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The Bulwark
BREAKING: Trump Makes Profane Threat Against Iran, New Attacks on U.S. Assets (w/ John Kirby)
00:16:54
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- [00:00]
A
Hi, I'm Ben Parker from the Bulwark. Welcome back to Command Post. And the Bulwark takes feed, joined as always by our very own Lieutenant General Mark Hertling and our special guest, Rear Admiral John Kirby, retired rear admiral, former Pentagon press secretary, former spokesman for the National Security Council, and director of the Institute of Politics at Chicago. Is that right?
- [00:19]
B
Yeah, that's right. Just started about eight months ago.
- [00:22]
A
Congratulations, Admiral. Thank you so much for joining us.
- [00:25]
C
It is great to have John with us today. We are old friends. We first met In Iraq in 2007, seven or eight, I think it was when John came over with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Mullen, and we were walking on a market walk somewhere in Tikrit Province or in South. There's a picture. Yeah, there's John, there's a flash from the past with Nancy Youssef taking notes and you making sure that I was saying the right thing. So I appreciate that.
- [00:54]
B
I remember that day.
- [00:55]
C
Yeah, it was a rough day. But anyway, it is great to have you, John. And you have not only been a voice of reason, but a phenomenal not just military analysts because of your background in the Navy, but also just a national security maven. You're an expert at this stuff. You've seen various administrations do different things, especially in the Middle East. We're going to talk a little bit about that today. But you know what? I'd like to start off, if you don't mind, because this is a show about the military. We try and provide insights to the 99% of the American public who really don't understand much about how the military works or what they do. And I'm going to knock you down a couple of pegs from your time as a senior strategist in different administrations to back a long time ago when you were a brand new ensign or lieutenant JG On a ship because you've been in this area as an operator. Can you tell us a little bit about the view from a sailor's perspective as an officer on a ship, what it looks like in the Gulf, what it looks like in the Strait of Hormuz, the Bab El Mandab, some of the other places, and what kind of effects it has on crews of some of these naval ships?
- [02:14]
B
I think the first thing that struck me, I deployed there back in 1988. I was just a brand new lieutenant junior grade when we got over there. Ronald Reagan sent the Navy on an operation called Ernest Will. And our job was it was right at the end of the Iran Iraq War when they sort of became, it became what they called the tanker war. And our job was to escort commercial ships in and out of the strait. So we pick them up in the Gulf of Oman, south of the strait, pick up a convoy, usually have about a half a dozen or so U.S. navy ships and some allied ships. And we'd space ourselves around this big old longa conga line, almost think like a line of ducks. And we'd flow them into the strait, protecting them, and then get them up to the north there. They'd load up and then we'd pick up a fresh load of ships, a fresh convoy, ships in the north that were already loaded and bring them back south. And it was back and forth, back and forth for months at a time. And the first thing that struck me when I did this back then is how small the space is. And it's at its narrowest. The Strait of Hormuz is 21 miles wide. Now that sounds like a lot, but boy, when you're, when you're operating with Iranian missiles, with Iranian mines and Iranian bog hammer fast boats constantly as a threat, that feels pretty confined. And so you want to get through that strait as efficiently and as quickly as possible and get into open water. And that separation scheme, think of it like a two lane highway in the strait. So you got 21 miles, but really you've got six, because there's a separation scheme that exists right down the middle and for ships to go in and out safely. So it gets real tight real fast. And that strikes you. The other thing that struck me was the volume of traffic. And we've been talking about that a lot since the strait became a story here since February, you know, 100 to 135 ships per day before the war started were going through that strait. And that was about what it was when I was there in 1988. It was over 100 ships a day. That's a lot of traffic to go through that narrow waterway. And again, it's quite dangerous. Dangerous. There's no way to do it without coming under the window of Iranian missile and drone threats now. So that's what struck me was again that the proximity of it, the danger of it, and just the volume of the traffic.
- [04:35]
A
Admiral, speaking of Iranian missile and drone threats, we have to ask you, you know, we've sort of had sort of a ceasefire these last few days, but it's totally broken down again with renewed Iranian attacks on American bases in the region. And we'll play the President's latest threats against Iran here real quick.
- [04:52]
D
Reacting to that Iranian attack on US Forces overnight in Jordan, President Trump tells Fox News about Iran. We are going to beat the effing s out of them. He went on to say, we'll be hitting them hard. They're going to get a beating. So clearly the United States is going to respond to what the President described as a surprise attack. He says U.S. forces had just minutes to shoot down these incoming Iranian ballistic missiles. The President says he has reviewed video of the shoot down and it was US Forces conducting this operation to defend that area. He said it was real time. They were calling out coordinates and ensuring that none of this incoming Iranian fire got through.
