Speaker 1: The US response has increased intensity eight times as many
Speaker 1: targets were hit compared to the last time the US
Speaker 1: responded to Iran firing on ships in the Strait. The
Speaker 1: targets include some sixty Revolutionary Guards small boats. Sencom also
Speaker 1: says the strikes included defense systems, command and control networks,
Speaker 1: coastal radar sites, and anti ship capabilities. And we have
Speaker 1: video of the US strikes hitting in Bandarabas. Iran responded
Speaker 1: by firing into their neighbors Kuwait and Bahrain. The official
Speaker 1: Iranian news agency claims to have hit some eighty five
Speaker 1: targets in those countries. Details on the number of targets
Speaker 1: are not confirmed by other sources, but sirens sounded in
Speaker 1: Kuwait and Bahrain.
Speaker 2: Now this isn't an I rerun. We aren't still on
Speaker 2: vacation and you're listening to old shows. We are back
Speaker 2: and this is new. We are back at war with Iran.
Speaker 2: It would seem Iran struck several ships in the Strait,
Speaker 2: violating the MoU According to Trump, which he says is
Speaker 2: now dead, we hit ran pretty hard. I guess we'll
Speaker 2: find out how hard when we ask lines here in
Speaker 2: a second. And then Iran struck the countries around them,
Speaker 2: as they like to do. Where it goes from now,
Speaker 2: I do not know. Welcome Mike Lyons to the Armstrong
Speaker 2: Engetti show again. Mike served with various military organizations in
Speaker 2: both the United States and Europe throughout his career. Got
Speaker 2: his degree from the United States to Military Academy at
Speaker 2: West Point. Hey, Mike, what did you think of that?
Speaker 2: How big a deal was this? How hard to strike?
Speaker 2: Was this just a like a little love tap, I'll
Speaker 2: let you know we're still paying attention or did we
Speaker 2: hit them hard?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Thanks for having me back.
Speaker 4: I've always thought that this has been the end of
Speaker 4: escalation management from the very beginning.
Speaker 3: So I published an article and we'll see.
Speaker 4: Journal about that, and sent Com is reporting eighty targets
Speaker 4: hit with precision munitions. So this is not a proportional
Speaker 4: response back. This is not a tit for.
Speaker 3: Tat what we had been doing good in the past,
Speaker 3: and so I think that that's a good sign.
Speaker 4: I do believe. Now it just gets back to you know,
Speaker 4: what are those targets. It looks like Iranian air defense systems,
Speaker 4: command and control networks, the coastal rate our sites.
Speaker 3: Those are so key.
Speaker 4: It looks like some of their anti ship missile capabilities
Speaker 4: now are more out in the open and roun Revolutionary
Speaker 4: Guard Corps, I mean, the small boats. You know, it
Speaker 4: just shows you the target rich environment. It is from
Speaker 4: a military perspective. When we stop, probably stops too soon,
Speaker 4: and it looks like our response back is disproportional.
Speaker 2: Well, Trump just said a few minutes ago, we're probably
Speaker 2: going to hit them hard again tonight. So you're saying
Speaker 2: there's plenty of stuff to.
Speaker 4: Hit, Yeah, no question, And I think you know we were.
Speaker 4: You've got to figure out a way still to you know,
Speaker 4: make sure that it's it's not completely destroyed when the
Speaker 4: country's you know, when we finally move this thing forward.
Speaker 4: And so I'm for this, you know, this preparable deterrence
Speaker 4: going after some of their revenue capabilities, but not necessarily
Speaker 4: destroying you know, entire oil fields and entire things. But
Speaker 4: but there are quasi military targets that would make them
Speaker 4: very easy to repair when the time comes, but set
Speaker 4: them back when it comes to trying to raise revenue
Speaker 4: and things like that. So there's there's still many military
Speaker 4: targets that hit many many to go after. And we're
Speaker 4: at the cleanup phase of that now, I think.
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 2: There was some reporting over the weekend that Trump had
Speaker 2: decided a while back we were going to use our
Speaker 2: military and force that straight back open, and Saudi Arabia
Speaker 2: talked him out of it. So I guess that still
Speaker 2: might be on the table if Iran's not willing to,
Speaker 2: you know, stop firing on ships.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that would really ramp up with our off tempo,
Speaker 4: the pace that our military is working. We'd have to
Speaker 4: bring maybe some more destroyers and cruisers into the into
Speaker 4: the region, even though we have three carriers strike groups
Speaker 4: right now that they're more focused on the aircraft and
Speaker 4: the carrier themselves. But that's you know, a mission that
Speaker 4: we could do. It could take months, but it means
Speaker 4: really softening up any of the coastal batteries.
