iraq? And we've done nothing until this president took out Soleimani, then bombed out their sites in 20, 25 and now is hitting them again. We really never really hit them before outside Reagan blowing up a platform, right?

[C]

Yeah, that's right. So we did do strikes in 1986 and again in 88, 89, as you said, under President Reagan, in response to the tanker war and in response to attacks on mining that affected US Shipping. But you're absolutely. In fact, at the time, that was our biggest naval shipping exchange since World War II. It was greatly surpassed by what happened during the 40 days this, you know, this spring. But look, this is a 47 year authoritarian regime that has killed a thousand American soldiers in combat, killed 500 NATO soldiers, killed 30,000 of its own people. This is the appropriate thing to do. I don't understand why Vice President Vance considers this warmongering. This is what I would consider a normal US national security response to a threat from an authoritarian regime.

[B]

I want to HEAR what Brett McGurk said, you know, and the whole thing. I know we're adjusting your shot. You change it a little bit, but the shot was pretty steady. You don't really have to adjust if you don't want to. But I think what's most important is the Vice President's come out and he is responsible for the MoU. The MoU is deeply flawed. Everybody knows it's deeply flawed. I listen. Look at Brett McGurk. I was listening this morning, 4:30 in the morning. As you know, he worked for the Trump administration last time and I find him to be reasonable and not a hater. In other words, cut 18.

[D]

It's one of the strangest international agreements I've ever read. It is kind of. There's so many gaps and potential areas of misunderstanding. And yet it was signed by the President of the United States and the President of Iran. The first time ever that this has ever happened since the Iranian Revolution. Never had such a high level signed, signed agreement. But the crux of it, the Strait of Hormuz, in Article 5, it basically says Iran, Iran will determine the arrangements in the Strait of Hormuz. The Americans have said, I've heard this from Middle east mediators as well, that there's actually a side agreement that all ships should be going through. It should be unfettered. But whatever happened after the MoU was signed, the Iranians and the Revolutionary Guard have determined we are going to control the Strait of Hormuz. We'll attack ships that are violating our understanding. And until you can break that impasse, we are stuck.

[B]

His verbiage that he signed off on, that he hand over to The President has really muddied up the waters.

[C]

No, it has. Look, it is not. It's the President signing. It's not unusual, as you know, the President, this is an unusual president. He is more involved when he wants to be involved, and there's nothing wrong with that. But the writing of the, of, of the fifth, you know, the, the fifth point of agreement, it is written poorly. It is certainly lends itself to the Iranians believing that in violation of international law, they would have some kind of control over transit through the strait. And so, you know, I, I wish it was written better. I wish we'd put more attention to this. You know, I'm not saying having State Department officials, you know, kind of career State Department officials is, you know, is the, is the secret elixir to everything. But I think it might have helped in this case to have a few more of our professional diplomats going over this and catching these kind of inconsistencies that are now becoming problematic.

[E]

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[F]

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[B]

Yeah, I want you to hear what he said to Joe Rogan. Cut 15.

[G]

I think fundamentally we are on the right trajectory. It's just going to be really messy and there's going to be a lot of stops and starts. So what happens the first week after we sign the MOU? We get 20 million barrels a day of oil out of the str of Hormuz. That's what it was before the war. The price of oil comes way down. And there are elements, the hardliners in the Iranian system kind of freak out a little bit. They're like, oh, shit, did we just give away our major leverage point? Screw nuclear weapons. We just gave away the. So in this mou. And so there was this kind of freak out in their system. So they shot at a couple ships, we responded. I think that's entirely appropriate of Course.

[B]

So is that how you saw it?

[C]

So. Well, glad to see the Vice President speaks like a salty sailor. The. I'll say that he's correct in the sense that I don't believe that they thought we could establish a, a flow, a, a, A channel through the Oman Strait. You know, it was normally the southern transit.

[B]

We set up our own.

