The Duran Podcast - Iran Nuclear Standoff: US Military Blockade or Negotiating Tactic? w/ Jim Webb

Episode Date: April 15, 2026

Iran Nuclear Standoff: US Military Blockade or Negotiating Tactic? w/ Jim Webb

All right, Alexander, we are here once again with the great Jim Webb, joining us on the Duran for another show. Jim Webb, whereup Keekeek, people follow your work. Best place to find me is on X. It's a name you see on the screen, James Webb underscore 16. That's my handle. Best place to find me. Guys, really appreciate you have to be back.

It's always a treat to talk with you and try and explain what the heck is going on in my neck of the woods over here in the U.S. Let's try to figure it out. Guys, I have the link to Jim Webb's X in the description box down below. And I will also add it as a pin comment as well. So you can find that link as a pinned comment. Alexander, Jim, let's discuss what's happening with U.S. President Trump or Dr. Trump. Anyway, let's get into it.

Indeed, let's indeed, because there's no one better to on. all of this, or at least try to unpack all of this with, then with Jim, because Jim's obviously got both the military knowledge, the background, and he's also been involved in the politics, the world of politics and decision-making and policy in Washington, because it's all becoming extremely complicated and extremely strange. So on the 11th of April, the United States and Iran meet at a very high level, I think high than they've ever done, at least in recent years, for negotiations in Islamabad. The negotiations last 20 hours, which does not seem to me a particularly long time, by the way,

given how complex the issues are. There's confirmation that there is no agreement. I don't know why anybody would expect an agreement for one meeting over a problem of this kind. The President Trump then announces that the United States is imposing a sea blockade on Iran. There is total dismay. There are reports that the United States may resume missile strikes on Iranian ports. The U.S. military in the area, Sentcom, appeared to say that the blockade is going to come into effect on the 13th of April.

As of today, it doesn't seem as it very much is happening. The ships are continuing to sail through the Strait of Hormuz with Iranian permission. The Iranians still seem to be controlling the Strait of Hormuz. The U.S. Navy doesn't seem to be making any effort to arrest these ships. which begs the question of what kind of a blockade are we even talking about. And, well, for the moment at least, in general, the cessation of hostilities,

ceasefire, if you prefer, appears to be holding. Now, Jim, you've served in the military. I've heard many people say that if there is going to be a blockade, a naval blockade, it's enforced with helicopters landing on tankers and things of this kind, that the people you would expect to do it in a situation where the Coast Guard,

the US Coast Guard isn't involved, are in fact the Marines, that the US Marines are the most capable and competent force for this sort of thing. There are marine forces in either deployed or being deployed to this area But I've also heard people say that with the assets available, a sea blockade isn't actually achievable, that there just aren't enough forces available to do it. Now, I am completely uninformed, in expert in these things. Can you take us through this and explain to us what you see as the position? Sure. Where do we start with that? Man, that is a lot to unpack. So start with, we'll go to the general with the specific. I think you hit the nail on the head with the negotiations in Islamabad. They were 20 or 21 hours, however you want to carve that up. But it's, that is a pittance compared to the amount of time it's taken to negotiate the end of any number of other conflicts. Most recently take a look at Afghanistan. Those negotiations went on. for years and they went in a third party or a third party country. So, and it was a step by step de-escalation promises on both sides, you know, go back to

Vietnam. There's were long, long, long negotiations to end that war. And there's a lot to work through no matter how long the war itself is. There are very serious, there's very serious distance between what the U.S. wants and what the Iranians are willing to give. And quite frankly, the negotiations last week did not appear very serious at all. It looked like to me, in terms of domestic politics, that President Trump decided to shield his heir apparent in the Republican Party, Marco Rubio, who would be, you know, you'd think would be the guy who would go do this. He is the Secretary of State. That's literally

his job description. Took him to a UFC fight here in Florida instead of having. him go do his job overseas and then sent J.D. Vance, who I believe called President Trump what, a dozen times during that negotiation period. And nothing was really achieved. The hang-up point appears to be the overall enrichment of uranium, which has never been a serious target. Iran is a party to the NPT. They're allowed to enrich uranium if we wanted to. truly control how much uranium they enriched or to what level, they should not have torn up the JPCUA a couple years ago. That led them to around 3 or 4% with certain off-ramps.

There's issues on every side with that in terms of how people viewed it, whether you're the Iranians, the Europeans, or the U.S., but it was a deal in place that allowed for inspections and set a firm threshold, which the NPT does not. And at 60%, which is the current freakout point, for everybody here domestically, particularly the Israelis who are driving this narrative and keeping us in this war, are keeping hostilities at a high point. 60% enables you to do certain things. It enables you to do advanced nuclear research.

