Speaker 1: Secretary Pompey is made clear that the Irani regime is
Speaker 1: responsible for this attack on civilian areas and infrastructure vital
Speaker 1: to our global energy supply, and we're not going to
Speaker 1: stand for that. Over the weekend, it would appear that
Speaker 1: Iran attacked Saudi Arabia's oil supply or their ability to
Speaker 1: supply oil to the world. According to The Wall Street Journal,
Speaker 1: US officials said yesterday, there are strong indications the blasts
Speaker 1: or the result of cruise missile strikes launched from Iraq
Speaker 1: or Iran. You heard drones all weekend. Their cruise missiles
Speaker 1: intermediate range ballistic missiles with the potential to fly more
Speaker 1: than a thousand miles. Mike Clients is a military analyst
Speaker 1: for CBS News who has covered a conflict all over
Speaker 1: the world and indeed served in the United States Army
Speaker 1: and joins US now. Mike, welcome, How are you guys?
Speaker 1: So great to be back with you. Listen. Uh, we
Speaker 1: engage in hyperbole for fun, but during serious times we
Speaker 1: like to have a grasp of of, you know, the
Speaker 1: seriousness of these things for real. How how big a
Speaker 1: deal is this attack counts out of Arabia? Yeah, big,
Speaker 1: because of the impact of it. It's drive driven the
Speaker 1: price of oil now down to where it was back
Speaker 1: I think the levels of desert shield desert storms started. UM.
Speaker 1: So it got the Iranian effect of impacting the market,
Speaker 1: which is what their goal is, to drive up the
Speaker 1: price of crude. So anything that they they're exporting, because
Speaker 1: there's been the de facto embargo on Iranian oil through
Speaker 1: most of the world, but what they can sell, they
Speaker 1: just want to get more for it. So it fits
Speaker 1: in with the Iranian strategy for what they did. Now
Speaker 1: again this is complex military operation. I mean to think
Speaker 1: that the Hoofies have done this is you know, being
Speaker 1: on the pale, there's just no way to have any
Speaker 1: kind of capability to fry literally anything six and fifty
Speaker 1: seven hundred miles from where they are to hit. UM
Speaker 1: precisely hit in aramical facility in Saud Arabia. So so
Speaker 1: clearly the US has gotta come on board really quick
Speaker 1: with UM this evidence that's coming from Iran to get
Speaker 1: the whole world against them. What do you expected the
Speaker 1: response from Saudi Arabia to be and will it include
Speaker 1: US or MBZ with the U A E. If you
Speaker 1: don't mind me thrown around all these letters in Israel
Speaker 1: and whoever else. Yeah, I know what, we gotta stay
Speaker 1: out of this. I know the President tweeted about being
Speaker 1: locked in looaded that that probably wasn't helpful. Um, this
Speaker 1: is somewhat if you know, any kind of let's say,
Speaker 1: kinetic response. If they're going to go that direction, we've
Speaker 1: we've got to step back from that. I think that
Speaker 1: will escalate things very quickly. Salrabia, though, is embarrassed today.
Speaker 1: You know two key numbers, right, six hundred or sixty
Speaker 1: sixty eight billion dollars what they spend on defense and
Speaker 1: a hundred and fifty grand is what the cost of
Speaker 1: the drones were. That that took that facility out for
Speaker 1: degraded at the way it did so. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: this is a kind of new warfare with the technology,
Speaker 1: the battery technology, with the GPS technology that critical limits
Speaker 1: has gotta be careful for. But the sali Arabia needs
Speaker 1: to do the same that the US share intelligence show
Speaker 1: where they think it came from. It's going to probably
Speaker 1: show capability gaps in a lot of their systems, and
Speaker 1: I think that's why they're going to be embarrassed, which
Speaker 1: is probably why they're holding back on it as well. No, Mike,
Speaker 1: just to clarify their reports out today that their cruise missiles.
