Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: So we're back in this same world, stocks in gold, down, oil,
Speaker 2: and interest rates up, with great concern about what might
Speaker 2: happen next in the Middle East, and ahead of our
Speaker 2: conversation with retired Admiral John Kirby, and it's one that
Speaker 2: we've been really looking forward to. I'll just bring you
Speaker 2: back to the cabinet meeting with President Trump. So many questions,
Speaker 2: so few answers, and mixed messages when it comes to
Speaker 2: the potential for negotiating a deal. President's saying they're lousy fighters,
Speaker 2: but they're great negotiators. They're begging to work out a deal.
Speaker 2: Went on to say, I don't know if we'll be
Speaker 2: able to do that. I don't know if we're willing
Speaker 2: to do that yet. At the same time, he talked
Speaker 2: about the so called present that he was given by Iran.
Speaker 2: He teased reporters with this a couple of days ago
Speaker 2: and actually identified what that present was. Today.
Speaker 3: Listen, they said, to show you that we're real and
Speaker 3: solid and we're there, We're going to let you have
Speaker 3: eight boats of oil. I said, well, I guess we're
Speaker 3: dealing with the right people. And actually they then apologized
Speaker 3: for something they said, and they said, we're going to
Speaker 3: send two more boats, and it ended up being ten boats.
Speaker 3: And I hope I haven't screwed up your negotiation. I
Speaker 3: thought it was appropriate to say, because I did taunt
Speaker 3: you the other day by saying they're going to give
Speaker 3: us a present.
Speaker 4: So when we considered the Strait of Horror Mows and
Speaker 4: this conflict, we will speak now, as Joe said, with
Speaker 4: someone who is not only experienced having naval experience in
Speaker 4: this theater, but also experience in communicating around armed conflict
Speaker 4: and national security. Retired Real Admiral John Kirby is with us,
Speaker 4: of course, the former White House National Security Communications Advisor
Speaker 4: in the Biden administration. Thank you so much for being
Speaker 4: here on Bloomberg TV and Radio. Admira, obviously you know
Speaker 4: this area well. If Iran is giving us gifts of
Speaker 4: allowing vessels to pass through the strait, if they're charging
Speaker 4: others some two million dollars in order to do so,
Speaker 4: one could argue that is a run being able to
Speaker 4: continually exercise control over this waterway. Is the US Navy
Speaker 4: alone able of rest able to wrestle that control back?
Speaker 1: What would it take it would take more than the
Speaker 1: US Navy.
Speaker 5: I did convoy escort operations back in the eighties when
Speaker 5: President Reagan sent us there to do exactly the same thing,
Speaker 5: make sure that the oil.
Speaker 1: Traffic could flow in and out safely.
Speaker 5: And we didn't do it alone back then, and I
Speaker 5: really don't think that the US Navy wants to or
Speaker 5: can do it alone today. And obviously we're the most
Speaker 5: powerful navy in the world. We have a lot of capabilities,
Speaker 5: and certainly our destroyers can conduct these kinds of convoy escorts.
Speaker 5: But it's dangerous, it's slow, it's time consuming, it's resource intensive.
Speaker 1: It's going to require a lot more.
Speaker 5: Ships than the US Navy is going to be able
Speaker 5: to afford to that mission. It could take, you know,
Speaker 5: just to get through the Just to go through the
Speaker 5: strait itself, that's a good half a day transit, But
Speaker 5: depending on how long the route is, where you're picking
Speaker 5: the convoy up and where you're dropping it off, I mean,
Speaker 5: it could.
Speaker 1: Take days to a week.
Speaker 5: And with the traffic shut down the way it's been
Speaker 5: the last few weeks, it's going to take a while
Speaker 5: before confidence can be grown enough in the shipping industry
Speaker 5: to get back to anything near the semblance of traffic
Speaker 5: that was going through before this conflict started.
Speaker 2: Well, this is incredibly helpful, Admiral. It's great to see you.