It enables you to treat cancer. And at that point, if you truly want to, you can also put a nuclear reactor on board a ship for nuclear propulsion. It is not, you cannot weaponize it. I believe the amount they keep setting that they have. is very limited. It could create a couple of dirty bombs. But what you would exchange for that if you were crazy enough to use that is effectively your entire country being turned into glass, which Iran is not an irrational actor. They've proved that time and time again. They do not want that. And one thing that really befuddles me here domestically is how you lose sight of one of

the key points of the Cold War, which was mutually assured destruction. Now, at any given point in time, That kind of goes on today without it being an explicit policy. Thousands of nuclear warheads in Russia and the United States were pointed at each other. And everybody understood if somebody pulled the trigger, the response would be overwhelming. And that's kept everybody in check for a long time. So with that as the specter, moving on to perhaps the blockade. I was a Marine. I was an infantry in the Marine Corps.

One of our key onboard ship roles is called VBSS or vehicle. It's vessel-borne search and seizure, vessel boarding search and seizure, pardon me. And this is something that is very labor and marine intensive. You cannot just seize a ship with a handful of guys. I mean, you think about how big one of those tankers are and how much space you have to cover. It's not a whole lot different in concept than, say, clearing a building in an urban environment. You need a lot of people to do it. And then you need to hold it, and then you need to drive it somewhere and do something.

So the number of Marines which are in the Gulf right now capable of that are very limited. I would say probably about only 2 to 3,000. You have the larger footprint, but your actual combat guys are a fraction of that, about one third of the overall troops that are deployed there. And this is the same problem we had with people talking about seizing terrain on the ground, too. So, yeah, the blockade appears to be somewhat of a paper tiger overall. And this actually goes in direct contradiction with the laws of armed conflict that governed DOD, where you are not supposed to put a blockade in place that is, in fact, only on paper as it only inflames tensions. So that's, I guess, a good starting point.

In terms of the objectives of this, you know, it's really hard to discern how you break a blockade. If you want to call what the Iranians are doing as a blockade, it looks more like a toll to pay for the damage in their country over the last month. But with another blockade, I believe the only logical conclusion that I can come to about what the Trump administration is thinking is that if they restrict travel through the strait, they will put enough pressure on Iran because somehow he perceives that we have, the U.S. has the moral high ground here. that the international community will come and back him up and force them, the Iranians, to fully open the strait and drop their tolls or however they're going to do it, and also perhaps give up their own sovereignty and control over that strait and the nuclear dust, if you will, that they also possess. And quite frankly, that's a fool's errand.

The strait was open. It was toll-free until Trump decided to bomb Iran on behalf of the Israeli government. a little more than a month ago. So it's a problem he's created, and this appears to be a very desperate attempt to force a solution that is not there. Can we go back to the program we did a very short time ago, about a week ago, in which we went through, you took us through the various military options, if we can call them options, quotation mark options, which were being discussed, the seizure of the islands, the operation on Harg Island, the attempts to conduct a deep infiltration attacks within Iran itself. And you highlighted very thoroughly the enormous

difficulties of every one of these operations and the fact that they all came with extremely high risks. Is he possible that this is the advice the President has to be? finally accepted and that the reason he's come up with the sea blockade idea is because it's the only thing he has left which he thinks can give him some degree of leverage over the Iranians, which but which doesn't come with the risks of all of those other things. Because if that is correct and in light of what you have just told us about the difficulties of the of a sea blockade, then perhaps it's a hopeful sign. It may be that the president is finally coming to realize that this isn't actually straightforward and that a military solution to this

problem simply isn't there. A risk-free military solution simply isn't there in the way that he wanted. Your thoughts about this? I think you're, I think it hit the nail on the head, So one thing that is falling rapidly out of the public specter is the quote unquote recovery operation for the whizzo, as we call them, the radar officer and the pilot of the F-15 that was apparently downed. There's a lot of speculation about the true nature of that mission due to the location. But one thing it did make very, very, very clear is that a large footprint or a large insertion into Central Iran was a very bad idea. was a very bad idea. And I think everybody hopefully got that message. The components that were used to recover that Air Force officer was very different than typical recovery operations.

So another mission that the Marines runoff ship is called Trap. It's where you go in and you recover personnel who are shot down. A good example of this historically is Scott O'Grady, who was shot down in the late 90s over I believe it was Bosnia or Kosovo, but in the Balkans. And one platoon of regular Marines went in, backed up by some air and followed a beacon to his location, recovered him and got out with a very, very minimal firefight. And the objective was, and the intent is to have a very low profile when you do this and just go pick the guy up and get out.

