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00:00Phil, let me start with you, if I could. And with that attack on Karg Island, I'm going to read
00:04a bit from the Truth Social Post the president posted last night about that attack.
00:08He said, at my direction, the U.S. Central Command executed one of the most powerful bombing raids in the
00:13history of the Middle East, the president's words,
00:15and totally obliterated every military target in Iran's crown jewel, Karg Island.
00:20Our weapons, he writes, are the most powerful and sophisticated that the world has ever known, but for reasons of
00:26decency, I have chosen not to wipe out the oil infrastructure on the island.
00:30Would love to get your perspective from your vantage of the significance of that.
00:34We know that 90 percent of the oil that Iran produces goes through this hub off the coast of Iran.
00:39How big a deal is this, and what does it signal to you that it wasn't a kind of full
00:42attack on the oil infrastructure on that island, Philip?
00:47Well, first of all, it's certainly considered an escalation by Iran, because shortly thereafter comes the statement from the Iranian
00:55Revolutionary Guard,
00:57says that because those attacks were staged here in the United Arab Emirates, by the way, without proof from Iran
01:04that that was actually the case,
01:05but because of what they think were attacks that came from here, that cities and ports in the UAE are
01:12now not safe anymore and are legitimate targets.
01:15Iran also says that people here should now leave those places because attacks might be coming.
01:23Now, it's worth saying that that has already happened.
01:25Remember that the likes of Abu Dhabi and Dubai, the biggest cities in the United Arab Emirates,
01:30have already seen drone attacks since the start of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.
01:37But we have, though, as part of that Iranian escalation, at least in theory,
01:41we do have seen something concrete on the ground not too far from here.
01:45Just south from here in Fujairah is a very large oil facility that was struck earlier this morning by what
01:53presumably were Iranian drones.
01:55We do not have confirmation thereof, but there were two large columns of smoke billowing from that oil facility just
02:03a short while ago.
02:05Now, that is particularly important right now because with the Strait of Hormuz,
02:09and you can see the entrance of it right behind me, with it essentially being closed,
02:14well, there are some ways of bypassing it to a lesser degree.
02:19There are pipelines in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates that can bring oil away from the Persian Gulf
02:26and to other ports where oil can be picked up and where the Strait of Hormuz does not need to
02:33be used.
02:33And Fujairah, just down the road from here, is one of those.
02:37Now, a little note on the Strait of Hormuz.
02:39I just mentioned there is very little movement, and we have been watching it from our vantage point here.
02:44Almost no movement whatsoever.
02:46We can see dozens of ships here.
02:48Now, these are tankers that carry oil but also natural gas.
02:53They are waiting to enter the Strait of Hormuz.
02:56And then there are hundreds in the Persian Gulf who are waiting to get out.
03:00So far, we have seen very little movement.
03:02We do know that some China-linked ships have made their way in and out of the Strait of Hormuz,
03:07and Iranian ships as well.
03:09A tiny, tiny exception they are.
03:13Essentially, what we are looking at here is pretty much a full-on blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.
03:18All right, I want to pivot to a different peninsula, and that's Jeff Mason, who is with the president in
03:22Florida.
03:23Jeff, in your latest piece, you've got a good breakdown of what the war is costing so far.
03:28U.S. officials told lawmakers the first six days of the war with Iran cost more than $11.3 billion,
03:33says a person familiar with the matter.
03:35How do you think that cost is going to go down with both members of Congress and the American public
03:40as this war, as the president has said, could go long, may not go long.
03:44We're going to have to wait until he feels it.
03:46Yeah, I asked him that last night on the tarmac.
03:49I heard you.
03:49I thought that was your voice, and I was listening to that this morning, Jeff Mason.
03:52Yes, you were spot on there, Christina.
03:55And he said it would last as long as necessary.
03:58And I think it's worth taking a pause to talk about that for a second, given that just a little
04:03over a week ago, I believe,
04:04when he was starting to feel politically sensitive to the price of oil and gasoline,
04:09he suggested that the war was going to end quickly.