Speaker 2: It's been a long time since we've heard from you
Speaker 2: here on Bloomberg, and so I'd like to hear a
Speaker 2: little bit more based on your experience and what it
Speaker 2: would take to reopen the straight militarily, because it's been
Speaker 2: suggested that we would need to have a full blown
Speaker 2: stand up, a full blown no fly zone to help
Speaker 2: protect the naval vessels who would be escorting ships. The
Speaker 2: President has talked about volume that he needed the help
Speaker 2: of our NATO allies, which he now says he never
Speaker 2: needed to be able to create the scale. Is that correct?
Speaker 2: Is that the approach the administration should be taking.
Speaker 5: Yes, And I was glad to hear the President when
Speaker 5: he did talk about the need for allies and partners
Speaker 5: to chip in.
Speaker 1: I think he was one hundred percent right on that.
Speaker 5: And back to the origin of your question is because
Speaker 5: it's not just about convoys. It's not just about a
Speaker 5: man on man kind of defense, you know, putting ships
Speaker 5: with oil tankers. It's about ISR, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance
Speaker 5: you have to have eyes on over that straight twenty
Speaker 5: four to seven so that you can see anything the
Speaker 5: Iranians might or might not be doing. You need good
Speaker 5: and that requires again a lot of resources from the air.
Speaker 5: You're certainly gonna need seaborne assets. And you need to
Speaker 5: worry about not just the mines. It's not just floating
Speaker 5: mines that the Iranians could put in the water or
Speaker 5: even seabed mines.
Speaker 1: It's their drones.
Speaker 5: I'm mostly concerned about the drones, air drones and sea drones.
Speaker 5: Sea drones can attack by stealth. Air drones can be
Speaker 5: very very hard to knock down. They're very slow, slow moving,
Speaker 5: but they fly close to the level of the water.
Speaker 5: They can be hard to knock it out of the sky.
Speaker 5: And all it takes is one one of those things,
Speaker 5: whether it's a missile, a drone, air or seaborne, and
Speaker 5: of course a mind to get through to shut down
Speaker 5: traffic for potentially weeks. So it's a very difficult thing
Speaker 5: to defend against. It acquire an awful lot of assets
Speaker 5: and an awful lot of time.
Speaker 4: How would two marine expeditionary units and thousands of troops
Speaker 4: from the eighty second Airborne contribute to a mission like
Speaker 4: this or another mission. Admiral, what exactly do you think
Speaker 4: we could be getting ready for as we position these
Speaker 4: thousands of other American service members into this theater.
Speaker 5: Difficult to know, of course, what the administration's planning. But
Speaker 5: if we're just going to talk about the Straits straight,
Speaker 5: the Marines could be helpful if you wanted to go
Speaker 5: after a couple of the small islands that bound the Strait,
Speaker 5: which are in Iranian control and therefore could be used
Speaker 5: by the Iranians as bases to launch drones or even
Speaker 5: small boat attacks. So you could put the Marines on
Speaker 5: those islands and help again restore a little bit of
Speaker 5: confidence in the shipping industry that you've got eyes on,
Speaker 5: that you've got a presence, and that you have the
Speaker 5: ability to defeat Iranian threats. There's also talk, I know
Speaker 5: about maybe using the Marines to assault KRG Island, which
Speaker 5: is that island way up in the north of the Gulf,
Speaker 5: right off the coast of Iran, about about fifteen sixteen
Speaker 5: miles off the coast that they used for infrastructure. That's
Speaker 5: kind of their report of departure and embarkation for all
Speaker 5: the oil that comes out of the Gulf, and so
Speaker 5: there's been talking about maybe the Rings taking that over.
Speaker 1: That is a much taller order.
Speaker 5: It's a bigger island, and I suspect that the Iranians
Speaker 5: are going to want to defend it. In fact, I
Speaker 5: saw press reports today that they're already fortifying carg Island
Speaker 5: and anticipation of some kind of amphibious assault. And then,
Speaker 5: of course there's always the other option here, which when
Speaker 5: you have the eighty second Airborne coming it certainly it
Speaker 5: can't ignore it as an option. Is the potential to
Speaker 5: put US troops on the ground in mainland Iran, in
Speaker 5: the area around the Strait, sort of southern Iran, to
Speaker 5: try to prevent the Iranians from using their coastal facilities
Speaker 5: to attack ships in the Strait. That is a much
Speaker 5: much taller order for the US military and would require
Speaker 5: an awful lot of planning, organization, coordination, and of course time,
Speaker 5: and of course it's very risky, very risky.
