Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. The war in Iran is four weeks old. The US has deployed tens of billions of dollars of munitions in thousands of strikes, and more than forty five hundred people have been killed in the conflict. That's according to governments and non government agencies.
And despite ten ships passing through the Strait of horm moves on Thursday in what President Trump has described as a gesture of goodwill, the strait remains effectively shut, choking off roughly twenty percent of the world's oil and gas, which has sent energy prices soaring. President Trump has threatened to strike Iranian energy sites if the country doesn't come to terms and reopen the Strait of Hormones, and he's
issued a deadline that he's now pushed back twice. The game out how the conflict could unfold From here, I reached out to someone who is no stranger to high stakes military decisions, retired Admiral James Tavridas, who's also a
calumnist for Bloomberg Opinion. He is, among other things, the longest serving combatant commander in recent US history, and the co author of a series of novels, The latest, twenty eighty four, will be published in May, and Admiralstabritas sees the pressure rising on both sides to make a deal.
There are two clocks ticking right now. One clock that's sticking is in Washington, and it's for the Trump administration. It's the gas prices, it's the cost of doing this, it's the public support. And it's November. It's the election in November. So that clock is ticking, and certainly it strikes midnight pretty soon. And for iron the clock here is their infrastructure. How much of their military do we destroy? How much of their defense industrial base, how much of
their oil? How much of their electric grid? That clock strikes midnight and probably read to four weeks.
He says, both countries have good reason to come to the table, but that's far from a guarantee.
I think there's a two in three chance we get to a negotiated conclusion, call it sixty five percent. But the bad news is, and this is uncomfortably high, one in three chants therefore a thirty five percent chance that the Iranians do not follow the logic of this situation, decide they want to keep fighting. We keep bombing, and we then go after their critical infrastructure. They go after Gulf Arab critical infrastructure. Then we have a much more serious global economic challenge ahead.
I'm David Garrett and this is the big take from Bloomberg News Today. On the show, retired Admiral James Tavridaz on how sending thousands more US troops to the Middle East changes the chances of a diplomatic resolution to the Iran War and the risks Atmostrophvidus, you were the head of US Southern Command, US European Command, and from twenty nine to twenty thirteen you were Supreme Allied Commander of NATO.
But before all of that, back in the nineteen eighties, you spent some time as a young sailor helping ships make their way through the Persian Gulf. So before we get into the details of US strategy and options in this particular war, I'm curious how that time in your life shapes the way that you're thinking about this conflict.
It does immensely, and that's a smart question. This was in the late nineteen eighties and we were escorting Kuwaiti tankers which were flagged to the United States through the strait. This is during the Iran Iraq War, when the Iranians again closed the strait of horror moves. Two takeaways that continue to rattle around in this grizzled old admiral's brain. One is it's hard, it's navigationally challenged, and to do it under Iranian fire as we did in the nineteen
eighties is doubly challenging. But a key thing to remember is they did not have drones. In number two, you have to open this straight. You cannot seed control of it to this rotten theocracy in Tehran. So how we get there? I hope we can do it diplomatically, but if necessary see paragraph one, we will open that straight.
In recent weeks, the US has ordered some seven thousand more troops to the Middle East, around one thousand soldiers from the eighty second Airborne, five thousand troops from two marine expeditionary units. The thirty first, which deployed from Okinawa, should arrive in the coming days. The eleventh MEU will be in the region in three to four weeks. What is the decision to send those troops? Indicate to you about the broader objective here that the US has at this point.
My supposition is that President Trump wants those troops to kind of hold them like a hammer over the head of the air Iranians and threaten actually seizing carg Island, which, as you know, David, is ninety percent of the Iranian oil flows through it. You really put a stake in the heart of the Iranian oil based economy. So President Trump is signaling to the Iranians not only am I bombing broadly across the entire vast nation of Iran, but I also have precise boots on the ground options. Seven
thousand troops is not a huge force. They're not going to conquer Iran, but you could use them in precise ways to try and move the negotiation along.
Could you walk us through what the stages of a mission to take carg Island would look like and maybe give us your sense of what the US could stand to gain or lose by undertaking a mission like that.
Sure, let's go back to those marines at see the first tranch of them, The thirty first Marine Expeditionary Unit have arrived just outside of the Strait of Horn Mouse. They've got to get through the strait, which the Iranians will oppose deeply that they got to get through mines, ballistic missiles, small boats above all the drones. Once they get through that, now they still david have three hundred and fifty miles to go to get up to Carg Island.
