Trump says US Navy will blockade Strait of Hormuz

Donald Trump posted on Truth Social, quote, effective immediately, the United States Navy, the finest in the world, will begin the process of blockading any and all ships trying to enter or leave the Strait of Hormuz. Additionally, at an appropriate moment, we are fully locked and loaded, and our military will finish up the little that is left of Iran. Let us try to understand how a blockade would work. I'm

joined by Admiral James Stavridis, former NATO Supreme Commander. Jim, how you've traversed these straits dozens, maybe hundreds of times. Tell us how a blockade would work and how much American naval power would be required to make it work?

Well, I certainly agree with one thing the president said was the United States Navy is the finest in the world. I'll take that. But this is not trivial work. Any blockade is difficult because it's an open seaway. Historically, we are enormous supporters

of freedom of navigation. So when you conduct a blockade, it is an act of war, and it is something that has grave consequence in terms of how you execute it. As to how many ships you would need, I'd say if I were the Admiral in command,

and Brad Cooper, Admiral Brad Cooper is the CENTCOM commander, he will probably want to put two aircraft carrier strike groups. So that's two carriers. So he has plenty of air cover up above him.

And then he'll want about a dozen destroyers and frigates. All of this would be arrayed in the southern part of the Gulf. All the way down outside the Gulf would be the U.S. forces. And then inside the Gulf, Farid, you've got probably half a dozen American warships, and you'd want to bring in the Emirati Navy, the Saudi Navy. So you'd try and bottle it up on both sides.

Bottom line, this is a big task, and it's a big gamble. So final thought here, what's the play? Why are we doing this, I think, is going to be the question on most people's minds. And it's an economic squeeze. So if you think of this on a scale that runs from doing nothing, walking away from the table, ceasing hostilities, that runs to destroying the civilization of

Iran, an economic blockade like this is right in the middle. It puts economic pressure on Tehran without destroying the oil facilities, which you'd want to preserve into the future. So big, complicated undertaking, hardly a trivial move on the chessboard we've been

watching. And so far, Jim, Iran has found asymmetrical ways, often quite cheap, to, you know, to maintain its control of the Strait by essentially just spooking insurance companies enough that there is no traffic. Is there an asymmetric, is there something the Iranians can do? What do you imagine would be their kind of countermeasure?

Let's do it from the inside out. So let's look at the Strait itself. The asymmetric play there would be smuggling. It would be trying to run the blockade. Think what the Confederate South did in the United States when Abraham Lincoln put an enormous blockade

around the entire Southern states. It's pretty porous. And so they could certainly try smuggling. That'll be very difficult. Secondly, they could put more mines in the water. Fortunately, CENTCOM has destroyed,

according to reports, 90 plus percent of the 5,000 pre-war mines, but Iran could put a lot more mines into the water and they could come off small boats or dows, which are the ubiquitous indigenous craft of the Gulf. Moving out from the Gulf itself,

I would start to really worry about cyber. And what I mean by that is, here's China, an expert cyber nation, alongside Russia, another expert cyber nation. Here's a way that they could assist Iran by using cyber. And all of this, Farid, as you've

reported on over the last couple of months, comes at a time when AI is making cyber tools much more accessible and available. So this emerging strain of cyber threat is one stream. And then aid from Russia and China is another stream of threat. It's like in Ghostbusters. You don't want those streams to cross. So there

are three things they could think about.

I want to bring in now the president's first term UN ambassador, Nikki Haley, who advised the president on Iran and many other things in that role. She is currently the Walter P. Stern chair at the Hudson Institute. Ambassador, thank you so much for being here. I, of course, want to start with what we just

heard from the president, that he is going to start a blockade, that any and all ships trying to enter or leave the Strait of Hormuz. What do you make of that? Is that the right move?

Good morning, Dana. Well, first, I think you look at where they were going into the negotiations. The US had a 15-point plan. Iran had a 10-point plan. They really were miles apart.