Speaker 3: That seem to exist that are there.
Speaker 4: The fact that they can get off any shots whatsoever,
Speaker 4: either using drones or any kind of you know, precision
Speaker 4: munitions to shows they still have this capability.
Speaker 2: Well, Trump's over there. All the NATO leaders the Big
Speaker 2: NATO meeting and the NATO Secretary General said this morning
Speaker 2: that what the United States did was perfectly appropriate, had
Speaker 2: to be done I mean, and that's not the way
Speaker 2: NATO's really been talking about this whole Iran operation the
Speaker 2: whole time. So is there any chance we get any
Speaker 2: help from any of our NATO allies on this at
Speaker 2: this point?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 4: You know, Mark Rute's influence on Trump, to me is
Speaker 4: a masterclass.
Speaker 3: And how to manage him, right.
Speaker 4: All these other NATO leaders are just can't manage Trump.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: McCrone thinks he's smarter than him. You know, the Germans tried,
Speaker 4: you know, to be more technical. Let's say Keir Starmer.
Speaker 4: That's you know, he failed miserably. But I think I
Speaker 4: think Route cracks the code. He validates him publicly as
Speaker 4: soon as Trump got on with that, the MoU is over.
Speaker 3: Rute couldn't say it any quicker.
Speaker 4: I'm with you in the same breath, right, So very
Speaker 4: clearly he's because a Trump whisper when it comes to that. Now,
Speaker 4: the downside is that he's really only managing him. He's not,
Speaker 4: you know, maybe not advising him, but he at least
Speaker 4: speaks his language. He's not trying to be Macron, he's
Speaker 4: not trying to be some other leader that that's trying
Speaker 4: to be Trump's peer. He let's kind of Trump be Trump,
Speaker 4: and I think from what we are right now.
Speaker 3: I think that's still a good thing. I think it's
Speaker 3: a good thing for NATO. I think it's going to
Speaker 3: keep you, you know, well in sant of NATO.
Speaker 2: Trump's talking as we're talking to you, so he's saying
Speaker 2: more things like we may put the blockade on the
Speaker 2: straight of Horne moves back in place, so we might
Speaker 2: be back right back to where we were two and
Speaker 2: a half weeks ago by the end of tonight.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the whip song is challenging to the military, going
Speaker 4: back and forth again. The blockade just means repositioning some.
Speaker 3: Of those ships.
Speaker 4: I think most of the military community that I had
Speaker 4: spoken to didn't think we had finished the job, so
Speaker 4: to speak. We gave the president enough leverage to start
Speaker 4: to talk. I think he needed that for making sure
Speaker 4: that oil prices didn't go crazy, and he was, you know,
Speaker 4: keeping one eye.
Speaker 3: On the politics of this.
Speaker 4: But I think those in the military we felt that
Speaker 4: it really wasn't finished. That this campaign should have gone
Speaker 4: on longer than thirty seven days is really what it
Speaker 4: went on for, should have went on at least.
Speaker 3: Forty five, even sixty.
Speaker 4: It should have had a better logical conclusion with a
Speaker 4: clear sign of US victory.
Speaker 2: Well, the Wall Street journals reporting today is that they
Speaker 2: were making no progress whatsoever, like zero on the whole
Speaker 2: details around nuclear weapons, which is what the whole war
Speaker 2: was about. So which doesn't surprise me in the least.
Speaker 2: So what's the worst case scenario. Worst case scenario obviously
Speaker 2: is that Oram gets a nuclear weapon, but we prosecute
Speaker 2: this war, we continue to go forward and put pressure
Speaker 2: on us. What should we watch out for that could
Speaker 2: go wrong?
Speaker 4: Well, you know, they had some kind of internal revolution
Speaker 4: and that you have this humanitarian crisis that exists inside
Speaker 4: the country because it implosed United States gets blamed for
Speaker 4: that or something. I think I don't think we have
Speaker 4: to worry about. You know, there's potentially some of our
Speaker 4: military targets, but there's not a situation that I could
Speaker 4: see that we're in trouble now unless the.
Speaker 3: Chinese decided to enter the picture.