That's what you want to do. So flash forward to what happened a few days ago where you had, SEAL Team 6 on the ground. You had Delta. You had the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment present doing these operations, assets from typical Air Force combat search and rescue. This was an incredibly large footprint with atypical forces. Seal Team 6 and Delta are your premier rate elements. They go in and they seize objectives. They capture and kill. They do not primarily go rescue an individual who has been shot down. That is strictly Air Force Cesar. So by all appearances, you know, I wouldn't go so far as to say that this necessarily was an operation bumping into

another operation out there, although it very well could have been, where you had a forward stage element, perhaps going to try and grab the nuclear dust or the enriched uranium, and then bumped into the need to go recover a guy. However, I think it's more probable that you had those element staged, and this was in effect a testing run for such a raid. And once they got on the ground, there was a number of aircraft that were shot down, hit on the ground. You note that some IDs were left behind, including a U.S. female U.S. Air Force officer. I have not heard anything that suggests that that was faked by the Iranians or any kind of propaganda. I've heard quite the opposite from some of my friends who are still in the service right now, which is surprising.

But what that suggests is that there is a high degree of panic and a large bit of contact at that site, as you would expect, once you insert a force that has a high profile and you go static. And if we go back to my conversation with you earlier a couple weeks ago, that is the fundamental issue with any type of military operation in that environment is, you know, our guys are very, very good at, you know, kicking in the front door and seizing an objective. But for what they're looking at and what the administration would want them to do, whether it's to seize an island in the strait or to actually physically drag out this uranium, you would have to sit on the objective for a long period of time and you no longer have the advantage. I think a good parallel in terms of the folly of thought on that would be Dien Buf with the French, where they decided that they were going to drop a highly specialized airborne unit along with the French Foreign Legion. into a remote area and to build a base that dared the Vietnamese to come attack them. And there's an odd parallel here. And once they went static, the issue became resupply, getting out their casualties, and then they were slowly surrounded.

That would happen much faster in Iran. And I think the memo was received by seeing the results at operation. We lost more aircraft there than I think in the entire global war on terrorism to hostile fire. So we'll see going forward. But you zoom back out to something like the blockade, you run into kind of similar issues where the Iranians have very significant anti-ship capabilities. So if you're trying to run down all of these tankers that are coming out of the straight, you notice the straight is very narrow at one point and it starts to fan out as you as you hit open sea. and we straight up do not have the number of ships or personnel available to really enforce it.

So I would suggest that this is a Trump negotiating tactic. He is a hardcore businessman from Manhattan who dealt in the kind of shady world of real estate. And one way I've heard it discussed is when he negotiates, it's like slap, slap, kiss, kiss. You try and appear strong, smack your counterpart across the table. upside the head and then you offer them a fig leaf on the back end. So it appears to be posturing, I hope. And I think there's going to be negotiations next week like we talked about for the show. And this is just a prelude to it.

And he wants to appear strong to his domestic base after a series of absolute just wild, wild statements over the last few days. Absolutely. Well, can I just say something about that? Because of course, that may work very well in real estate. but international diplomacy is a very, very different thing. And you can't just slap the Iranians one day and kiss them the next. It doesn't work like that with the Iranians. And again, going back to our previous program, you discussed again very thoroughly.

And by the way, after that program, I saw other people discuss it elsewhere, just so. But you discuss very, very thoroughly the way in which the whole military operation up to that point had been conducted in a way that was very untypical for the United States, in that it wasn't all thoroughly and meticulously and very carefully thought through and planned through. It all looked to be very extemporized and improvised and without any clear structure or planning. to it. And I have to say the same seems to me to be the case with the negotiations and with the announcement of this blockade. It's all very much done on the fly, very much on impulse, whereas in negotiations, especially these kind of negotiations, you need to prepare meticulously. You have to have a big team of people. I've not been involved in negotiations. This is something I've done. You have to have a big team of people. You need to think through every single

possible angle. You need to know the people you are negotiating with. You research them. You find out the background of them. It's something you prepare for, you know, very carefully in advance, and you know clearly your own mind. So again, are we looking at the same pattern as I said, everything being done on the fly with a president in far too much of a hurry and announcing a sea blockade when really the right thing to have done says, okay, we didn't agree today. Maybe we should meet again next week and see where we go from there. I'd take it a step further, Alex, and say, you know, if we didn't get anything done in 21 hours, why are we even leaving the table? If you're serious about this, you know, and it's to do exactly what you're talking about.

And I would refer to it in a slightly different sense, which is rapport building. If you're actively seeking to create a deal as the president likes to say it, you know, why not sit there for a couple of days and get to know the people you're talking to and really understand their concerns? While the rest of the entourage, like you're saying, is working issue by issue with their counterparts in different segments. It's a, you can call it even like little different stove pipes. But this definitely goes back to the whole kind of slapdash nature of this war. And you go back to the, I guess the admissions of a guy like Marco Rubio and Secretary or Speaker of the House Johnson, where they flat out admitted that we went to war to back up the Israelis because they were going to go. That's it.

