BATTLEFIELD UPDATE: Strait of Hormuz ATTACKS intensify

A cargo ship from Thailand is struck by a projectile in the Strait of Hormuz. This all happened yesterday as Iran is launching fresh attacks Middle East in the Middle East waters. The regime also joining Hezbollah, both firing simultaneously toward Israel.

Our chief foreign correspondent, Trey Yinks, joins us from Israel with more.

Trey.

Yeah. Hey, hey, Brian.

Good morning. Two tankers off the coast of Iraq in the Persian Gulf were hit by the Iranians overnight. Some dramatic video showing these tankers on fire as the crews were reportedly evacuated with one person killed. This is taking place as the Iranians are using what's left of their Navy to try and target vessels in the Persian Gulf and put pressure as this war continues. We know

that CENTCOM is going after many of the vessels that the Iranians have left in their Navy but they're still able to get off some of these attacks. Also further south in Oman the Iranians used a drone to hit an oil storage facility. This is the largest in their country. Flames rising from that storage facility just yesterday. Again, the Iranians going after many of these locations, but President Trump speaking out

about the oil markets saying this.

And my administration, as you know better than anybody, is also working to keep the oil flowing. It's oil flowing all over. We knocked out, you know, they want to drop some mines. Very friendly people, mines, very friendly people mine so boats blow up. And we knocked out as of, you know, every hour I have to

change because they knock them out so fast. I've never said anything. Think of it. They

knocked out 54 ships in two days. They're real ships. With a focus on the Persian Gulf, we're also looking at the situation in Lebanon, where overnight the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group launched more than 100 rockets into northern Israel. An IDF official telling Fox News this was the largest attack by Hezbollah since the war began.

The Israelis immediately responded with a series of airstrikes, not just around the Dakhil neighborhood of southern Beirut, but also Hezbollah launching positions across Lebanon. This taking place as a top spokesperson for the Israeli military said this.

Hezbollah is under pressure today. It works for its Iranian master. It acts contrary to the Lebanese interest. It not only does not defend Lebanon, it harms Lebanon. We see the statements of Lebanon's government leaders. It harms the state of Lebanon.

We have some video of those strikes the Israelis conducted in the minutes after that rocket barrage that targeted northern Israel, injuring at least two people. You can see in these videos here they are launching extensive airstrikes across Lebanon, not just in Beirut. What was interesting, guys, overnight is that this rocket fire came from very close to the Israeli border, an area where there were Israeli ground troops just a few months ago. And so this is an indication that Hezbollah

has been able to push some of their terrorists further south of the Latani River and launch more attacks against Israel. We expect intense airstrikes to target Beirut in the hours ahead. As the Israelis say today, they are targeting positions

in Iran and also Lebanon. Gaz.

Thank you, Trey. Yeah, thanks so much, Trey. Goes to show you the Lebanese army's got to do something. They can't be everywhere. I'm talking about the Israelis. Meanwhile, Trey, stay with us, because I just want to give everyone at home a sense of who

this paramilitary security force is, dressed in plain clothes, oftentimes on motorcycle. They're called the Bashis. cycle that calls the Bashi's and this power paramilitary group has headquarters we think roughly based here the red marks are the places that we've actually attacked and this is what I think is directly related to Prime Minister Netanyahu Israelis to coming out and saying get ready to take back a country you can't do it when you when you have this police force amongst you

who are sitting there with with with force and with guns who are going to shoot you if you protest. They're the ones who pile up the bodies in the streets of people when they want to just have a say in their government and they're upset they can't get any water or their currency is worthless. Who's the head of the besiege?

He's dead. This is some great news. Asadullah Badfar, he was killed over the last two days. This was confirmed by the Defense of Democracies, and it was also confirmed by the Israelis. It was not confirmed by the Iranians yet, but they don't like to admit this.

Look for a big funeral in his response. What is their symbol? This goes to show you their symbol. These men, these guys actually made their name in the human waves that used to run, just the men, used to run at the Iraqi tanks during the Iran-Iraq war. That was where the besiege made its name.

And that's why these ruthless guys who were ideologues to the nth degree and severe Islamic extremists will crack down ruthlessly on the average everyday Iranian who just wants to stay in their government. Here's a look at how they get their guys.

They look at people sold on this mission and they recruit mostly young men into it and they consist primarily of working class men who just want to actually subscribe to the extremist religion. What can you say about them? Without them, the Iranians could rise up. What are they?

A division of the IRGC. So as we talked back to Trey, is there anything you'd like to add about this group that people should keep in mind if they want to see the Iranians take back their government? Don't you believe, Trey, this group's got to be neutralized?

