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00:00Nowhere in the world is safe from the economic disruption that will come from this,
00:04that will, first of all, hit by energy prices and is already hitting by energy prices,
00:08but then will impact everything that energy goes into.
00:11Because we don't know how long this is going to last for,
00:13because we don't know what President Trump really wants out of it,
00:16it is very, very hard to see what the bottom is.
00:20The societal resilience of the United States is really low.
00:22We're not a good country for problems.
00:25And with a midterm election coming up,
00:27the president's going to be in a lot of trouble, in my opinion.
00:29So this has to work quickly.
00:33Hello and a very warm welcome to The Forkast.
00:36I'm Alex Thompson in Jerusalem.
00:38Now, as you may just have heard,
00:40Donald Trump has imposed his blockade on the economically vital Straits of Hormuz.
00:46Or has he?
00:47We know that since the blockade came into place,
00:51several vessels, including one Chinese and several flag to Iran, have passed through.
00:55So how is this blockade working?
00:57Why has he done it?
00:58And how long is it going to last for?
01:00Well, we're lucky enough to be joined by the retired U.S. Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery
01:05and the contributing editor and Times columnist Cindy Yu.
01:09Cindy and Mark, thanks very much for being with us.
01:11Mark, as we have the luxury of your long-time expertise as a naval man,
01:17just as I think when people think of a naval blockade,
01:20they think of large gray vessels with guns sitting outside somebody's harbor with somebody,
01:26I don't know, on a loud hailer saying,
01:28you are hereby blockaded.
01:29This isn't quite what it's all about, is it?
01:31No, it isn't, and that's because what we're blockading are vessels transiting from an Iranian port to another port,
01:40either carrying, you know, oil, some kind of fossil fuel, maybe fertilizers.
01:45And therefore, we can intercept them wherever we want.
01:48In fact, if I were the Commodore in charge, I would probably back off a little bit from
01:53the Iranian ports themselves and do the detentions and the seizures some distance away.
02:01Eventually, that ship has to go to the port that it's intended to go to, and you can grab it
02:06almost anywhere along the way.
02:08So the military and thereby the political economic objective, just to be absolutely crystal clear,
02:13is not obviously to block off trade from the strait, it's actually to open it to everybody, bar Iranian vessels.
02:21What it is, is Iran said you cannot transit through here if you're from certain countries,
02:27or if you're from other countries and haven't paid a toll.
02:31Or if you're Iranian.
02:33So, you know, what they did was they illegally, you know, in contravention of maritime law,
02:39prevented what's called transit passes through an international waterway.
02:43And in doing that, you know, the United States said, well, look, we have two things we can do.
02:47We can either force our way open, you know, go back to a kinetic conflict, knock back your forces,
02:53do a, you know, what would probably end up being a challenging convoy operation, which we may do anyway, eventually.
03:00Or we can say, you know, a pox on both your houses, if we're going to prevent you, those ships
03:06that are illegally,
03:08you know, that are paying a toll, which is in contravention of international law, we can block them,
03:13you know, detain them, and ship them off to a third party port to determine what to do with them.
03:21Right. Thanks, Mark. Well, now, Cindy, I'm sure you've heard what Mark's just laid out.
03:25It sounds, to put it gently, a little bit complex.
03:29An awful lot of things could go very badly wrong, it would seem, with that. What do you make of
03:34it?
03:35Yeah, it could go wrong. And especially when Trump seems to be wanting to bring other countries into it.
03:42Because let's be clear, some of the ships leaving Iranian ports are going to Iran's friends in the world,
03:48that's including China, but also India and Pakistan. So you're bringing more countries into this conflict
03:55by basically hijacking what little oil can get out of Iran at the moment, with the hope that Iran will
04:02be
04:02the ultimate victim of this. And it is estimated that Iran might lose 13 billion dollars a month in
04:08lost imports and exports through a blockade like this. But at the same time, you're hurting other
04:13countries that so far have stayed neutral. And in particular, China is the big one here. You know,
04:18what do you do, as we are seeing today, and this is a situation still evolving? What do you do
04:22when
04:23a ship leaves an Iranian port, supposedly heading for a Chinese refinery, and actually now seems to be
04:30stopped on the other side of the Strait of Hormuz, where, as Mark says, the US Navy may be
04:36doing some kind of action there to stop them from moving on? You know, what does that really happen?
