David E. Sanger
speaker
2,183 appearances
17 recordings
1 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard today
David E. Sanger’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 12 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 2.
Appearances
a war where the president said repeatedly, oh, I just need another week or so to clean this up and the forces will begin withdrawing.
I think they now realize that they are stuck there for some time, that if the Iranians are going to claim sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz, that there is no way to withdraw a significant American naval force if you are determined to keep that commerce open.
You may remember that when we were closing in on this 14-point plan, the president called me.
I was in London.
I think you and I talked the same night, right?
And what he said was, I'm going to try this agreement, but if it doesn't work, I'm going to patrol the entire Mideast, basically ad infinitum, and charge...
everyone in the region, the Arab states, everybody who's protected by the U.S., a 20% fee, 20% of the value of the cargo they are delivering, and the U.S.
will basically be the paid peacekeeper of the region.
It was kind of a shocking thing because his own secretary of state was telling us that the goal was to actually restore the Strait to the pre-war period where there were no charges for anything, no tolls, no service fees.
And here was his own boss, the president, saying, yeah, there'll be a 20 percent security charge that goes to the taxpayers of the United States.
Well, he dropped it after that phone call.
Until Monday.
Well, inherent in that concept is sort of an admission that the U.S.
could be there for months, for years, forever.
until there's an alternative way to get the region's oil to the markets of the world.
And even if we are not at full-scale war, even if we are just caught on the precipice between war and peace, more like a counterterrorism operation than a full-scale war,
That is the definition of the kind of forever war presence, even if we're not taking significant casualties.
Unfortunately, so far we have not.
But that is exactly what his MAGA supporters were worried about with Iran, that we would go in and get stuck.
Always great to be with you, Rachel.
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