Yeah, Brian, this is a really important part of the story that we are covering on the ground in Iran. When you look at Iran's IRGC, it's made up of five separate branches. We know about the Quds forces, President Trump ordering that targeted strike against Qasem Soleimani back in 2020. We know about their air force and ground forces. It's the Basij forces, though, one of the branches that is responsible for the crackdown on protesters in Iran. One of the reasons that Operation Epic Fury began, we saw the attention shift back to

Iran earlier this year, when theieged forces went into the streets and directly confronted the pro-democracy protesters who were peacefully demonstrating in the streets of their country. President Trump believes 32,000 Iranian civilians were slaughtered, mainly by these forces, as they went on motorcycles and in cars and opened fire on demonstrators. And so there has been a concerted effort, I'm told by intelligence officials here and

in the United States, to go after the leadership structure of the besieged forces and their command and control centers. We saw earlier in Operation Epic Fury intense airstrikes against the capital of Tehran, taking out the command centers that they used to order the crackdown on protesters. And we expect the degrading of this part of the organization to continue in the days ahead, because the Israelis and the Americans want to create the conditions for the Iranian people,

if they want to go to the streets in the days or weeks ahead, that they can do so. And they will have less security forces there. They will have a weakened structure that would allow them to demonstrate against the regime that we know has simply replaced the former supreme leader with his son, Mushtaba Khamenei. This is a man who actually has very close ties to the Basij forces. He was directed by his father in the past, even in 2009 during the Green Movement protests in Iran, to use these individuals to crack down on peaceful demonstrators.

And so very big developments on the ground as the Israelis and Americans go after these headquarters, and we can expect more of the leadership structure of this wing of the IRGC to be taken out in the days ahead. Brian.

Great job, Trey.

I'm reading about them, that they monitor population for anti-government sentiment, they enforce the strict dress codes and social norms, they're the morality police, and they're criticized often, the group is widely criticized for using excessive, often lethal force against protesters,

including torturing and killing detainees.

So the Israelis said they're looking to take them out. What they did to show that there's still a force when the war started, they set up checkpoints. And now we're bombing the checkpoints.

Taking them out. Decentralizing the coordination is gonna, making it hard for them to coordinate with one another is gonna be easier for, make it easier for Israel and the United States to take all of those leaders out.

I'm pleased to report that earlier today, the International Energy Agency agreed to coordinate the release of a record 400 million barrels of oil from various national petroleum reserves around the world, which will substantially reduce the oil prices as we end this threat to America and this threat to the world. We don't want to leave early, do we?

We got to finish the job, right?

Absolutely. The U.S. will tap into oil reserves in an effort to lower energy prices. But despite that, oil prices are pressing higher at this hour. As the State Department warns, Iran could be planning attacks on American oil and energy infrastructure over in Iraq. This after the IRGC claimed responsibility for firing on ships in the Strait of Hormuz.

Kate Timmer-Farland serves as Deputy National Security Advisor to President Trump and joins us now. The only ships getting through there are Iranian vessels. Why are we letting Iran be able to ship oil to China? Why don't we stop that? We're pretty good at stopping barges.

I'm sure you've seen it in Venezuela.

Yeah, we're pretty good at dealing with the Strait of Hormuz. We've been dealing with that going back to the, you know, Reagan administration where we stopped those vessels going through. The president has said that the United States could escort our tankers through the United States Navy. And he's also said that we, the United States, could insure – the problem is insurance. They can't get insurance because it's a war zone. We would give them the insurance. But he hadn't done either of those things yet. And what happens is Iran is letting ships go through, tankers go through, that are Iranian tankers,

that are illegal ghost tankers. And the tankers just say, hey, we're on our way to China. Don't bother us. And so Iran lets them through. You know, we could stop this. We just haven't done it so far.

I would urge the president to, if he wants to keep the Strait of Hormuz open, do it quicker. Do it sooner rather than later.

KT, it seems like so many of the president's objectives have been reached. But the question is, how much of their interior, Gestapo-like forces, the besiege, have to be destroyed before the people of Iran rise up, being that we haven't really armed them yet and the Iranian government doesn't let them have any arms?

You know, we're working our way down the target list and the initial target list was the Navy, the Air Force, the command and control centers, the senior tier of leadership of the Revolutionary Guard and of the government. But what we haven't gone after are these besieged. And you're right, these are thugs.