04:13He didn't give a timeline then.
04:15He hasn't given a timeline now.
04:16But he has walked away from that language.
04:18And that action right there, a verbal decision anyway, is something that I think markets are going to be sensitive
04:26to going forward.
04:27To your question about Congress, look, the president already has a sales pitch to make to Congress, certainly to Democrats,
04:33which I think he's probably much less concerned about.
04:35But more generally, there's already some tension there about the fact that he has launched a war in the Middle
04:41East without seeking permission from Congress.
04:44The Congress, as you well know, also controls the purse strings.
04:47And that amount of money is no doubt something that's going to get scrutinized.
04:52And as I like to mention, because politics is my wheelhouse, this is an election year.
04:57And this is also a president who campaigned on and, in fact, started his first year talking about government waste
05:04and about cutting down on government spending.
05:06Obviously, a war costs money.
05:08A war does not achieve those particular goals.
05:12Dan Williams, let me turn to you.
05:13I want to ask about Israel's incursion into Lebanon, which has really escalated here.
05:17And I'm very curious about the end goals for Israel.
05:20I know that the U.N. Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, was on the ground in Beirut in recent days.
05:25Let me play a bit of tape of what he said to both of those feuding parties, Lebanon and Israel.
05:29My strong appeal to both parties, to Hezbollah and to Israel, is for a ceasefire to stop the war
05:40and pave the way to find a solution that would allow Lebanon to become a country independent
05:52with sovereignty and territorial integrity respected.
05:56The U.N. Secretary General is saying he made that trip in solidarity, his word, with the Lebanese people.
06:02We see reporting from Axios this morning that Israel is planning to significantly expand its ground operation
06:06in Lebanon with the aim of dismantling Hezbollah's military infrastructure.
06:10That's according to Israeli and U.S. officials.
06:12Axios cites, quote,
06:21Dan, I'm very curious what you're hearing from Israeli officials about the objectives of this military campaign,
06:27this effort here to encroach on, perhaps seize more territory in Lebanon.
06:33Well, that's certainly the mood music.
06:35In fact, it was stated explicitly by the Israeli defense minister that, as he put it,
06:39the Lebanese state had failed to impose its authority over the entirety of Lebanon,
06:45meaning reigning in that subnational group Hezbollah, a group that's clearly a cat's paw for Iran,
06:51a group that reopened the Lebanese front with Israel in solidarity with Iran a couple of days into this Gulf
06:57War,
06:58this Iran war that we've all been covering and dealing with.
07:01So the Israelis haven't said explicitly how deeply they're willing to go into southern Lebanon.
07:06They have ordered out civilians.
07:08Hundreds of thousands of civilians have now fled accordingly north of the Litani River,
07:13which is the natural demarcation of southern Lebanon.
07:16It makes up something like 10 percent of the Lebanese landmass there.
07:20If you believe the Axios report, Israel is willing to go all the way up to the Litani.
07:25Again, perhaps there is some saber rattling here, some muscle flexing,
07:30given that an invasion on that scale would really require a couple divisions worth of troops.
07:36The Israelis may need time to muster that number of men.
07:39They have been doing so in recent days.
07:42I'm not sure they would want to.
07:44I think they would still want to see the Lebanese states intervening,
07:48coming in at last moment to really impose its authority on Hezbollah.
07:52But given that Hezbollah, especially in recent days,
07:54has been escalating rocket attacks into northern Israel,
07:57Israel responding in kind, it would appear the escalation vector is very, very clear here.
08:03Philip, I want to ask you, because you're in the area,
08:05you were talking about those stranded ships.
08:06And later on in the show, we're going to talk to a UN official
08:08about what these international agencies are trying to do to help the stranded sailors.
08:12About 20,000 stranded merchant marines and sailors on those vessels.