The Iranians were not willing to give up their nuclear production. They weren't willing to give up holding the Strait of Hormuz hostage. And I think Vice President Vance did the right thing by walking away and saying, we're not going to continue talks. This isn't worth our time.

And we'll finish the mission. And I think what you're seeing President Trump do is not pause at all and say, we're going to go after Iran where it hurts. I think if you look over the span of this war, CENTCOM has done a remarkable job by taking out the majority of their missile drone naval capabilities,

which really was at the heart of the strategy of what Iran wanted to do. But the part to really bring Iran to its knees is to go after it economically. And I think making sure that the strait is open is the first part of that.

I think the second part of that is going to be really important. It's finally dealing with Russia and China. You know, you look at Russia, and it was their intelligence that was used to hit our bases, you know, in Turkey and Qatar, the oil fields in Saudi Arabia, they gave the intelligence to Iran. Iran shot those.

And China, hundreds of, you know, hundreds of ballistic missiles have been made because China has supplied them. And now we know that China's getting ready to give, you know, manpads, which is going to only give them more air defense systems to work with.

So, look, I think Trump wasted no time. I think he's moving forward, and I think he's calling Iran's bluff.

Whether it's a blockade or some other military operation, would you support that to reopen the strait?

But I don't understand how blockading the strait is going to somehow push the Iranians into opening it. I don't get the connection there. I agree. I think actually Ambassador Haley underestimated the threat, the economic threat.

We know we've got $4 a gallon gasoline. We know that 25% of the world's natural gas goes through the strait. We know a lot of aluminum does. We know that this is so devastated. Asian countries right now, they're shutting down

their economies one day a week. Fertilizer costs up. And the thing I was hoping was we could come to some negotiated truce or end. But even with that, you're going to see these energy prices continue at record levels, not for weeks, but months and years.

And how blockading the strait gets it open suddenly, I don't get that logic. Yeah, I mean, it sounds like, and how blockading the strait gets it open suddenly, I don't get that logic.

Yeah. I mean, it sounds like, and this is reading this lengthy post and not being able to ask the president at this moment, but it sounds like they're trying to extract economic pain on Iran the way Iran is trying to do on the world. I do want to ask you about what the president has said.

But Dana, just one quick thing there. Here is the irony of this. When the president decided to release the sanctions on the Iranian oil that was already at sea, we literally gave the Iranian regime, 14 billion dollars. We are paying, helping the Iranians fund their effort to attack us, to attack Israel, and to attack our allies. That is the most crazy upside-down kind of policy I can possibly imagine. So, you know, if you want to strangle Iran, why would we leave the

sanctions on their oil. It's crazy.

Even before these talks concluded without a deal, the president said, regardless of what happens, we win. We totally defeated that country. You have a lot of access to intelligence. You were one of the few people in this country who has, at least, presumably you know what's going on on the ground there. Given that, how do you think the U.S. gets

out of this war?

You know, it is an extraordinarily fair question. I know people have said, well, even though you may not like how we got there, what do we do now? Because, you know, the president can declare victory. And I think, you know, I don't know...I've not met an American yet who wants to send their son or daughter to another ground war in the Middle East, especially in Iran. But you know, if we declare victory today, luckily we can maybe then reopen the straits and we can move forward.

But Iran will claim with some vindication that they have taken on the two major military powers in the world, United States and Israel, and at least fought them to a draw. Our Gulf nation states who look to us for protection, we've seen that we've helped some, but take the UAE. The Emiratis actually has been bombed and missile attacked many more times than Israel, or are they going to hedge their bets?

And because we did this with Israel alone and no other allies, this is where the kind of actions of President Trump threatening NATO or threatening Greenland hurts us when we look to those NATO allies for either assistance or support in this kind of action. Again, I shed no tears for the Iranian leadership that's been killed. They are awful.

But I don't know how, outside of the president's own bubble, he can somehow claim that Iran has been totally destroyed when we see them continue to strike, when they have virtual control of the strait. control of the strait. And unfortunately the regime is, if anything, filled with more radicals than before.