Speaker 4: Off they decide, which I think should have been part
Speaker 4: of the MoU. Anyway, I think that we should have
Speaker 4: made sure that no other countries were going to come
Speaker 4: in and assist the Roan, that that MoU is all
Speaker 4: front loaded for the Iranians, it was you know, all
Speaker 4: the all the United States activities were on the back
Speaker 4: side of it. We don't want the Chinese in there,
Speaker 4: we don't want any other countries in there, and we
Speaker 4: often need stronger Gulf states to make sure that they're
Speaker 4: focused on making sure we take this to the end.
Speaker 3: But but what goes wrong?
Speaker 4: I think the real the real challenge would be more
Speaker 4: inside of Iran humanitarian crisis. Ninety million people's will have
Speaker 4: to feed and keep water, and if the Ranian government collapses,
Speaker 4: you know, how do they do that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a good point.
Speaker 2: So also part of the Wall Street Journal reporting day
Speaker 2: was that Iran has gotten back a fair amount of
Speaker 2: their capability, was that with the help of China and
Speaker 2: Russia that they rebuilt all that stuff.
Speaker 4: I think they just basically took that out of the
Speaker 4: mountains and they had a lot to begin with. And
Speaker 4: again from a scale perspective, they still can't deploy hundreds.
Speaker 3: At a time.
Speaker 4: But when you have a lot, when you sneak, you know,
Speaker 4: take a thousand rockets, let's say, or a thousand missiles
Speaker 4: and hide them in the mountains and hide them in places.
Speaker 4: If you look at the geography of Iran easy to do,
Speaker 4: and all that they're doing now is just deploying those
Speaker 4: that are out there. So that's where there's more targets
Speaker 4: for us to kind of go after. I think that's
Speaker 4: really what happened. There's no industrial capability to fix anything
Speaker 4: that's not really on the table. It's the fact that
Speaker 4: just shows you the level of ballistic missile capability. They
Speaker 4: always had tens of thousands of missiles that they had ready,
Speaker 4: that had built them be ready for the fight.
Speaker 2: Are any of those countries surrounding around that keep getting
Speaker 2: hit by the Iranians going to finally like really join
Speaker 2: us in this battle.
Speaker 3: Well, that's another great question.
Speaker 4: And you know, it just shows you how Middle Eastern
Speaker 4: politics are, you know more in some ways based on religion.
Speaker 4: A lot of it has to with that, you know,
Speaker 4: the Shia Sunni divide that exists in that part of
Speaker 4: the world, and so that they you know, you can't
Speaker 4: change the geography, right, I mean, Tatar and the UAE
Speaker 4: are doing what they can to avoid the straits, right,
Speaker 4: they're building tunnels and things like that, but they should
Speaker 4: have been building them before the Saudi's already did that.
Speaker 4: They've got a pipeline going to the Red Sea. But
Speaker 4: the politics are just not what we're used to, and
Speaker 4: that they have to they recognize that there are what
Speaker 4: they are.
Speaker 2: Well, I have a feeling there's a chance we might
Speaker 2: be talking to you again later this week after a
Speaker 2: couple of more rounds of strikes in Iran. Mike Lyons
Speaker 2: military analysts. You can follow him on Twitter at m
Speaker 2: A j is in Major at Major m Aj. Mike Lyons,
Speaker 2: I go there whenever something happens to see what you
Speaker 2: thought about it.
Speaker 3: Thanks Mike, Thanks for having.
Speaker 2: The war's back on. I think clearly, well let's play
Speaker 2: this just because we got a moment.
Speaker 3: To me, I think it's over.
Speaker 5: I don't want to deal with them. You know what
Speaker 5: scum is. There's gum, there's sick people. They're lit by
Speaker 5: sick people. There's something wrong with them. They're cuckoo. As
Speaker 5: far as I'm concerned, it's over.
Speaker 2: That he was asking about the MoU, the memorandum of
Speaker 2: Understanding that you know, brought about the sixty day cease
Speaker 2: fire and they get their money back before we start
Speaker 2: the nuclear talks, which never happened. Shock shock shock, Trump
Speaker 2: saying it's over. They're cuckoo, it's over. I hope he
Speaker 2: means it, because he says this sort of stuff about
Speaker 2: Putin or the Mullahs or the IRGC, and then you know,
Speaker 2: by the end of the day he'll say, noh, he
Speaker 2: talked to do a guy and he sounds like he's
Speaker 2: a it's really exciting.
Speaker 3: JD.
Speaker 2: Vans will come out and say, you know, it's really cool,
Speaker 2: is they They they now understand that they've been doing
Speaker 2: the wrong thing all these years, which was just the
Speaker 2: lamest thing that has ever come out of Jade Vancel's mouth.
Speaker 1: Oh Armstrong, Hetty