00:00What is your read on whether this war, now in its second month, its fifth week, is actually nearing an
00:06end?
00:08Hey, Carol, Tim, great to be here.
00:11I think if you walk the dog back, say, what's this all about?
00:16The end state has always been a non-nuclear threat to Iran.
00:20Then how do you get to that?
00:22So you either have to defeat a country, you have to surrender to a country, you have to find an
00:28off-ramp.
00:29And so I think we're still looking for a negotiated off-ramp.
00:33I don't think there's any intent at this point to say we're going to defeat Iran in regard to obliterate
00:41the nation or its capabilities.
00:43Certainly this desire for a Supreme Leadership Authority transition.
00:48But the question is, is that something that can be done in the immediate future?
00:52Is that something that's going to be done down the road based on the Iranian people's reaction?
00:56Can it be done without ground troops, without boots on the ground from the U.S. and Iran?
01:03I don't think it can be done with ground troops.
01:05I don't see this being a warning to Iraq with 300,000, 500,000 ground troops.
01:13I don't see that strategy being what we're pushing for.
01:17I see we've positioned sufficient assets to be able to apply additional pressure to create negotiation space to try to
01:25get the outcome that we're looking for.
01:29So many questions, so many places to go.
01:31What I want to go back, though, is what you talked about, the mission of making sure Iran's nuclear capabilities
01:39were reduced, you know, gotten rid of completely.
01:43Like, that seems to be the main reason, I guess we all assume that the U.S. and Israel got
01:50into this.
01:51At the same time, we're reporting that President Trump's willingness to attack adversaries while rattling allies threatened to push the
01:59world into a new nuclear age with governments debating whether they must get the bomb.
02:04The U.S. is assessing a return to atomic bomb test.
02:07China and Russia are upgrading their arsenals.
02:09The Atomic Energy Agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency, warning that more nuclear weapons in more countries will not make
02:17the world more secure.
02:18Are we on the precipice of a new nuclear age, in your view?
02:23I don't believe we are.
02:25I mean, I think, actually, the bigger immediate thing that we're on the precipice of is trying for this not
02:30to become a case where navigation of the sea
02:35and the convention of high seas and the rules of international law regarding high seas are completely thrown out of
02:44the window,
02:44which is sort of what's happened at the Straits of Hormuz.
02:47You go back to the 1958 Commission of the High Seas or the 1994 UNCLOS, which is, in essence, what
02:56established the fact that key shipping lanes like this,
03:00even though they may be within territorial order, it's illegal to prevent them from being normally used for global commerce.
03:08And that's kind of where we are right now.
03:10And that has certainly escalated things a bit away from the non-nuclear threat Iran objective to say,
03:18but at the same time, we need freedom of navigation globally or the economy really is going to be massively
03:25impacted.
03:26That's not new for us.
03:27We've been doing that for decades.
03:30My first involvement of an expedition like that was in the 1980s, believe it or not, in an obscure location
03:39in the Mediterranean where a country is saying,
03:42hey, we want to claim this larger body as our own gulf and control everything that goes through it.
03:46And we said, no, no, no, 12 miles is what you get unless you're on a key shipping lane, like
03:52Straits of Hormuz, blocking Straits, Straits of Gibraltar, et cetera.
03:55Can the U.S. sufficiently, like, does the U.S. have the technology or the weaponry or the ability to
04:05protect ships without Iran's cooperation through the Strait of Hormuz?
04:12That is a very loaded question, Tim.
04:14And I would say that's not what we're chasing.
04:18I think what we're trying to achieve here is enough leverage where we have negotiation to be able to have
04:24Iran's...
04:25Okay, we're going to stand this down.
04:27But it seems like Iran has a lot of leverage right now with shipping traffic at a standstill.
04:34Well, they have all the leverage, right, with this?
04:37Well, I don't think they have all of it, but they certainly have more than we wanted to have, which
04:41is why we've introduced new assets into the theater to say,
04:45we need more capability to tip the balance our direction in regard to the threat of what we can do.
04:52And that's where you get into the discussions of, you know, Karg Island and so forth of, you know,
04:58can we take something away from you that's vitally important to you that causes you to say,
05:03hmm, maybe this isn't the road we want to go down.
05:08Do you believe, you know, Secretary Scott Besson told Fox News the U.S. is going to retake the control
05:14of Hormuz,
05:15you know, ensuring the safe navigation?
05:17President Trump has threatened to take Iran's oil.