04:41How will that work in the future with more and more vessels to stop like this? Will China really
04:45accept it? And you have to also bear in mind that actually, the US and China are meant to be
04:50seeing
04:50each other next month for this kind of trade war discussion, which now also all seems so 2025,
04:57doesn't it? So, you know, there's just a lot of kind of escalation potential here that I don't know,
05:03nobody really knows how it will play out. Just prior to us putting in this blockade, and you know,
05:10what Iran had established was a very illegal mechanism that said, only the ships we prefer
05:18can go through. In other words, Saudi ships weren't going to go through, probably a lot of UAE ships
05:22weren't going to go through unless they were going to China, a lot of Qatar, Kuwaiti, Bahraini,
05:27in other words, the Iranian, the Arab states that Iran held accountable for the war. So it wasn't
05:33like the world was getting 90% of the oil coming out of there. Before we did this, what we're
05:39doing
05:39is shutting off that final 10%. Yes. And Donald Trump has said, Mark, has he not, that he indicated that
05:46he'd obviously like other countries, not least NATO, to kind of come along and help, as it were.
05:53That didn't prove very effective in the early stages of the shooting war with Iran by air,
06:01did it? Any sign that that's going to play any better in this aspect of the war?
06:06No. And Donald Trump's certainly an important lesson here. If you mistreat your allies and
06:10partners for 14 months, and then give them a call saying, hey, could you come down to the street fight
06:15I'm in? They're probably not going to join you. And I don't blame the Europeans and NATO for being
06:21particularly disappointed in Trump over Greenland. I mean, there's a litany of issues over Greenland
06:26and other things. So, and it's one thing to not notify him. I wouldn't have trusted, I wouldn't
06:31have told the 32 countries of NATO I was about to do a hit, you know, hit on Iran. I
06:36mean, what are
06:37the chances Hungary wouldn't have spilled the beans on that under Orban, right? I get why he didn't tell
06:42NATO, but he should have immediately consulted with them afterwards, told them what he was doing,
06:46and asked for assistance like, like minesweepers. I'll be honest, there's not a lot of there there
06:52in the European navies for like air defense ships, escort, you know, the kind of ships that would
06:57enforce this kind of blockade. Because 30 years of not spending on defense, your navy is the big loser.
07:04And the Royal Navy is a dumpster fire. Now, the French Navy is not in much better shape. The German
07:10Navy is a bunch of new ships that aren't really weaponized yet. The Italian Navy is no good shape.
07:14I'm sorry, those navies are no longer pertinent players in a game 10,000 miles away in the
07:21Straits of Hormuz. So we didn't miss that. But we did miss the minesweepers. And the president
07:25should be criticized for his failure to talk with the Europeans in the immediate aftermath of the
07:30start of the strikes. Cindy, that's quite a charge sheet mark just laid out there. The European
07:35Navy is a dumpster fire in his view, through neglect down the years economically 10,000 miles away from
07:41where they should be. But in any case, why go and help Donald Trump when he's sat around insulting
07:46you anyway, for months on months? Yeah, well, quite. And I'm starting to think that actually,
07:51the breakdown in the US and the European relationship will take much more than Trump
07:56leaving the White House to fix at this rate, because it's starting to feel structural now,
08:00actually. So many European countries are thinking about alternatives, even if they don't have much
08:05capacity or money to make those alternatives happen. Even the thought of getting strategic
08:10autonomy from America is, I think, damaging for the US in the kind of empire of consent,
08:17if you would like to put it that way, that it had built with its allies across the world.
08:21You've got the Spanish prime minister this week in China talking about how much China needs to take
08:26a greater role in the world because America can't be trusted. You know, that's the kind of stuff
08:29it's going to take much longer than Trump leaving the White House to fix. And I'll defer to Mark on
08:35the abilities of these navies. But of course, you know, the other thing to consider is actually that
08:39the Strait of Hormuz gives Iran an asymmetrical and oversized ability to disrupt the world.