They drug us into this conflict. And when you have that kind of admission from the Secretary of State, that flat out says that, You are not, you were not prepared for this. And then you take a look at the forces that were in place on the ground. We had absolutely no ground component. We obviously were lacking in anti-air defense. We probably didn't have enough aircraft to prosecute the type of mission that they wanted to prosecute. And historically speaking, that is anathema to U.S. military operations.

We are known to be overprepared for at least the initial invasion or initial kickoff of hostilities wherever. we are. We're also known not to think really things through two, three, four years down the road. I mean, you can take a look at Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan. I mean, there's any number of recent conflicts where that has been the case. And this is just a natural arc. It speaks to, I think, the absolute lack of leadership in Washington. They are reacting emotionally, or I would say someone at the top, like the president is reacting emotionally and he's not surrounded by competent people who, A, will say no, when there's a bad idea. But B, their lack of experience is put on display

when you have a situation where you don't have a real negotiating team in place, you don't have a plan to negotiate, or when you're kicking off a war, and you just don't have the personnel in place to do what you want to do. It's almost like it's a fantasy land. I was looking at the makeup of the Iranian negotiating team. And say what you will about the Iranians, they did put together a very strong team of people.

You could see that there were lots of people with all the relevant competencies there, lots of experts. The American team, as you rightly say, the vice president, I think he's a clever man, but he does not have the background and the experience in this type of negotiation.

He's the vice president. He's not a diplomat. The Secretary of State, Marker Rubio, has been on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He has much more experience than this area. Exactly as you said, why is he not there? And what are Whitgar from Kushner still doing? I'm going to say what, I mean, I floated this on a programme, but I am absolutely sure that this is what people are saying around the world. they are there because they are there to keep an eye on Vance,

not because they're going to negotiate with Wittgoff, sorry, with Ghalabuff and Arakshi. But it's a sign that the president doesn't fully trust his vice president going into this negotiation. Now that might not be true, but I've no doubt at all that around the world, that is what a lot of people are thinking. And by the way, we had that big article in the New York Times about the origins of the war, which I think bore out all that you were saying, two meetings apparently,

in which people are asked, can we do it, can we not do it? And everybody basically said a few words, and then the president decided. There's certainly no real planning. But clearly, there's been no planning behind this negotiation. and no real agreement or process to sort out the negotiating team or to prepare the positions in advance. So, excuse me, so when I first started working in Washington, one of the first things that I was told one day I came back to my chief of staff in Rand Paul's office,

kind of hot around the collar about a bill coming through. It was foreign relations related. And the first thing my chiefest staff told me was never assume malfeasance when incompetence is a perfectly good explanation. And I typically roll with that in the day to day when viewing particularly these types of issues, the team he has around him is fairly inexperienced. And they seem to have mucked a lot of things up. However, this in particular looks very malignant. it looks as if this was designed to fail. When you're sending someone for one day and you're not sending the guy whose job it is to do it,

there's no other way it could be, quite frankly. And I worked next to Marco Rubio for a number of years. I was a staffer on the committee. I found him to be incredibly savvy, incredibly intelligent. Never agreed with him on policy. But he is a very smooth political. operator who is superb at negotiating and he was on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for a very, very long time. So he would be the absolute natural fit to go get this done. And then you

look at Kushner and Whitkoff, quite frankly, they are handlers. They have no experience in this whatsoever. There's a, I guess, an argument out there that Kushner in particular as a businessman who's dealt in the Middle East could have some negotiating prowess, but it's this. horrific mistake to view business negotiations somehow in parallel with diplomatic negotiations. It's totally different. You're not seeking the same ends. You're not seeking the same kind of deals. And what you need to incorporate into them is the long historical arc of a nation, of civilizations, if you will, the Iranians are the Persians. They've been around for millennia. And you need to have subject matter experts in that field. And the people principally

doing the negotiations have to be experts on what they're looking at culturally in order to get these things done. So quite frankly, designed to fail. And I think there's a lot of evidence in that with BB Netanyahu's tweet following the negotiations, talking about how, you know, he got off the phone with JD Vance and very much sounded like he had been giving him marching orders during the negotiation and Vance was reporting out to him. And this is if you combine all these things together and you you roll in Vance's appearance in Hungary trying to back Orban. It looks almost like a deliberate attempt to humiliate him. He is a guy who doesn't typically agree with all of President Trump's policies and perhaps behind

closed doors he's been disagreeing. I would prefer somebody who disagrees with this because it's such a big issue to take a public step forward and make a statement, particularly another gentleman who is a Marine. like myself, although he wasn't a combat guy. But, you know, that would fit the bill. But it looks like they're effectively burning him to get what they want in the near term while they preserve Marco Rubio because he is a through and through neocon. There's no way around it to carry the mantle on 2028.