Speaker 1: Do you think it was that's not correct? Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: so we're defining, you know, kind of what the drone
Speaker 1: is versus a cruise missile. Right. So drones are normally however,
Speaker 1: they stay, they're more collection. They you know, they're not
Speaker 1: necessarily used as a as a targeting facility, or don't
Speaker 1: they don't fire kind of depending what we're kind of
Speaker 1: mixing the vernaculars above. Christmas is clearly you know, fire
Speaker 1: have deep range, uh that we're trying to you know,
Speaker 1: keep them in under a treaty all those kinds of things. Drones,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of stay on station. They they're serve
Speaker 1: used for surveillance. There's no way they were drones. These
Speaker 1: are clearly weapons. You can call them cruise missiles. The
Speaker 1: fact that they went that far again and having the
Speaker 1: GPS capability means that they were likely more missiles than
Speaker 1: they were drones. We're talking with military analyst Miclines, who
Speaker 1: we've talked to over the years and really appreciate his
Speaker 1: opinion on things. If Saudi Arabia and Iran went to
Speaker 1: an actual war war, not a proxy war, but they're
Speaker 1: actually at war with each other, which from what I
Speaker 1: understand from my reading MBS, the leader of Saudi Arabian NBZ,
Speaker 1: the leader of you A want they want to take
Speaker 1: out iran Um. What are the um capabilities of each
Speaker 1: of these countries? I mean, who would come out on
Speaker 1: top on that? Well, probably not Um. And I'd say
Speaker 1: the first question is where does that war take place
Speaker 1: on the sky and what happens? And because you've got
Speaker 1: a country that sits in between them, and that's a rock.
Speaker 1: So in all likelihood, if it's anything that happens on
Speaker 1: the ground, it happens in a rock on the southern
Speaker 1: part of Iraq, which has been pro iran Um. If
Speaker 1: the Iranians are able to marshal Um Iraqi forces to
Speaker 1: go along with them, then things would escalate quickly because
Speaker 1: the Salatis would be looking for another partner themselves that
Speaker 1: Jordanians perhaps Um, and you'd have full scale you know war,
Speaker 1: the regional war I guess you'd call. It wouldn't be
Speaker 1: world war just yet as well, you know, the US
Speaker 1: to get involved with that would be crazy because now
Speaker 1: if the IT gets involved, now you bring in Russia,
Speaker 1: you bring in China, you bring all these other elements
Speaker 1: of it. So I think that that the Iranians would
Speaker 1: have the upper hand if they decided to do that,
Speaker 1: based on the amount of resources they could get together
Speaker 1: in that region. Plus the Saudist think that they would
Speaker 1: win because they would just kind of find an air
Speaker 1: war and they think the terms would win it. I
Speaker 1: don't know if that's a good enough of a gamble
Speaker 1: to lose your country over. I wonder what a non
Speaker 1: kinetic response would look like. Um. I mean, the sanctions
Speaker 1: are already pretty harsh. Might the world unite on a
Speaker 1: military naval blockade of or any imports or anything like that.
Speaker 1: Of course that would turn into shooting pretty quick. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and and again any kind of conflict there would
Speaker 1: upset the global markets and effects. You know, you have
Speaker 1: a worldwide recession likely if um, if there was a
Speaker 1: kind of shooting war there, because both Saudian and the
Speaker 1: Iranians would like they have to pay pair back and
Speaker 1: a lot of their production. Hopefully the United States could
Speaker 1: say somewhat stealed from it based on having a more
Speaker 1: resilient economy now based on our energy what we've done
Speaker 1: here in the past ten or fifteen years. So but
Speaker 1: but again, um, you look at that part of the world,
Speaker 1: there's going to be a conflict at some point. The
Speaker 1: question is where it happens, how it happens. I still
Speaker 1: believe that the Iranians would try first, cyber first, or
Speaker 1: these kinds of things, attacking critical infrastructure, going after them first. Interesting.
Speaker 1: Mike Clients, military analysts for CBS News. Mike, thanks a million,
Speaker 1: good to talk to you, Thanks for having me. Thanks