08:45As everybody knew, you know, war games, war gaming, this kind of situation for years have always said
08:50that Iran could just close off the Strait of Hormuz. Legal or not, that is something that they could
08:55do very easily and disproportionately disrupt the rest of the world. And so, yes, of course,
09:02the European navies should perhaps be better funded. But at the same time, this is basically
09:07the first car that Iran would have gone to at a strike situation. And it was not one that it
09:12seems
09:12like the US prepared for. Let's just drill down into this in detail a little bit for the next few
09:19minutes. And Cindy, perhaps you could give us your political answer to this question. And then,
09:23Mark, I'll come to you for a military strategic one. We understand, as I said at the opening,
09:29several vessels, at least one apparently Chinese flag, several Iranian vessels have already gone
09:35through the straits since this thing was supposedly put in place. Well, politically, what do you make
09:40of that, Cindy? Well, as I think the situation is developing such that any ships leaving the Iranian
09:47ports haven't quite left the region. So we don't know what is going on with ships like the Velpis,
09:53which left an Iranian port seemingly heading for China, which hasn't basically moved since this
09:58morning. That is Tuesday morning, UK time. So we don't know if the US Navy is the result,
10:03is the reason for that ship stopping. Another ship, Rich Stari, which is a Chinese owned ship,
10:08left the UAE port, actually, and traversed the Strait of Hormuz and seems to be on its way
10:14to China. So that does seem to have lied outside of the American blockade. I mean,
10:20part of this is the confusion of what the blockade really means, because Trump has said
10:24it's any ship that goes via the Strait of Hormuz. But then CENTCOM said that it's any ship that leaves
10:30the Iranian ports. And, you know, I assume that the latter is right, considering what we've seen
10:35today already. But nobody really knows. And what a ridiculous way to run the world, basically.
10:41Well, yes, it would seem that way. The Chinese certainly think so, Cindy. They've already
10:47condemned this in what for Beijing is unusually strong language, haven't they?
10:53Yeah. And they've said that they strongly condemn any disruptions to the world economy,
10:58any unilateral moves on to this. And they've said a lot, you know, throughout all of this,
11:02they condemned the Ayatollah's assassination as well. They condemned the building up of military
11:08presence in the region by America before then as well. The Chinese haven't done anything too
11:13material so far. But what is interesting and something to watch is the US intelligence reportedly
11:17showing that China may be offering Iran these kind of shoulder-maneuvered anti-air missile systems
11:25that would have an impact on, for example, low-air American action over Iran if and when the ceasefire
11:31breaks. So if that has happened, you know, as I say, we are really in certain territory. I think it
11:36would be very stupid of China to get more involved in this. But if Trump continues to force the issue
11:41and actually China can't get its oil from the strait, I think it will have to start thinking
11:46about a different way of doing things. Right, Mark, a note of a semi-despair, almost exasperation
11:52from Cindy just there. This is no way to run a world, quote unquote. Is this any way to run
11:57a
11:57military blockade, in your view, a naval blockade? I mean, if Sydney's exasperated,
12:03try being Admiral Brad Cooper, the CENTCOM commander with this commander in chief.
12:09So first, I do need to say the Royal Navy is, you know, has tons of good people in it.
12:15I just think
12:16that they haven't paid their money. And watching the defense minister recently not know the number
12:20of ships is kind of a mildly, when the number's as low as it is, it's kind of an embarrassing
12:24thing.
12:24Right. The Spanish need to be really careful. I mean, they, of all the European countries,
12:29they're treading into the most danger with Trump. And most of us who think Trump is a little nuts
12:34on Europe actually kind of think he's got Spain about right. So they should be very careful. They
12:40are setting themselves up for a very long-term, frigid relationship with the United States,
12:44which won't do them any favors. But let me flip that, Mark. Let me flip that the other way. An
12:49awful lot
12:50of people, an awful lot of people in Europe think the Spanish are the people who've got it exactly
12:54right with Trump. And they're standing up and calling a truth of truth about him.