I should just say, just in support of what you just said, that there's an article today in the Financial Times, which speaks of J.D. Vance, the constantly shrinking vans. I mean, it's very cruel, actually, to read what they say about vans. Now, the other side, if I can call them that, are busy, much more busy than I think people are aware. Yesterday, Lavrov spoke to Arakshi, and had a very interesting conversation. I have the Russian readout in front of me, and it says that there should be continued to be diplomatic efforts.

Lavrov told Arakshi that the purpose must be to find a to seek solutions that would address the root causes of the conflict. Now, anybody who has followed the conflict in Ukraine will know that alarm bells should ring when the Russians talk about root causes. That's what they're talking about Ukraine. Now they're talking about it in relation to Iran. And then if you go further, you read that the Russians are coming up with this proposal for a new security system in the Persian Gulf, which will bring together Iran. and the Arab-Persen Gulf states, and which will be underpinned or guaranteed by what the Russians are calling as extra-regional countries capable of making a constructive contribution to the negotiation process.

Now, it's not difficult to guess who that means. and straight after Lovov had that conversation with Arakshi. He then spoke to the foreign minister of the UAE, and it's clear that he was floating the same idea to him. And then that happened at roughly the same time that Xi Jinping was meeting with the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, and if you look at the Chinese readout, it's clear that he, Xi Jinping, was floating the same idea to the UAE as well.

And then after that, Lavrov talks to Fiedan, the Turkish foreign minister, who basically says, yes, we're all in, as you would expect. And then Lov takes the plane and flies to Beijing. So quite a lot of diplomatic activity going on there. And if you unpack it, if you unscramble it, if you unscramble it, all. To me, and of course I'm not being in the room with all of these people, it looks as if they're all talking together about coming to some kind of arrangement in the Persian Gulf, which does not involve the United States. I mean, what does those words about countries that

have played a constructive role in the negotiating process? What could that, who could that refer to? So are the Americans involved in all of this? I mean, I should say, I don't think it's going to happen. I mean, I don't think it's possible to exclude the United States and the Persian Gulf. But I think there ought to be at least an awareness in Washington that this is going on. First of all, do you think there is? And do you think anybody's taking it seriously? and do you think that there is any attempt at least to speak to the Chinese, if not the Russians,

about all of these various moves? I would hope so. Those are some very, very straightforward tea leaves to read. And if you look at the overall arc of where this has been going in terms of with the bricks and in the international arc of who is becoming the chief negotiator for people, around the world, it is turning into China. And that is where the United States is going to completely lose its moral high ground, its traditional position as a negotiator. We always backed up negotiations by force, but more often than not, until recently, we have been at the forefront

of doing this in order to preserve our position, if nothing else, and to preserve our currency. If you look at the core request, the core underpinnings here, which you mentioned at the front end, you know, the root causes, if you will, there's a direct parallel between Ukraine and Iran and what they want and the threats that they face. And I was in the room with any number of Russian negotiators several years ago prior to the outbreak of war in Ukraine. And one of the mandates of my boss at that time, Rand, was to prevent such a war from happening. And what we were peeling the onion back, or the layers of the onion back on, where these different layers of threats, part of it was the Aegis Ashore system, which we wanted to put in Ukraine, which is less

obvious than the admission of Ukraine into NATO, which appeared farcical at the time. It's still a really terrible idea. I hope it's still a bad joke. But the bottom line is that you have a country on their border, which is a direct threat to them and the safety of their people. And if you put Aegis Ashore there, not to go too far down. on this rabbit hole, but you're talking about the potential for nuclear-tipped cruise missiles, being in Moscow in under five minutes and having absolutely no ability to respond to that

whatsoever. It's an unnecessary provocation. The number one thing the Iranians want is the removal of forces, removal of U.S. forces that are a threat to them. And the force posturing we have in the Middle East right now doesn't back anything up other than trying to militarily pressure until this war broke out and directly attack Iran. And there's no more war in Iraq for us to fight. There's no logistical tale you really need to back up any large troop concentrations other than if you're trying to threaten and attack Iran. So the parallel there is crystal clear.

And you have the same principle negotiators on the opposite side of the table trying to build a consensus to solve a similar problem. The major issue that comes into play here with the Middle East is how invested a country like China is in having a secure pathway for their natural resources to reach them. It's upwards of, I believe, like 80 to 90 percent of their petroleum with various stripes goes to China. But there is some attention on that in the United States right now. And it's turned into this just hyperbolic, nonsensical, like fifth grade level assumption that President Trump is playing 4D chess. And the overall objective of this is to choke out the Chinese and rebalance the oil trade globally. The big thing that is the most important thing that's left out of that are our own allies in the Pacific.