[C]

And get numbers. Yeah. And yes. And get up with the IMO's, the International Maritime Organization. So really the way you're supposed to do things, clearly we did some kind of queue route, which is a quick mine clearance to make sure, to make sure there are no mines in that transit scheme and then put aircraft overhead to take out small boats coming out and then ships nearby to try to get at missiles and drones. And I think they were surprised at the degree we could do that. And clearly they decided to disrupt that and that's what's got us back at the table. So that part doesn't surprise me. And in his idea that we're in fits and starts is probably right. I just think for him to, for him to say we're probably gonna have to keep doing this bombing and then accuse Vice President Pence of being a warmonger for saying that we need to do the bombing, that's kind of inconsistent. I think almost all of us understand if we're going to get this thing resolved correctly, we're going to have to hold. You have to push back Iranian military capability capacity around the Strait. We're going to have to blockade their ships and we're going to have to do this for the amount of time it takes for them to break.

[B]

What role should Israel play?

[C]

I think that as long as Israel is not being attacked by Hezbollah from Lebanon, we probably want to do most of this ourselves. If, if there's any shots fired from Iran towards Israel, Katy, bar the door. They're going to come down hard on all the nuclear and ballistic missile. But probably at this point we can handle the right number of missions a night on our own and let us and keep it this way. I don't want to give the Iranian regime an excuse to really open this up more broadly.

[B]

Are you worried about the Houthis shutting down the Red Sea?

[C]

Yes, I think that's a great point. You know, there was a flight. We've tracked some flights from cargo flights from Iran to Yemen. Look, I don't think they're sending them like tents and water and food. Right. I think they're sending them weapons, missiles and drones and launch equipment and small disk radars. So that the Houthis can get back in the business of trying to shut down the Baba Mandeb. Because the way that Saudi oil is going from east to west across Saudi Arabia, it now has to come out this Babel Mandeb Strait to get into the Indian Ocean. So I fully expect the Houthis will be back in business in the next weeks or month.

[B]

You're in Kiev right now, and I understand Zelensky had really changed the tide of the war with drone technology. And the 35 year old defense Minister, now there's nationwide protest in Ukraine. Unless you know differently because he fired him yesterday. Why did he fire the guy? What am I missing?

[C]

I. I'm not sure. So you're absolutely right. Defense Minister Fedorov came from the Minister of Digital affairs and he was, he'd been a drone expert there, brought his drone expertise in. He's done a lot of. But he was unable to get control of the generals, the general staff. And as a. And he complained repeatedly to Zelensky about it. And he. What he. I think at some point Zelensky viewed Fedorov as a threat, you know, maybe politically long term, but viewed Fedorov and his chief of, you know, his actual general, Chief of Staff being in conflict with each other. Unacceptable. I think he did the wrong thing. Here's Alinsky. I mean, it's a democracy. This is the beauty of democracies. Stuff like this happens. People get pissed, they go in the streets. I mean, I drove through it today when I was coming back from our training session with one of the Corps. It was, you know, it's packed, thousands of people, very unhappy. Could you imagine the United States? The Secretary of Defense gets fired and thousands of people are protesting, you know, in Lafayette Square. I just, I don't see it happening. But in this country, in the middle of this war, this leader, Fedorov was seen as a change agent.

[B]

Good. And I get the sense that Crimea has become uninhabitable. And I think the Ukrainians love that in every way. That started this whole thing.

[C]

It's been fantastic. Look, I got to tell you, their medium range strike, really enabled by a US weapon, by a weapon provided by Eric Schmidt's company called Hornet, and by air weapons delivered by U.S. weapons delivered by Ukrainian aircraft called Eram. We have made, the Ukrainians have made the logistics line from Russia, you know, the land bridge to Crimea untenable. They cannot resupply Crimea. They've hit the Kerch Bridge. Crimea has limited power, limited food, tough to get weapons, and gas for their gas for their weapons, ammunition for their weapons. The Ukrainians are doing fantastic damage in the middle strike. And that's not even mentioning the long range strike which is impacting their ability to produce, distribute and refine fossil fuels.

[B]

It's great.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

And they will have, I think, 23 or 33 refineries. Admiral Mark Montgomery doing great work in the hotspots that are keeping America busy. Admiral, thanks so much.

[C]

Thanks for having me.