12:58No, the Spanish were stuck at 1.3% on defense spending for 20 years. And they were trying to
13:04justify their low numbers by saying, we're not going to respond to this blackmail from Trump. I mean,
13:09let's be clear. They didn't exactly, you know, they are not a contributor. They've never been a
13:14contributor. They don't see a threat from Russia. They think China can help. Since 1949, China's
13:21never helped on anything internationally, except supporting North Korea in an invasion of South
13:25Korea. So I think I'm going to be a little careful here in how the Spanish handled themselves in
13:30international relations. They will be, of all the countries, a lot of this can be forgiven. The
13:35Spanish have really gone pretty far. And look, Trump needs to be held accountable as well.
13:40You know, he is, he is definitely more than 50% of the problem. Back to Brad Cooper. His problem
13:45here
13:46is that he has, he has inconsistent guidance from the president. I can't tell yet whether if a ship
13:53leaves a non-Iranian port, but pays a toll, I think they then are blockaded. So that might be the
14:02condition
14:03with this second Chinese ship losing the UAE. But you know, if we don't really know the rules, I'm not
14:08sure how you can hold the ship captives responsible for not knowing the rules. I will say these Chinese
14:14ships are not going to be... Exactly, exactly. You're a rear admiral. You're a rear admiral
14:18looking at this with your years of expertise and you're forced to use dangerous verbs like
14:23I think, you know, not I know. That's terrifying. I agree. How's that for another verb? But you know,
14:32I'll tell you, I think there's a problem here. You know, I think the president's making this hard.
14:37Having said that, no one needs to, the one thing if I were Brad Cooper is I wouldn't do anything
14:41urgently. There's, to get from Iran to China's, you know, 14 to 21 days, you have lots of time to
14:49figure out what you are and are not going to do with that ship. My suspicion is the Chinese ships
14:55are
14:55going to get a pass from Trump because of, as Cindy referred to, the meeting May 14th and 15th
15:01between that summit between Xi and Trump. And that's going to put the lie to this blockade.
15:07I will say though, the non-Chinese bound stuff, which is principally India, I think, that's where
15:13a lot of the rest of this sanctioned oil, this shadow fleet oil is going. That I think we're going
15:19to seize and India is going to have a problem very quickly. Right. So Cindy, let's bring this up to
15:25the dear old subject of money. It's kind of what it's all about, as well as the military aspect.
15:31The longer this goes on, I mean, Mark making a very clear case that if you think the Chinese could
15:37get
15:37a free pass, outlook for India not nearly so good to huge economies. The longer this goes on, with all
15:43the complexities that we've been laying out here this afternoon, what does it do for the global
15:49economy? Yeah. And Alex, it's more than just about money because money, of course, is just a
15:53shorthand or rather a correlation of what we're otherwise talking about, which is material living
16:00standards. You know, we're talking about jobs. We're talking about people's health. We're talking
16:04about, you know, how entire countries fare for the rest of the year and actually for the next few
16:09years, depending on how long this conflict drags on. So we've already seen in Europe, for example,
16:14a 60 percent rise in gas prices. But actually, it's Asia that is most impacted by Strait of Hormuz
16:20energy blockades because countries like Japan, for example, get over 90 percent of its imported oil
16:26via the Strait of Hormuz. The Arab nations, of course, being in the middle, in the eye of the storm,
16:33the UN estimates that they might lose 200 billion dollars in revenues as a result of this war. So
16:38nowhere in the world is safe from the economic disruption that will come from this, that will,
16:43first of all, hit by energy prices and is already hitting by energy prices, but then will impact
16:48everything that energy goes into. Things like fertilisers, which will impact the food industry,
16:53things like transportation, things like manufacturing. You know, some countries are already starting to
16:58ration their power. Some countries are already starting to tell that people just start working
17:02from home. You know, because we don't know how long this is going to last for, because we don't know
17:07what President Trump really wants out of it. It is very, very hard to see what the bottom is
17:13here, Alex. And I try to be very, very kind of impartial here, but it is an exasperating situation.