These are guys on motorcycles that are thugs. And this is the internal, they're not even a regular police. They're just gangs. And they go into the, into towns, into regions, into remote areas, and they arrest women without headscarves, bring them into jail, rape them and beat them. That's the besiege. And until somebody gets ahold of the besiege, whether it is the Israelis bomb their headquarters, whether it is the government itself, a new, potentially a new Iranian government

that goes after the Basij. The Basij is a cancer within, and until they're dealt with, then I don't think you're gonna see a lot of people going back out into the streets, except people who are knowing they're gonna die

because the Basij are gonna just tackle them, arrest them, beat them, torture them, kill them.

Right, we killed their commander, to just tackle them, arrest them, beat them, torture them, kill them. Right. We killed their commander and we're killing a lot more and the Israelis' intelligence on the ground is unbelievable. Hopefully that leads to grabbing that uranium out of some of those destroyed sites. Maybe that'll be something that'll be announced shortly. Let's talk about oil.

They think their greatest offense is getting oil up to $200 a barrel. Here's Energy Secretary Chris Wright on what we're doing. We are every hour of every day degrading their military ability to threaten ships in the Straits of Hormuz. We will release collectively 400 million barrels. This is to tide the world over while these flows are restricted by Iran.

But ultimately the United States military will prevail. We will end their ability to impede traffic through the Straits of Hormuz and ships will flow again. So we release them from our strategic oil reserve and so did 32 other countries. That's a pretty good adaption. It doesn't show defection.

Yeah, but it's a temporary fix. You've got to deal with Iran's ability to use oil as blackmail, whether it's blocking the Strait of Hormuz or whether it's going after energy sites around the region that other countries own, targeting other countries' energy sites. We have yet to target the Iranian energy sites to you know, to a certain extent. Now, why is that? Because I think we're still hoping that we could work with a new Iranian government

that would then rely on those oil refineries, the oil extraction, the oil bases to have them intact to work with. But that's still on our target list. So we could do a whole lot more damage to Iran than we've done. And we've got plenty of time to do it. I think that with the initial objectives have been met, no nukes, no missiles, no force of proxies, endangering the Middle East. Now, what we've got to do is do the next tier of targets, which is open the Strait of Hormuz, making sure the oil flows, getting rid of the besiege. And it depends on President Trump.

He could leave tomorrow and say, I've committed the job. I'll be back in a couple of years as Iran rebuilds its military, its nuclear sites, and we'll mow the grass again. But I think President Trump has made the decision he wants to get deal with it once and for

all. One of the things he said is, I don't want to leave it for the next person, no matter who the president is. I don't want to leave it for them. I want to handle it now. And every other administration knew there were a problem, only this Democratic Party is not admitting it now. Hopefully people will not fall for that.

Kate Timmer-Farron, thanks so much.

To have the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Michael Waltz with us here. You can talk about any issue. Let's start with this big one. President Trump and Steve, excuse me, Peter Doocy had an exchange yesterday about the war.

Watch here.

You just said it is a little excursion and you said it is a war.

So which one is it?

Well, it's both. It's both. It's an excursion that will keep us out of a war. For them, it's a war. For us, it's turned out to be easier than we thought. But think of it, they had thousands of missiles, 7,000, 8,000 missiles. We got many of them before they got to launch.

They had drones all over the place. We got many. Now we're knocking out the drone plant. They started talking about mines. So we hit 28 mine ships as of this moment, 28, like using the same weapon, the exact same weapon

that we use against the drug dealers.

So over at the United Nations, what word do you use to describe what's happening right now?

Well, what I've been using over and over again and pointing out to all of the members there is that this war started 1979, started 47 years ago, and President Trump is no longer going to just absorb these attacks, whether it's the terrorist proxies, Hezbollah, Houthi, Hamas, or attacks on infrastructure, or you name it, the malicious activity that Iran has been up to, he's not going to kick the can anymore,

he's going to end it. But can I just say that, you know, looking at Trey Yankst and others and what they're going through, the Iranian strategy of sowing chaos, shooting in all directions, hitting its Gulf neighbors, even hitting countries as far away as Turkey and Azerbaijan is absolutely backfiring. Yesterday in the UN, in the Security Council, we had a historic day in the sense that all of the GCC countries

led by Bahrain uniformly and publicly denounced Iran. They were co-sponsored, this resolution was co-sponsored by a UN record, 135 other nations. And we actually have that map.

If you could pull it up there while we're speaking. This is the, call for number three, please. This is the map of the countries on the UN resolution. This is unusual, to say the least.

Well, and here's why it's so significant. Number one, many of these countries have taken kind of a neutral position over the years when it comes to Iran. Qatar, for example, shares a massive gas field, the Pars gas field, with Iran that stretches across the straits there. UAE has a massive free trade zone of Iranian goods.