In that stretch of water, Iran will continue to attack them. I could see terrorist attacks against them from small Iranian supposedly civilian craft, more drone attacks. Now you're off the coast of Carg Island, so here you depend on Central Command air cover to make sure there's a bubble over you in effect, and the sea the fifth Fleet is protecting you. Now those Marines will get on osprey aircraft. They're kind of in between a plane and a helicopter.
They'll start going ashore by air. There'll be some seaborn component of them. You bring them ashore at a relative undefended corner of this island. Cargo is about a third of the size of Manhattan. You pick a couple of points, bring in the Marines, seize the base. Now they're locked down in a well known place and it's within artillery range of the Iranian coast itself, and there are twenty thousand, maybe thirty thousand Iranians on the island that you have
to control. Most of them are civilian oil workers who just want to stay out of the line of fire. They have no interest in getting in the crossfire between US Marines and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. If I'm Tehran right now, I'm increasing my forces on the island. I'm putting booby traps in place, putting land mines at the places where I think you might land. I'm putting drones overhead, very small ones so I can maintain surveillance. So they're
preparing for this. It's a very challenging mission. It's kind of easy for me to sit here and say it, but to execute that mission will be costly in terms of lives and equipment. Final point, if I were advising the administration, I would say, maybe a better idea of blockade the island. Have the fifth fleet. Just shut it down. Tell the world don't bother going to Carg Islands no longer open for business. Tell the Iranians you can do all you want with the oil that's stored there, but
it's not leaving Carg Island. I think that might make more sense.
What else might be on the table for the US as they think about where they might deploy troops in this region.
I'll give you three other options that kind of pop into my head. One is the island of Larrac right at the very northern tip of the Strait of Hormuz, and Larac is very important because it controls the top of the straits. Heavy defended, but seizing that I think would have some military utility. A second one is there are a pair of islands that are claimed by both Iran and the UAE. This is Abu musa island and
Tomb also in that vicinity. So if you took those islands, you'd have land right at the top of the strait. That would help you defend it and keep it open. But if you really want to lock down the strait, you've got to control both sides of it, both the Arab side and the Persian side. And then third, and actually more dangerous than anything we've talked about, would be going into Iran, deeply into Iran, and going after the nuclear material that they have. They have nine hundred pounds
maybe one thousand pounds of enriched uranium. It's not quite weapons grade, but it's very close to where is it. It's at the bottom of supposedly of Isfahan under concrete. You'd have to have a thousand plus troops to defend the area, put up all the air cover, and then have the seals in the green berets wait for it, civilian technicians who know how to manage all this. It is a very difficult mission. It would be literally the largest special forces operation in history. I want to say
I'm not advocating those missions. I firmly believe we need to get to a diplomatic resolution here. But you know, soft power without the ability to apply hard power is no power. So move the forces, set the table, and then go to the Iranians and say, look, we really want to settle this at a negotiating table, not on carg Island.
I want to shift to opening up the straight and you've laid out ways in which the US could take over Carg Island other islands. Do those military options do much to hasten the process of getting oil flowing once again? Just draw the line for me from doing that to effectively opening up this strait once again.
The theory of the case is that by holding hostage this ninety percent of the Iranian oil, we could then go to the Iranians and say, carg Island. Nice little operation you got going here. Boy, it'd be a shame if we had to blow it all up. How about if we go ahead and open the straits and then we can have a conversation. Let's get to a very simple deal. At this point, we stop bombing, you open the.
Straight and what would that take.
Let's start by observing that what Iran has done is they have not hard closed the straight. They have virtually closed the straight, and they've done that by blowing up a handful of tankers, saying any other tankers we don't like, we're going to blow up with drones. They put some smart mines in the water that they have control over, but they haven't really hard closed it. I think it's worth noting they haven't done that, which means there's still
room to maneuver here. And I would say that if we were to fail diplomatically and have to militarily open the strait, you need more mind sweepers to be on station prepared. You need more guided missile frigates, destroyers, cruisers to protect shipping going in and out. You need special forces on small boats to counter the Iranian small boats. You need to destroy more of the Iranian attack capability along the littoral of the Strait itself, but again it'll
be costly. It would be far better that we got to a negotiation here.