17:20And I think, you know, Donald Trump, for all his faults, has been good on foreign policy
17:25for a long time. And actually, people have underrated him for that. But this kind of latest
17:31war is just so uncharacteristic of the kind of isolationism and the American first attitude
17:37that has actually been quite good for America, or just quite good for America solo, not for the
17:42Americans' global alliances so far. But it does just seem bizarre that he get himself into this
17:50war, and now he has no way out, and the rest of the world is paying a bill. And just
17:53a brief point on
17:54Mark's point about Spain. Yes, I can see why the Americans are annoyed with Spain, but just look at it
17:59from the perspective of Europe, or any of these other areas and countries that I've mentioned.
18:0390% of the fault lies with America. You know, everyone else has been taken along for a ride here.
18:10You've got, you know, leaders of countries from South Korea can comparing Israel to the actions
18:16of Japan during World War Two, you've got countries like Spain, but also you've got Italy, you know,
18:21Georgia Maloney is hardly a left wing actor in Europe, and she has been criticizing Trump as well. So
18:29it's, it's, there is, yeah, I mean, it's hard to know how to conclude this point. But basically,
18:33the economic shock is very, very great. We can have the Pope to that list. We probably have the Pope
18:38to that list. Yes, the Pope as well. Mark, that's a, after Cindy's global overview there,
18:46um, let's bring it back to the United States, shall we, domestically. Longer that all this goes on,
18:50in and around Hormuz, the more the price of, uh, of gas, petrol goes up in the US. That's not
18:56good
18:57for the poll ratings of the president. Small matter of the midterms trundling along towards
19:02us in November. And he knows that, doesn't he? Yeah, he does. We're going to have less impact than,
19:07uh, the European and Asian states and Arab states that Cindy went through. And I agree with her
19:12assessment. And I put fertilizer as a, as a really top issue in food production, uh, in, in a lot
19:18of
19:18places at the top of the list. Um, but while we will have less gas price challenges, there'll be
19:25some, um, the societal resilience of the United States is really low. We're not a good country
19:30for, you know, for problems. And, uh, and with a midterm election coming up, the president's going
19:36to be in a lot of trouble in my opinion. So yeah, he has a lot of, this has to
19:40work quickly. This idea
19:42of cutting off the, you know, 13 billion, um, you know, a month from the, um, from the, uh, uh,
19:49Iranians is going to have an immediate impact. If it doesn't, uh, he's going to have to pick some
19:53other tools to get them back to the negotiating table. And I would caveat one thing. I don't like
19:59much of his foreign policy and I'd throw his Russia, Ukraine policy on, you know, on the fire of not,
20:04not executed well, um, even from a make America great again stance. So, you know, I think this is a
20:11long series of failures in my mind by, by Trump and, uh, and I'm very disappointed with him.
20:18I'm just, when I comment on the blockade, I do think it's legal. I do think it's executable
20:23and I do prefer it, you know, to trying to wedge open the straight for convoy operations. I think
20:29that would lead to casualties of, uh, US sailor casualties, um, unnecessarily. Uh, so right now,
20:36trying this blockade strikes me as the right thing to do initially.
20:39Mark, why is the US blockade legal, but it's not legal?
20:45Because the US is responding. What's happened is what the US is doing is seizing ships
20:49that are participating in an illegal operation. The illegal operation is they are being
20:56exempted from toll or in the case of the ones that are paying tolls, paying tolls while Iran blocks
21:01the, you know, uh, the transit passage through an international waterway. You can't, you know,
21:07our response to this can't be, well, you got away with it. You know, it's got to be, no,
21:12we're going to hold you accountable. And that's what, that's what you do. I, I'm,
21:15I don't think what he's doing here is, you know, not that he cares. Um, but I, I don't think
21:20what he's
21:21doing here is, you know, is illegal. I think what he's doing here is a response to an Iranian action
21:26to block. And it is Iran that blocked the Straits of Hormuz.
21:30Isn't an Iranian blockade a response to the war that he started, which is arguably illegal as well?
21:35Yeah, well, that's a separate argument about the war being illegal or illegal. How, you know,
21:39his assessment of whether there was a threat to the United States is what you have to go through with
21:43that. But no, blocking an international strait is not an allowable response.