Speaker 1: Indeed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know if these are in some of
Speaker 2: the documents of the classified documents that the President had
Speaker 2: at mar A Lago that mapped out Iran battle plans, Admiral,
Speaker 2: but we are seeing reports today that the Pentagon is
Speaker 2: developing options for what they're calling a final blow, and
Speaker 2: occupying KRG Island is one of them, as well as
Speaker 2: invading Larok, if I'm pronouncing it right, the island that
Speaker 2: helps Iran keep control of the Strait of Horror moves
Speaker 2: and seizing the island of Abu Musa to that same extent.
Speaker 2: Are these battle plans that you have seen for years?
Speaker 2: Are these options that the Pentagon has been looking at
Speaker 2: for other administrations as well well.
Speaker 5: I won't get into the details of operational planning or
Speaker 5: what I was cognizant of when I was in the uniform,
Speaker 5: but I can tell you that the US military has
Speaker 5: long been looking at threats to the Strait by Iran
Speaker 5: and coming up with contingency plans for.
Speaker 1: How to deal with those threats.
Speaker 5: I have no doubt that after I left service, the
Speaker 5: US Military and Central Command continue to refine those plans
Speaker 5: and those contingency operations. I'll leave it to the planners
Speaker 5: to speak about what they're thinking or what they may
Speaker 5: not be able to do. I would just tell you
Speaker 5: that if you're going to introduce ground troops, and that
Speaker 5: certainly appears to be an option, the President has not eschewed.
Speaker 5: There is a whole new level of risk here, and
Speaker 5: quite frankly, a whole new level of potential escalation of
Speaker 5: the war. Once you insert troops on the ground, then
Speaker 5: you're in a different kind of fight than we are
Speaker 5: right now.
Speaker 4: Well, of course, the President hasn't ruled that out entirely.
Speaker 4: And to your point about there being some things that
Speaker 4: you are not able to communicate publicly, obviously things can
Speaker 4: be classified for a reason, and strategic ambiguity can be
Speaker 4: a real strategy. But I wonder if you see the
Speaker 4: administration as kind of straddling the line of not having credibility,
Speaker 4: either as they seem to President Trump or the Secretary
Speaker 4: of State, the Defense Secretary, others aren't necessarily sending a
Speaker 4: consistent message as to what it is we are not
Speaker 4: only trying to do, but what it is we're willing
Speaker 4: to do to get there.
Speaker 5: It's an interesting question, and I think I spent a
Speaker 5: lot of my time focusing on the Pentagon briefings. I
Speaker 5: wish they did more. I wish they had more traditional
Speaker 5: media in the briefing room. But when you listen to
Speaker 5: General Kine, the Chairman of the Joint chief's talk, or
Speaker 5: when you watch the videos by Admiral Cooper, the Central
Speaker 5: Command commander, you do get a clear sense of what
Speaker 5: they believe. Their military objectives are, what they've been ordered
Speaker 5: by the commander in chief to do, and it's pretty simple.
Speaker 1: They're pretty limited objectives.
Speaker 5: But then when you listen to the political messaging, it
Speaker 5: does tend to be all over.
Speaker 1: The map, and it's very hard on any given data.
Speaker 5: Is it unconditional surrender, is it regime change, is it
Speaker 5: just the is it just a nuclear program, or now
Speaker 5: you know, we're talking about maybe going after energy infrastructure
Speaker 5: on the ground in Iran.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of mixed messaging.
Speaker 5: This administration might contend that that's good, that that is
Speaker 5: strategic ambiguity, that that confuses the Iranians. But if you are,
Speaker 5: in fact in the middle of negotiations, if you are
Speaker 5: trying to end this diplomatically, then clarity and concision in
Speaker 5: message is absolutely vital, not just for the public that's
Speaker 5: paying attention like you and I are, but for the Iranians,
Speaker 5: for your enemy, and for your allies Israel.