05:20Is that bluster or do you believe it?
05:25I hope it's doable.
05:27I mean, I think that's the question that we're all sitting around watching and saying,
05:31okay, you have more tools in your kit bag then.
05:35You have more capacity and capability to influence Iranians' desire to come to negotiation.
05:44This is not the first time the Straits of Hormuz have been at issue.
05:47It's not the first time we've been at odds, not just us, but the world at odds with Iran regarding
05:53shipping lanes of Straits of Hormuz.
05:56You can go back to them laying mines.
05:59You can go back.
05:59This is the first time it's gotten into this much threat of shooting.
06:04And, of course, at the end of the day, yeah, there's the threat of shooting, sinking ships,
06:09but there's a large threat of the cost because of the cost of insurance and the ability for nobody would
06:15afford to go through these types of passages,
06:18whether it's by the owner of Straits or Straits of Hormuz because insurance costs just go through the ceiling.
06:23General Robinson, one of the things, too, that I think about is what's life after?
06:29Maybe I'm optimistic that that'll happen sooner rather than later, and you can weigh in on your time frame.
06:34But I do think about is this still – we've had folks say it's an Iran that is going to
06:41be even more hell-bent on making sure it has nuclear capabilities when it comes to military weapons.
06:47And so I just wonder, are we creating an enemy that is going to be even more difficult going forward,
06:52and it may take a few years for their rebuild?
06:55Or are we helping to create a Middle East with all of our allies in that region that's more positive
07:05going forward?
07:06Is that even – I'm just not quite sure which way this goes.
07:10In my opinion, the results of what's happened over the last month has created more unity among not just Middle
07:19East leadership but Middle East population than we've had in the past.
07:24I think it was a strategic error on Iran's part, though they didn't really have a choice.
07:30I think they had preset targets, you know, when the Ayatollah was taken out and the communication network went silent
07:39and the C2 architecture was dismantled for a while.
07:43They immediately turned to their in-the-box, these are the targets we're supposed to attack, and they attacked them.
07:49A lot of those were targets that were not at government institutions but at commercial institutions in their neighboring countries,
07:55which I believe played to our hand in regard to a more unified Middle Eastern population saying,
08:03wow, this Persian Iran really is a threat that is bigger than what we've even imagined in the past.
08:13So I think in that regard, it's improved the status of the Middle East and our relationship.
08:19Going to what you're talking about, have we really been able to knock down Iran's nuclear capability or capacity in
08:26regard to their development?
08:28Well, we certainly have set it back.
08:30I don't think we know yet just how far back we've set it, and I don't think we've played every
08:34card in the deck yet in how we would set that back.
08:38What's an example of a card you think we still have?
08:45I don't know that I would want to speculate on that.
08:47I'm not sure that would be helpful.
08:49I think the point is that both we, Israel, and now the Middle East, more than ever before,
08:56are saying this Iranian nation that we're looking at, this supreme leadership authority, is as unhelpful as we've ever had
09:04it.
09:05Therefore, how do we transition that to something that's more helpful?
09:11So before we wrap up, I'd love to get your thoughts because President Xi is inviting the leader of Taiwan's
09:17largest opposition party to visit China for the first time in a decade,
09:22setting up a potential one month or meeting one month ahead of President Trump's scheduled summit in Beijing.
09:29It's just kind of interesting.
09:30You just watch kind of the jockeying that's going on around the world.
09:32Just interesting.
09:33Made us think about with all that's going on, do you believe that the U.S. is sending messages to
09:40Russia and maybe to China especially in terms of their military might and what they are willing to do?
09:50I think it's a fascinating thing that's going to develop.
09:53I really don't know how that's going to play out.
09:55I don't see Taiwan advocating to China's demands.
10:01I don't think Xi will have any leverage to cause Taiwan to say, okay, we're going to be different.
10:06I think Taiwan is not looking for a fight with China,
10:10but Taiwan absolutely looking to have the maximum ability to defend the Straits and defend themselves from the cross-strait
10:18attack.
10:19And do you think just 30 seconds that the U.S. is willing to go to war to support Taiwan
10:26against China?
10:28Just quickly.
10:29I think the U.S. is willing for Taiwan to go to war to take that option away from China
10:37and would love to be part of facilitating Taiwan's capability and capacity to do that.
10:46I don't know that we're looking to be involved, but the entire Pacific Rim has a lot at stake here.
10:55And really, the worst scenario is China starting a war against Taiwan.
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