21:48What this is all about is also resilience. Now, many would feel, and it's more a feeling than an
21:56intellectual argument, the Iranians culturally, socially, politically have resilience to the
22:04ends of the earth compared to the United States. The United States has an airman or two missing, and
22:10there's a state of almost national panic. You compare that to what's actually being inflicted on
22:15what the Iranian nation is going through. And that's a factor here is, we've mentioned time
22:21and mentioned, you said this has got to happen quickly, Mark. That resilience, Cindy, is a big factor,
22:27isn't it? Yeah, and I wouldn't want to pretend to be an Iran expert here, Alex, but I think that
22:31the
22:32operative part seems to me is maybe the fact that when you are the one under attack, that resilience
22:38comes much more easily, because it seems much more obvious as an existential risk to you. And this is
22:44the this is what's happening in Iran. And this is what happens at a lot of the countries that
22:47not just America, but other nations target over time, you know, I'm ethnically Chinese, China,
22:53as you know, plays a lot on this kind of memory of, of existential risk. And it's not because the
22:59country is strong, or because the people are more smart or anything, I don't really think it's any of
23:03that. I think it's just because when you are the one forced to rally around your flag, and when it
23:07is
23:07an existential risk for your own country, or your or your regime, whatever you want to identify with,
23:11then it becomes much easier to feel that that battle to the death. I mean, I don't think America,
23:17Americans can feel that kind of same sense of desperation. Just remember, they murdered 32,000
23:23protesters in about 40 hours. I mean, this is not a popular regime. But, you know, if the you know,
23:32when we started bombing like this, we don't give we didn't give and do any of the preparation
23:36so that the activists or so that so that people who are opposed to the regime were armed and ready
23:43to go, we did none of the proper preparation. But the regime is resilient. And when you can kill 32
23:49,000
23:49of your people and get away with it, you're pretty resilient regime. So that's that's an ugly resilience.
23:55That's part of Europe. That's part of this description. And I think people are forgetting that a lot. I the
24:00United States, you know,
24:00they're blaming the United States for all this. I mean, what was what's Europe's response to the 32,000 people
24:05condolence cards,
24:07you know, a criticism of a country trying to remove the regime. I'm sorry, this is a you know,
24:13there's a lot of amnesia in Europe over the Iranian regime. And what they say about Israel,
24:20what they say where they're gonna get a bomb and what they do to their people who protest. This is
24:23an evil
24:24group of guys who have who have ruled this country mercilessly for 47 years. I'm not 100% sure I'd
24:32have
24:32any empathy for them in this case. Now, just going forward on the economic part of China, China's in
24:39our in our minds, of course, because of the Chinese vessel, which has seemed to have gone through the
24:44straits thus far. Okay, longer term, how does this play for the Chinese economy, Cindy?
24:50I think it depends on how long it goes on for. For now, you know, China is not the front
24:58of the line
24:58as as one of the biggest victims of this action. Even though, as a figure often trotted out China is
25:05a massive customer of Iranian oil, 80% of shipped Iranian oil goes to China, you flip that stat on
25:11the
25:12other on its head the other way around. And actually, Iranian oil accounts for about 10% of
25:17China's energy oil imports, and about any 7% of China's total energy consumption, because actually,
25:23China is so energy independent. So going back to your point about resilience, Alex, you know,
25:2885% of China's energy that it uses comes domestically, basically. So it's been preparing for a long time
25:33for external disruptions, precisely like this one. So I think, you know, countries like Japan,
25:38for example, are much more exposed. But that's a short term thing, you know, in the long run,
25:42if there is a global recession, a country like China, whose economy is basically being kept afloat
25:47by exports needs customers. And that is not going to be good for the Chinese economy either, which is
25:53probably only growing at about three to 5% at the moment, some people say even less than that.
25:58So none of this is good for China in the economic sense. Diplomatically, though, depending on how
26:04Trump plays the card, I think China has a lot of brownie points, as it were, that it can win
26:09from
26:10the rest of the world, if it plays its own cards. Well, in this sense, because right now, who looks
26:14like the most disruptive, the most threatening actor to the rest of the world? It's not China,
26:19it's the US. Cindy, Mark, thanks very much for your valuable time. We've covered a huge amount of
26:24ground in the last half hour. So very grateful to you both. Thank you so much. Thank you.
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