And they receive, you know, the majority of their oil and fertilizer. from the Straits of Hormuz, whether it's Japan, South Korea, or even Australia. And this is not part of the discussion, and it needs to be. Because as we've seen recently, you take a look at the Taiwanese. They are already meeting with their Chinese counterparts. It happened two days ago. And it's the trajectory for these countries in terms of their energy supply, the cost of food, or something even like mining in Australia,

is unsustainable, and we are creating problem after problem. I say, we denied states, no, I'm not having any part of it, but we United States are creating problem after problem for these countries just to maintain their basic viability every single day. And at some point, it's kind of like wearing a pair of shoes, right? You might really like your Nikes, but if they tear your feet up, you're going to go buy Adidas. And, you know, that's, I think that's coming.

And just one final comment to Zoom. back into the region, the force posturing we put in place with all of these countries in the Middle East. We asked them to pick us over ties with Iran and they have some historical friction with Iran. But the guarantee was that if you roll with us, we will provide you with the equipment and the means to defend yourself should something pop off. And war happened and they were not protected. And they're getting Maliwopped in the process. It's an extremely important point, actually. It takes us back by the way to Ukraine. I mean, Ukraine has been demanding security guarantees from the United States. And what we actually see from this world, or at least one of the things that this war is apparently showing, is that America is not always able to act on its security guarantees. In that respect, this war is. This has been very damaging.

And I'm glad you'll provide your point about the 4D and 5D and 60 chess. Because if people take a step back, this is not making, this conflict is not making China weaker. It's making it stronger. China is now involved in the Middle East in ways it has never been previously. It is not protecting Israel. Israel is being attacked to a degree that it has never been attacked before. It is not reducing the risk of Iran one day developing a nuclear bomb. The Iranians have been incentivized to think about developing a nuclear bomb because without it,

they have been attacked. The results of all of this are completely contrary to all of these objectives, and that all of these people who, So talking this way about 4D and 5D chairs and we must do this in order to prevent that, it's working out in exactly the opposite way. Do you want to speak to that a bit? Yeah. So the overall objectives for the United States would be to, in a perfect world, would be to maintain stability and open up trade and to de-escalate tensions with Iran. So if you go back to the way that the North Koreans developed the bomb, they took one look at Omar Gaddafi giving up his weaponry in 2003 in an attempt to adhere to George Bush's,

you're either a terrorist or you're against us type of rhetoric. He thought this would be an immediate release of sanctions. He would be incorporated into the West in some way. And actually, it would be a pretty obvious way considering the amount of oil that Libya at the time traded with the EU or particularly France. It would have made a whole lot of sense. However, it resulted ultimately in his removal from power and being sodomized with the bayonet to death. And you have Kim Jong, who said quite specifically that he developed that nuclear weapon as an insurance policy. And there is no other way to get around that.

And it created a lot more tension on the peninsula in Korea than was there previously. So if you take a look at the Iranians, one other parallel between Iran and Libya is the development of ballistic missiles. They got the Libyans to effectively throw away any type of deterrent that they would have, even at the local level, or we could call it the tactical or operational or. operational level. And that is a major request that we are making of Iran at this point in time. And it makes absolutely no sense. Unless you look at it through the specter of what Israel wants out of this, their chief rival in the region, the block between them and achieving regional hegemony is Iran through their capabilities and through their economic potential. And what they are after is a basically a Balkanization of the Iranian state, which is a pipe dream. It's never happened to them before.

This is an empire. This once again, been around for millennia, and they have a very, very strong identity, and they have a very strong system that governs the country no matter who's in charge. And there's going to be some continuity with that, no matter how you do it. The rest of the region is effectively on fire at this moment due to our provocations, our attacks, and our ability or desire to further Israeli ambitions in the region. And naturally, that's going to require one of two things to happen. Either the United States doubles and triples down and commits the ground troops necessary across the region to further Israeli objectives, which I don't think is going to happen.

I really hope it doesn't happen. It would go over like a lead balloon here in the United States. This is already the most unpopular war in U.S. history, but it's the only way the Israelis can achieve those objectives. to ride our back. They do not have the military to expand their borders any further than they already have. There's reports of them moving into southern Lebanon, blowing bridges and isolating, but that would be the absolute limit, in my opinion, of what their military is capable of. The other side of the coin on this is that people in the region, the other countries in the region,

and in particular other major powers such as Russia and China, get totally fed up with the way that we conduct ourselves and do whatever is necessary short of actual physical confrontation in order to drive us out as much as they can or to kneecap us. And I look at that in terms of economics. You know, it goes back to an interesting way that the United States operated in the Cold War, which is no longer being used by the United States, but ironically is being used by China, where the Soviets expanded at the barrel of a gun. They spread their ideology through typically through invasion. And we would do it through co-opting other countries and saying, hey, we'll make you rich. And that has a much broader appeal. Today, it appears the Chinese are taking up the mantle

and how we did things, although it's slightly different. But it is more effective. And in the long term, or even the medium term, it's going to work. Can we go back to this thing that you mentioned, which I think is a very important one, which is about freedom of navigation? Because from as long as I can remember, I mean, going all the way back to, you know, the time when I first started to take an interest in things, the United States has always said that it wants freedom of navigation. It makes complete sense. The United States is one of the major trading partners. It is the absolute center of the global economy. One would expect it to want stability and freedom of the seas. And it is, In some respects, first and foremost, there see power. I mean, that is the source of a lot of its wealth and a lot of its power. So it makes absolute, and prosperity, that makes complete sense. And I also remember that the United States back in the 1980s, early 1980s,