Oman was just mediating and providing the kind of neutral actor for us during the negotiations that Iran never approached in good faith. They are all now standing strong. They are all uniformly, I've got to tell you, and talking to them on a personal level, furious, outraged, and the fact that Iran is hitting hotels, resorts, ports, their shipping, you

know, all of those, their airports, all of those civilian infrastructure has them squarely aligned with the United States. And if you look at it, it's really kind of the Abraham Accords coalition that's now in action and now it's unified. And the other important thing yesterday, sorry, is both China and Russia, fair weather friends that they are, they abstained.

They backed away. They didn't oppose it. And they could have.

They could have vetoed. We've heard President Trump say that the US has already won, that this is over. He said yesterday, quote, it's easier than we thought it would be. Does he risk putting himself into a corner

at all by saying that, though? I mean, especially with these new images overnight, the Strait of Hormuz is still, there's still bombs going off, there's still ships getting hit. Yeah, but look, I mean, if you look at the military objectives that he laid out, Secretary Hegseth has laid out from the very beginning, command and control decimated

three layers down. Ballistic missile, both production and current, we've seen a ninety two percent drop off if you look at their nuclear program not only their enrichment is a bullet obliterated we're hitting other key aspects of it as well and i could tell you any interestingly uh... member the who these that were firing at every ship out there

incredibly quiet they don't dare given what they suffered last year, start firing at us. Hezbollah completely degradated, as is Hamas and the other terrorist proxies as well. So what we saw again in the council yesterday were countries like Syria and Lebanon and others that have been under Iran's thumb

for so many years are now saying, you know years are now throwing off that yoke.

Let me actually show you call for a number.

This will transform the Middle East.

Let me show you call for a number four. This is the UN Security Council members that voted with our position. What I thought was interesting is that includes Pakistan and Somalia. So I paid attention a little bit to that. And then I'm fascinated by what the mood is over in Turtle Bay. This is the Iranian ambassador at the UN yesterday.

Watch here.

Today's action represent a blatant misuse of the Security Council mandate in pursuit of the political agendas of the certain members. The various state responsible for the brutal war of aggression against my country, the regime of the United States, sits on the other side of this chamber as president of the council, abusing its position

while obstructing every effort to bring an end to this barbaric war against the Iranian people.

Is that ambassador eating alone at the lunch table over there?

Oh, he's in the building alone. 135 countries. And I read every one of them signed up with us. I read every one of them out loud. But I just can't emphasize enough for the Gulf Arabs to come together.

And they've been kind of at loggerheads over Yemen and Sudan and all kinds of other things to stand uniformly is incredibly powerful. And now today, and this is the part I don't think is getting a lot of attention,

we are going to go the next round of snapback sanctions. Again, kind of in the skies of where's the UN any good or helpful, President Trump put maximum pressure back in. He had it his first term. Biden lifted it.

President Trump put it back in last year, and now the rest of the world will be with us. And the thing that's not changing right now is the absolute devastation that's going on within the Iranian economy. Their currency's in free fall.

Their reserves are in free fall. If you remember the protest just a few months ago,

it was from their merchant class. And that isn't going to get any better for this regime.

It's great to have you in New York. It's really good to have you on set. Our audience is very interested and you help us understand it better.

Thank you so much.

Yeah, sure.

And for them, it's a war. For us, it's turned out to be easier than we thought. They started talking about mines, so we hit 28 mine ships as of this moment, 28, like using the same weapon, the exact same weapon that we use against the drug dealers in the water.

So we've heard so much about the Strait of Hormuz during this ongoing conflict with Iran, but let's talk about why it's so important in the first place, why President Trump wants to keep it open. Take a look at this map right here. So roughly 25% of all global seaborne oil trade goes through this trade of Hormuz right here. Then on top of that, almost 20% of all liquefied natural gas trade, LNG as it's known,

goes through this trade of Hormuz as well. A large amount of that LNG being exported from Qatar. Now, Iran has come out today saying they plan to keep the strait closed during this war. How do they plan to do that? We know Iran likes to use mines. They've used them in the past, and there've been reports

they've started mining the strait again. There's a handful of different mines that they can use. There are floating mines, which kind of bob in the water 3 to 10 feet down in depth. There's moored mines. Those can be chained to the seabed. There are seabed mines, which literally sit on the ocean floor. Those can be used against submarines.

