Eric Swalwell

You were right to bring up Dr. Pape's theory on escalation trap.

The United States is choosing, rather than de-escalate, we are choosing to escalate.

Now, I was initially surprised that the president wanted to do a counter-blockade, which is what this is.

We're blockading their blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.

And the reason I'm surprised he's doing that is, first of all, you're right.

It has the same impact as does landing forces on a place like Karg Island in terms of the international legal scenario.

It's an act of war under international law.

But second of all, and this is very key, blockade is a protracted engagement.

Basically, it's all the worst aspects in terms of the economic and political fallout from, say, landing troops or even doing an even bigger air war, but it has none of the immediate positive effects.

There's no positive effects that will come out of this because, as you rightly note, this thing is going to now involve us potentially

stopping the cargo ships and container ships of other countries, notably China.

Now, I just want to say something right here.

I don't believe for a second that the United States Navy will, in fact, stop Chinese-owned vessels from transiting the Strait of Hormuz, from picking up oil that the Iranians have produced for China and leaving the Strait of Hormuz.

I think there's a lot of braggadociousness.

uh to iran or leaving the iranian ports well they might be able to stop the vessels from crossing the strait of hormuz in terms of just not letting them through but i i really am suspicious that we're seriously going to board uh a a japanese vessel we know the japanese paid the toll right i seriously doubt and and you know past his prologue here

The Americans, when we were doing our blockade of Venezuela in January, there was an opportunity we had to seize a Panama-flagged, Hong Kong-owned container ship.

And ultimately, the president told the Navy, don't touch it, because, of course, he's trying to get a deal with Xi Jinping on the larger trade formulation.

So ultimately, I have a deep suspicion that when it comes to a country like China or

or an ally like Japan, I'm very skeptical the president will honestly do that.

And if he did that, particularly to China, not only would he lose any ability to get a deal with China on these other outstanding issues, but now we're talking about a real world war potentiality here because now we're going after, truly, directly, Chinese trade with Iran and the greater Middle East, which the Chinese military has already... Okay, but let me ask you, Brandon, so what...