I remember when President Carter spoke about it and the Carter doctrine and all of that, about the importance of freedom of navigation in the first. Persian Gulf and in this particular area. Now, how is that reconcilable with announcing sea blockades? I don't understand. I don't get this. I mean, you spoke earlier about using a blockade to end a blockade. Having two blockades going on at the same time is assuming they were going to work would

make that blockade even tighter, which thankfully at the moment doesn't seem to be the case, because it's not being enforced, but it would make it even tighter and would take us further away from freedom of navigation. All of the Chinese, and they made this very clear, they want freedom of navigation in the Persian Gulf. They don't like what the Iranians are doing with the straight of whole moves. They've said so, by the way. They're quite clear about it. So surely, what the president is doing is again approaching this problem in completely the wrong way.

We had freedom of navigation before. We don't have it now. And the priority should be to take us back to a situation where we could have it. And there is international support for that. that. Yeah. You know, it's, you have to look no further than the U.S. Constitution to see how important freedom of navigation is at a fundamental level. And then you look no further than the president's actions, whether it's the initial bombing of Iran back last June, the snatching of Maduro, the launching of a full-scale war a little over a month ago, to see his complete disregard

for that document, either that or the ignorance of it. The, The founders of the United States founded us as a trading seafaring nation that was not supposed to have a standing army, but we had a Navy and a Marine Corps that were to ensure the sea lanes. It's very, I think it was kind of similar to the British model in a way. Well, can I just say about that? Yeah. The one war, Britain and the United States have fought against each other was over the issue of freedom of navigation. The United States was unhappy with the fact that Britain. was violating it. That was the war of 1812. Anyway, just continued. Yeah, stole the words right

of my mouth, right out of my mouth. So to see another country, which is constantly described, this being China, as authoritarian, a threat to the American way of life, actually adhering to some of our first principles in a way that we've abandoned is more than disturbing. At the same time, what you're saying about a blockade to offset a blockade somehow breaking up a blockade is completely just, I mean, I can't even wrap my brain around how many hoops you would have to jump through logically to even make that sound like it's possible. And I think it gets back to the intent of the Trump administration. They somehow believe that the international community at some point with the agreements we have historically had that Trump has railed on and torn down continuously, whether it's NATO, whether it's our allies in the Pacific, that they're somehow obligated to do whatever we do whenever we do it. And it's not how those documents work. like never has the United States started a war and then been able to activate our alliances

in order to drag our allies into it to get what we want. I guess Article 5 of NATO has been used one time. That was in Afghanistan. I think that was a bit of a stretch, but at least we were attacked in the process. And our allies showed up in a cursory fashion, you know, I guess proportional to their interest. Proportional to their interest in acquiring U.S. funding would be a better way to put it, but they were there. And this is not the case. So the blowback on this is, I believe, we're starting to see is going to be a complete abandonment of requests to work with the United

States and people actively seeking another option. It is not in the interest of any number of our allies or the Chinese and their economy to have their energy supply shut down. That crushes economies. And we haven't even begin to see the effect on the food supply, which is it's going to be a little bit delayed, but that's going to be massive. What this is is an opportunity, particularly for the Chinese, to very calmly kind of stay with their rhetoric about looking to change, you know, to change peacefully the situation on the ground and to rally support around them, to offset the United States, and then inevitably to force us. us to back out and come to some kind of agreement. And the president is inevitably going to

spin this domestically the best that he can. But ultimately, this is in the process of destroying our credibility and our relationships, I believe, for a couple of decades at least, if not permanently. How long is this going to go on for? I mean, have you any, I like you, I think we both think that negotiations between the United States and Iran are going to resume. some kind of agreement is eventually going to be reached. But negotiations conducted in this chaotic way. It actually lasts longer probably than they would if they were conducted in the proper structured way that you were saying. I mean, your point, by the way, about why did they even leave?

Why did after a single meeting that they would just leave? And that's a very good one, by the way. They could have a break and that they could have met the first. day, and they could have taken it further. In fact, permanent negotiations, a permanent structure of negotiations is actually a good thing in this kind of crisis. But how long is it going to take? I mean, we have a, it's probably behind it in the US, but we've had riots now in Ireland over energy issues. We're having more and more problems in Europe. We're having many problems in Asia. I've heard reports that the Japanese prime minister has been trying to call

Putin to get help. So far, Putin is not taking her calls, all kinds of reasons and rumors about that, which we're not going to go into here. But there is a developing crisis. The world wants to see this resolved quickly. If there is a further sense, that the Americans are being erratic and as a result, it's dragging on. That's not going to make a lot of, that's going to make a lot of people very unhappy. But ultimately, it's going to make people in the US unhappy too, because if there is a global crisis, Americans will be affected as well. So, how long is this going to go on for?