08:17Four have already been killed, seven injured,
08:19and at least seven ships have been hit either by flying debris or other explosions in the region.
08:25What are the different governments trying to do?
08:27Are those vessels just sitting out there?
08:28Are these sailors coming into port?
08:30Are they getting supplies out there?
08:32Can you give us kind of a situation?
08:35No, look, the truth is there is pretty much no movement whatsoever.
08:40A colleague of mine, though, today was in touch with one of the sailors on one of those tankers,
08:47in fact, waiting to go through the Strait of Hormuz.
08:50He actually told him that he felt a little bit like a sitting duck
08:53and was a little bit afraid that the oil company or maybe the transport company,
08:59it wasn't clear there who he mentioned,
09:01was feeling the pressure for financial reasons to actually move through the Strait of Hormuz
09:06despite the dangers.
09:08So that is the situation these seamen are in, essentially.
09:12The pressure to make money and to move through the Strait of Hormuz is huge.
09:17It's just right now that because of these recent Iranian attacks,
09:22and there have been several of them, as you mentioned,
09:24and the threats that more will be forthcoming,
09:26that the evaluation right now is simply it is too dangerous to move through the Strait of Hormuz.
09:32Insurance companies, as I'm sure you have spoken about over the last two weeks,
09:36insurance companies have skyrocketing rates,
09:40and they also, of course, deem it very, very dangerous indeed to pass through the Strait of Hormuz.
09:46So there is no movement here, not in and out of the Strait and not towards any ports either.
09:51Now, generally, these are ships, and it is a generalization,
09:54but still, they tend to have enough provisions on board once they get close to the Strait of Hormuz
10:00because they know, especially during this time,
10:04that something bad could happen and that they might get stuck.
10:07So in that sense, they should be okay.
10:10Now, what are governments doing?
10:12Of course, they want to get their citizens out, but there's very little they can do.
10:17That brings us on to an entirely different subject in a sense is
10:20what can foreign governments do to actually get these ships moving through the Strait of Hormuz?
10:25Of course, the Trump administration has spoken about the possibility of escorting ships.
10:29It's not something that is happening right now,
10:31and it's also something that is very hard to put into place.
10:34It is logistically very, very hard, and it's also a military option in a sense
10:40because as long as Iran has the power, the firepower, to attack ships
10:44and to use drones on cities here in the United Arab Emirates,
10:47well, then it should also be powerful enough to take on the U.S. Navy if it brings in escort
10:52ships.
10:52Now, there's another attempt.
10:53France is involved in a potential international coalition to escort ships in and out of the Strait of Hormuz.
10:59Again, that takes weeks to set up.
11:02It's not going to happen anytime soon.
11:04Jeff Mason, very quickly, I want to wrap up with you here.
11:06We've got about a minute left, and we're kind of threading through the conversation comments
11:09we've gotten from the president to Brian Kilmeade and on President Trump's Truth social site.
11:13He writes,
11:13The fake news media hates to report how well the U.S. military has done against Iran,
11:17which is totally defeated and wants a deal, but not a deal that I would accept.
11:22And we see this news that the U.S. is sending 2,500 additional Marines to the region.
11:26Your read on what that portends, it's going to take about a week for them to get there.
11:30What does it say about the president's appetite for a deal in the minute we have left?
11:34Well, number one, I would say that the president is telling the truth when he says
11:38the war is going to go on as long as necessary.
11:40It doesn't seem to me like he has an endgame in mind,
11:44and it does seem like he's prepared to increase resources
11:48to achieve the goals that he's looking for.
11:50I wouldn't take seriously what he or what Secretary Hegs has said yesterday
11:54about how the media should be covering the war.
11:56It's our job to cover it truthfully and factually and not take tips from the government.
12:00But I would say from an analytical perspective,
12:03it is not unrealistic to conclude that they're committed for a long term,
12:08even if that has a negative impact on the economy
12:11and a negative impact on the president's political prospects in November.
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