- [05:34]
A
So, you know, you talked about the convoy operations through the Strait, but that was before Iran had such a, such an advanced drone arsenal, such an advanced missile arsenal. What is it like to be on one of those ships and try to protect those convoys then and now?
- [05:49]
B
Well, we're not doing that right now. We're not protecting the convoys. And one of the reasons is because the US Navy just simply can't do that alone. We have to have support from other navies and we don't have that support right now. The French and the British just yesterday rejected another call to potentially get involved in convoy operations. Convoy think of that as like a, that's kind of a man to man defense. I mean, you are right there with those ships. You have skin in the game. And you're right, it was easier for us in 1988. We had missiles to worry about. We had the fast boats and we had the mines. We didn't have to worry about drones. Drones present a uniquely challenging threat for the U.S. navy. Yes, they fly slow relatively, and they fly relatively low in order to make, to become effective. But they can sometimes be hard to pick up and to find. And as Mark knows this very well, they can be swarmed. I mean, you don't have to just do a one off drone. You can launch a bunch at a target with the expectation that they're not all going to get defended. So the drones present a very unique challenge now for the US Navy and for the military. And we are seeing the Iranians use that to a fairly well. A lot of their hits on commercial ships in the Strait have been through drones.
- [07:05]
C
Yeah. And if I can bring this up, Ben, because I think both John and I have experienced this both on shipboard and I was on the Mount Whitney one time in the Mediterranean and talking about integrated air defense, if you're just concerned about drones or missiles striking ships, that's a hard problem. To tackle. But what we're seeing is a requirement for integrated air defense across the region. So they are launching drones and missiles not just at ships, ships, but at bases around the area against targets like Patriot missiles and some of the smaller air defense systems, short range air defense systems. So what Iran is attempting to do is not just swarm drones, but swarm attacks. So you're forcing the individuals who are trying to integrate the air defense around the region to basically manage an area the size twice of the United States of where the missile's gonna, what are they going to strike? How do we shoot them down with limited resources? And at the same time, how do we protect ships? And I'm going to go back to what John was talking about, the escort. I mean, that's a gaggle when you're talking about ships from various nations that are living by the law of the sea and suddenly they find themselves in a combat zone. For the navy to piece that together and say, okay, we're going to make a run for it through the strait, let's go. You're talking 10 different languages if you have 10 different ships and all kinds of different procedures depending on what type of ship it is. So this isn't as easy as just getting ships through a strait. What Iran is doing, I think, and what they did last night, we'll talk about that in a little bit, is continue to test and show that they have the upper hand in terms of attacking, in terms of maintaining the tempo and the operations. John, can you comment on that a little bit?
- [09:04]
B
Yeah, so I think a couple of points. Number one, we ought to also remember that in the first few days of this war, the Iranians effectively shut the strait down through fear alone. They didn't fire a single shot and shipping companies were like, yep, we're not going through there now. And you get attacks like we've seen in the last few days. All that does is reinforce that fear. So it's making it very hard. No matter how hard. The navy's trying to conduct what they're calling sort of a shepherding process. They're not convoying, but they're, they're helping provide an alternate route and oversight of that route. It's still difficult for them to convince every shipper to want to take that route just because of the fear alone. The Iranians know that we have integrated air defense. They are also integrating their capabilities to shut down the strait. So sometimes they'll use a drone, sometimes they'll use a missile. I obviously have mines that they've put in the strait and they still have, although much fewer, they still have fast boats available to them to harass shipping. The other thing they're doing is just getting on the. On the shortwave radio and calling up these ships as they begin to enter the strait or get close to the strait and threatening them. That alone, as I said, back to fear. So they are using an integrated approach of themselves to manage control of this, and they still have that capability. I think it has surprised everybody. And I. I can't verify this, but I would guess I'm accurate that it's probably a surprise. Some people at Central Command down at Tampa, the degree to which the Iranians still have capability left. We knew they were going to squirrel things away and bury it. We knew they were going to obfuscate their capabilities. We knew that they would have some restorative defense industrial base capability. But I think it surprised everybody in the region that they have as much left as they do. And we saw that on stark display just last night.
- [10:55]
A
Yeah.