There are also things known as limpet mines. Those are mines that are literally just attached to the hull of a ship. And what's crazy about this is ships don't have to physically touch these mines in order for them to detonate. Yes, if they come in direct contact, they'll explode. But some of these mines are capable to basically listen

for a ship, to listen for its electronic signature, the magnetic signature it gives off, some of the ship noise. And just getting close to a mine is capable of setting it off. So how do you fight these mines? Well, the US has, these are known as MCMs. These are mine countermeasure ships.

And they're built a certain way. They've kind of got like a wooden hole. They don't give off as much of an electric signature, but they're designed to detect and destroy mines. These are some of our MCMs which are being decommissioned. This is them in transit back to the United States. Why are they being taken out? Because we apparently have some new ships. They're gonna be brought in. They're more modern, but these are the kind of ships that we use to detect and destroy the mines in the Strait. And you take a look

at the bigger picture here, again, looking at the Strait of Hormuz, you got Iran saying you want to keep it closed. You got President Trump and the U.S. military saying they might consider using military escorts to get ships safely through this area as we see these overnight videos of ships being bombed and are now on fire. For more on this we want to bring in Andrew Markoff. He's a former Marine Special Forces officer and the CEO and co-founder of SMAC Technologies. Andrew, good morning to you. Good morning, thanks for having me. Do we have a rough estimate of how many mines that Iran potentially has built up over

the years? I've heard reports that they have circa 6,000 of a variety of different types from what you were pointing out, the ones that are close to the surface, some that are just under the surface, and then some that are in the seabed. But I think the bigger issue than just the quantity is that they're cheap and that you really only need

one mine to make a minefield. I mean, the reality is just the threat of any mines in the strait is enough to shut down traffic. So as there's talk about potentially using military escorts to escort naval ships through there and oil tankers, General Keene suggests that the situation has to get a lot calmer before that can happen because there's still obviously a lot of fighting going on. Take a listen.

If we start to bring our warships through right now, the Iranians still have the capability, not just at the coastal area, which we can eliminate, but hundreds of miles back to range those ships with precision weapons. And that makes no sense in terms of the risk when we're going to finish them off entirely in a few weeks. We're likely not going to begin that task of escorting tankers through until that threat is removed. Do you agree with that assessment.

I definitely think that there's still a threat. I think that this just points to the need for what we would describe as decision dominance with the ability to fuse massive amounts of data in real time to understand what's going on and then make the right decisions both to take out threats to our ships in the strait and to be able to get ships moving through the strait. I think that's really one of the promises of artificial intelligence and like a lot of the defense technology companies that are working in the space is to enable us to actually do this live and to do this faster and to do this more effectively.

There's been all this talk about cluster munitions being used by Iran, and we've seen some of those wild videos of them raining down from the sky where they all kind of splinter together, almost looking like a meteor shower. If we can pull up this graphic right here,

it kind of explains how some of these cluster munitions work. They get fired from some sort of a projectile or a tank or a missile launcher or something. They explode in the air, and then they splinter out and just basically spread out all over the ground. And that can be obviously extremely dangerous

for civilians. How much of an escalation is it for, there's the graphic right there, how much of an escalation is it for, there's the graphic right there, how much of an escalation is it for Iran to be turning to these weapons right now? I think cluster munitions are terrible and they are a real problem and I think that that just speaks to the need that we need to take out their launching capabilities. If you look at the US's red lines on Iran, it's nukes, missiles, and terrorist proxies, and the launchers are

a big issue. I think it's one of the reasons that it's really important that we're focused on targeting those and taking that capability out, because cluster munitions are brutal. Here's a headline I want to read to you. It says, quote, Iran increasingly employing cluster munitions against Israeli civilians. Quote, Iran is likely hoping that the use of cluster munitions will increase the number of casualties caused by each individual missile. Andrew, you've got about 30 seconds left here. Do you think that's Iran's strategy? Cause as much pain as possible in all the spots they can to try to get some sort of

resolution to this war, try to get US or Israel to come to the table? I think they're trying to make this war drag out and I do think that they're trying to make this war drag out, and I do think that they're trying to make this as painful as possible, because they know that one of the considerations that we have to weigh is as we move more and more assets into this theater that takes assets that we could use in other theaters to maintain stability away.

And we need the ability to be able to be effective in this theater, optimize getting this conflict resolved in a way that maintains our equities in other theaters at the same time. And again, I think that's really why decision dominance and the ability to fight and move assets

in multiple theaters at the same time is a really critical capability for us. Yeah, on top of the fact that every day they're trying to take out the launchers that are firing those missiles. Andrew Markoff, thanks for your time

Andrew Markoff, thanks for your time and thanks for your insights this morning. Thanks for having me.