And why, just very last question, why is Congress, which you once worked, why is it not playing its constitutional role here? For this, what I understand, it's constitutional role to be. Yeah, so break us into two parts. How long is this going to last? I hope only at a maximum a couple of more weeks. Unlike other conflicts, there is a massive economic lever, which is being played both globally and probably more importantly for the president,

although he seems to be ignoring polls and insulting his voting base left and right. But the economic lever here is very severe and getting worse. Before I came on the air today, my sister sent me a text message on the way to work. She's a nurse in California and was filling up her gas tank. And diesel fuel in California, where she's at is almost $9 a gallon. It's absurd. It's where I live, regular fuel is four. she's looking at six, six, $6.6.50 a gallon. And that is unsustainable for the domestic economy, any which way you cut it. We haven't seen riots in the street yet, but there's a, I think that if that goes on much longer, you're going to see a lot of public protests against this, more so than you already have. Then there's the economic factors internationally. I don't think that reasonable parties are going to allow the United States to drag this out, particularly.

particularly President Trump. This is his war. He started it. He's keeping it going. And he seems to be more emotionally attached to it than rationally attached to it. They're not going to allow the entire global economy to crash into some kind of depression and have population starve, which is a real thing if this goes on too long. So I would hope that we have negotiations start within the next week and they can hammer something out. The sticking points that are there. are pretty firm. The Iranians are not going to give up their own sovereignty, nor should they. And the issue of enrichment is a non-issue. It is a shifted goalpost by Israeli pressure inside the U.S. government. We've gone from getting rid of nukes to they can't enrich uranium, which means they can't, they can't treat their own citizens for cancer or they can't provide power to their own citizens in an alternate way. And that's illogical. It's, I don't think that's, I don't think that's, going to happen either. A complicating factor to this is, I believe that to go back to the raid, or sorry, it wasn't the raid, the aborted raid or the pickup of the pilot, President Trump

always likes to have a big splash in order to get out of a conflict. And I think that was it. It was from everything I've heard from my contacts, a number of troops that were on the deck doing the extraction were a fraction of what was required to actually go in and snatch the and rich uranium, which was a plan on the books. And that was severely disrupted. So he is left without his glorious exit and victory from the war, which his ego requires. And there has to be some sort of other one. I wrote about this in the most recent piece for Responsible Statecraft.

And I believe I've said it on your show before. Declaring victory and bringing our troops home from the Middle East would do a lot to repair what is left of that is able to repair and the damage to his base. case. If he can do that and pull that off, it would be a big splash. It would appease the Iranians and get us out. Low probability. And then to your last point, where is Congress? Congress is on vacation. And that is most unfortunate. But one thing to understand about American politics is how much influence APEC has on the body and how popular a war with Iran has been, not just in, the last couple of weeks within that body. I'm talking years. They were the target while I was there. You know, this was, I started in the U.S. Senate in 2018.

I left in 2020. But before that, even, I mean, you can go, you can go all the way back to some of the policy writings at the end of the 90s on behalf of Netanyahu, many of which emanated from members of our own DOD establishment. What is it? A clean break. securing the realm, basically laid out our policy in the Middle East that was executed across the global war on terrorism. And the big target at the end of that is Iran. So there has

been a major push and a major conditioning and a selection of people within Congress via money and chosen candidates via money for a long time. And they don't want to risk their necks on anything. It's very counterintuitive, to be honest, because anybody who would stand up right now and decide to speak out against this war and invoke some sort of congressional authority or reclaiming the authority of legislative branch would be immensely popular domestically, yet they don't do it. And that's very, very, very confusing to me on an individual level. And it can only make you wonder about how corrupt our system actually has been. So Jim Webb this has been an absolutely outstanding program.

I do hope we do more very soon. It's been incredibly thorough. In fact, I will ask you now, if as things develop, if you can be prepared for more requests, invitations from us, just to say. Thank you very much. And by the way, just to say, you can also find Jim Webb on Responsible Statecraft, that particular article that he wrote. absolutely is one people should read.

I would suggest that they look out for all the things that Joe writes, responsible statecraft, and in other places as well. You will learn an awful lot from them. Well, gentlemen, I truly appreciate the kind words, the opportunity to join you again. Thank you. And on X.

Find Jim Webb on X. I will have links in the description box down below, and that's a pin comment. Great show. Thank you very much. Mr. Jim Webb. Take care.