- [10:55]
C
If I could add something, Ben, I know you got a question, but the comment you made just now, John, about the fear factor involved in ships wanting or not wanting to go through the straits, I think we all got to remind people these are not military sailors. I mean, these are merchant folks. They don't have any experience with this kind of stuff. So they're scared to death. Plus their business owners, their merchants, the guys that are renting these ships to transport goods, they're saying, hey, this is an insurance problem. If I lose a ship, it's going to cost me x millions of dollars to replace that ship or to pay the people who don't want to work there anymore. So there is more of a factor of fear than what I think most Americans would think. Well, it's the Navy. Just send them on through the water and devil may care.
- [11:47]
B
These ships are big. Even when they're empty, they're slow. And they can't maneuver the way a destroyer or a guided missile frigate can. Back when I was doing it, you've got to be careful and you've got to be deliberate. And they don't have defenses onboard. They don't have machine guns. They don't have missile defenses. They're just big old tankers and freighters. And so they are virtually defenseless once they start making that run. And there's not, again, there's not a lot of room for them to maneuver and they don't have a lot of power and speed. So that's why it's a very careful calculation. And what you're seeing now is not only the insurance going way, way up for these guys, but their companies, their shipping companies are finding alternate routes. So they're trying to find alternate routes so that they don't have to transit the strait.
- [12:33]
C
Yeah.
- [12:34]
A
All right, if I can ask you two questions. The first is this is something that at a sort of detailed tactical level has not been clear to me ever since we announced that we were going to blockade the Iranian blockade. And Trump said we're going to shut down the strait. And then CENTCOM said, well, actually no, we're just blockading the Iranian ports. What is the purpose of all this? How does that work? Iran's trying to shut down the Strait of Hormuz, so we're blockading the Iranian ports. Is that just to prevent the fast boats from getting out into the strait or is that to block off their trade? What exactly is the operation and the goal there?
- [13:07]
B
A blockade is a military operation. Usually it's a naval operation, although it is not exclusively confined to just maritime assets, but it's a military operation designed to choke off the economy of your adversary. Unlike an embargo or sanctions, which are likewise designed to do that. It is a physical blocking of a country's nation state's economy. And so what the US Navy has got in place in the Gulf of Oman is a blockade. Now this blockade is multi assets, multifunctional. It is surface ships, destroyers, even some amphibious ships because they have helicopters. So you have aviation capabilities. You also have constant eyes on intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets, drones, satellites, the whole works. So they have got constant eyes on what's going on in the strait. And they know that they can identify because we're watching all the time what ships are trying to get through and where they're coming from. So you can know whether a ship is coming from an Iranian port. That's the trigger. If it's coming from an Iranian port, then that's the trigger for the blockade to go into effect. They try to stop these ships through warnings the same way the Iranians are doing. They try to stop them through non kinetic means. Means like, you know, fly over, you know, have a helicopter buzz over overhead or a jet, you know, something to intimidate them to turn, to stop them and turn them around. If that doesn't work, then the US Navy obviously can use kinetic fires to disable a ship. What they typically try to do is shot across the bow, literally. It's not just a navy, it's not just a term from the movies, it's a real thing. To again intimidate and to get them to stop. And if that doesn't work, you can disable a ship usually by going after its engineering spaces, maybe the rudder, something like that, so that it can't maneuver and then and or board it if you feel like you need to board it to take control of it. It really depends on how fast the ship is going, what you think it's carrying, and how determined that ship is to make the blockade or to run the blockade. The blockade has been pretty effective. And that's not to say they've gotten every one they have missed. Some ships have gotten through, but not a lot. There's a fear factor here that the US Navy is also trying to apply to Iranian shippers. And it has had an effect. The regime wants survival. Key to their survival, they believe, is a nuclear weapons capability. But it's also the economic lifeblood that comes from their oil industry. And so the blockade has an effect on their economy. There's no question about that. It is a unlike the man to man defense we talked about, a blockade is kind of a zone defense, if you want to look at it that way. You got assets kind of depleted, deployed in the Gulf of Oman where they need to be. So it's not like there's a line of destroyers cutting off the strait. They're where they need to be. And they're more located sort of towards the northern part of the Gulf of Oman because that's where the Iranian ships are going to be coming out of. But it really is an opportunity to try to stranglehold the Iranian economy. And again, they know that the regime is sensitive to that. I do want to put a caveat on that though. The hardliners, the ones who are popping off these drones and these missiles, they're not pragmatists and they could care less about the economic needs of the Iranian people. And so while the regime itself, I think, is sensitive to economic targeting and that kind of messaging, the hardliners, the ones who are not interested in sitting down at the table and don't want to necessarily see this war and really aren't that affected by the economic measures that are in place.