Speaker 1: And it's not clear to me.
Speaker 5: That the Israelis share the same strategic objectives as the
Speaker 5: United States and here, and they get a vote in
Speaker 5: how and whether this war ends.
Speaker 1: So clarity and.
Speaker 5: Concision and simplicity in the message as you approach negotiations
Speaker 5: is absolutely vital, and I would hope that we'd be
Speaker 5: able to see a little bit more of that than
Speaker 5: we have in the last couple of days.
Speaker 2: Admiral you. Of course, we're appointed Pentagon Press Secretary by
Speaker 2: Chuck Hagel when he was the Defense Secretary, so you
Speaker 2: know what it's like to stand up in front of
Speaker 2: that room and manage a press corps in a very
Speaker 2: sensitive environment here. And I'm curious what you make of
Speaker 2: the posture that this Pentagon has taken when it comes
Speaker 2: to journalists. Of course, we just saw a recent court
Speaker 2: ruling in favor of a lawsuit brought by The New
Speaker 2: York Times that struck down the administration's decision to curtail
Speaker 2: the activities of reporters, And in response to that ruling,
Speaker 2: the Pentagon says it's going to be kicking reporters out
Speaker 2: of the building altogether. They'll build an annex, some sort
Speaker 2: of outhouse on the property where reporters will purportedly be
Speaker 2: allowed to work, although they still won't be allowed to
Speaker 2: solicit information even if it is not deemed classified. Is
Speaker 2: this all good for the country.
Speaker 5: I think it's not only not good for the country,
Speaker 5: it's not good for the Pentagon. It's not good for
Speaker 5: mister Hegsith and his leadership and for what they're trying
Speaker 5: to communicate about the war efforts. So I really hope
Speaker 5: that they revisit these policies and begin to allow more
Speaker 5: briefings to occur, and more media to be in the
Speaker 5: briefing room for them, and to have the press back
Speaker 5: in the building I think is important. Look, when you're
Speaker 5: talking about issues of life and death, war and peace,
Speaker 5: when you're talking about the US military and the billions
Speaker 5: of dollars the American people are spending on their national
Speaker 5: defense and.
Speaker 1: The literally millions of sons and daughters.
Speaker 5: Who are in uniform, the Pentagon has an obligation. It's
Speaker 5: not a privilege, it's not an opportunity. It's an obligation
Speaker 5: to explain what they're doing with those tax dollars and
Speaker 5: with those young men and women in uniform, and how
Speaker 5: they're using those resources to keep the country safe. It's
Speaker 5: an absolutely sacred obligation. And I always looked at it
Speaker 5: that way from the podium. So did Secretary Hegel when
Speaker 5: I worked for him, Secretary of Austin when I worked
Speaker 5: for him, that we had an obligation to get up
Speaker 5: there and explain ourselves. The other thing I would say
Speaker 5: about access to the press and having the Pentagon Press
Speaker 5: there with you all day long, and they were with
Speaker 5: me all day long, is it makes you a better spokesman.
Speaker 5: It makes you a better policy leader because you get
Speaker 5: to hear what they're hearing from their sources. You get
Speaker 5: to understand what stories they're working on.
Speaker 1: You get an.
Speaker 5: Opportunity to maybe shape their thinking about those stories. And
Speaker 5: I think you also quite critically get a chance to
Speaker 5: make better policy, because there's nothing better for policy than
Speaker 5: to throw it open to the scrutiny of an independent
Speaker 5: press every day and let them poke holes in it,
Speaker 5: let them ask the tough questions you can. Actually, if
Speaker 5: you're wise and you're humble, as Secretary of Hagel and
Speaker 5: Austin were, you'll change your mind from time to time.
Speaker 2: Spoken by someone who's been there, Admiral, it's great to
Speaker 2: see you. We'd like to stay in touch with you
Speaker 2: as this entire story progresses. John Kirby, retired rear admiral,
Speaker 2: former White House National Security COMMS advisor, and a fascinating
Speaker 2: conversation you're only going to hear today on Bloomberg