Is it possible to do that kind of clearing that you just described militarily well? Fighting is still underwear? Does the fighting have to cease?
Effectively? Fighting has to cease as follows, You have to bring complete air superiority over that particular area, meaning you've got to be able to stop the drones. You have to go after the longer range Iranian capabilities. By the way, there happens to be an admiral in overall command of the mission, Admiral Brad Cooper, the commander of Central Command. That's what Admiral Cooper is doing right now, and I think the Iranians are cognizant of that as well.
Retired Admiral James Tavritez was the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO after the break. His thoughts on what role the Alliance could play in helping to reopen the Strait. You've had a lot of big jobs you served as NATO Supreme Allied Commander. You've spoken passionately about the importance of that NATO alliance. This is what the President posted on social media on Thursday morning. NATO nations have done absolutely nothing to help with the lunatic nation now militarily decimated
of Iran. The USA needs nothing from NATO. But never forget this very important point in time. Over the last few weeks, we've heard the President disparage longstanding US allies, then call for their help, then criticize them once again. How do you see this conflict? The Iran war impacting relationships between the US and its allies, many of which were already understrained.
We've been under kind of a roller coaster with NATO since Trump came back into office. The good news is NATO has been gradually increasing defense spending from kind of sub two percent now NATO's pushing up to three and a half percent, maybe four percent, depending on how you
score it. So that's a positive event. On the other hand, the Greenland episode where the United States appeared to really lean in talk about the eighty second airborne I saw actual tweets from people saying, yeah, the eighty seconds on their way to nook Greenland. That really rattled Europe's confidence in the United States. And by the way, I think the Danes would have fought, They would have blown up those runways, they would have put special forces there. That
was a pretty dangerous moment for the alliance. That was kind of a troughs. Now we're we've come back out of that, but now we have the current crisis in the Gulf. And so for the Europeans, as you assess their behavior, you need to kind of put it through the filter of how they'd been treated in Trump one
and in Trump two. We tend to not remember this in the United States somehow, but I commanded a mission in Afghanistan for four years fighting in Afghanistan because we were attacked in New York and in Washington, d c. Thousands of Americans were killed. We went to war, and who came with us the Europeans, and they fought and died in great numbers. So don't tell me NATO hasn't stood with us in combat. Now we come to the
current moment. By the way President Trump tends to use the word NATO, he really means the European Union more than anything else, but he means the nations of Europe. I think President Trump would be wise to say to the Europeans. Look, we've got the offensive part of this. We're going to do the bombing. We will put the troops on the ground if necessary. The Israelis are going to do the bombing. Europe. Here's what we need. We need mind sweepers, we need guided missile frigates, we need
guid of missile destroyers. We need you to help open been the strait of horror moves. I think Europe would take that mission gladly. And Mark Route, the Secretary General of NATO, former Prime Minister of the Netherlands, know him well. He's kind of nudging the European allies in that direction.
I'm genuinely curious if there's been a moment in history where we've seen this much military might brought to an area and not used. I think of the conversation that was happening around Venezuela head of the capture of Nicholas Maduro. But there's an awful lot of equipment and personnel being brought to the Middle East. Now, I think of Chekhov's gun. If you see the gun, it has to be fired.
As you think about history, have there been moments when there has been this much again military might marshaled and not used in the end.
Not that immediately leaps to mind. You should ask Claude that question. But I think that what is Jermaine is about twenty five years ago we marshaled this level of forces off of Iraq, and we did invade, and we were at war for twenty years. To me, that's the cautionary tale here. It's the forever wars. That's what we desperately must avoid. I think we will again. I think we will either negotiate or if we have to have boots on the ground, they'll be used in a precise,
direct and military way. But let's remember twenty five years ago. We attacked Iraq twenty three years ago, I suppose, and that experience was not the best for the United States.
This is the big take from Bloomberg News. I'm David Gura. The show is hosted by Me, Sarah Holder, and wanha. The show is made by Aaron Edwards, David Fox, Jeff Grocott, Eleanor Harrison, Dengate, Patty Hirsch, Rachel Lewis, Krisky, Katie mcmurran, Naomi and Julia Press, Tracy Samuelson, Naomi Shaven, Alex Segura, Julia Weaver, Young Young and Tada Yasuzawa. There's much more on Bloomberg dot Com, yet unlimited access to all of our coverage at a special rate for listeners at Bloomberg
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