Mark Dubowitz

That's where we're heading.

We have chosen this because we saw the Iranians moving towards the end state that I described.

To prevent them from moving to that end state, we would have to fight a major war.

I'm doubtful that any president would have extended that permission, but that permission is not enough because the Israelis don't have the capabilities to destroy deeply buried missile cities.

They don't have massive ordnance penetrators.

They don't have strategic bombers.

They don't have Tomahawk missiles.

They don't have the capabilities that we have to do severe damage to Iran's missile capabilities.

Well, by the way, it's not inevitable that we're going to fight the battle of Hormuz.

I mean, we saw President Trump now do a 90 degree U-turn and start to talk about negotiations.

He actually had a comment which I found really disturbing.

He said something to the effect of, well, you know, maybe the United States and the Ayatollah, we just share the we share the Gulf.

We share Hormuz.

Yeah.

Now, I don't know if he's serious and he's just doing his usual Trumpian feint, but that's obviously something that would terrify our Gulf Arab audience.

neighbors and certainly should terrify the Japanese, the South Koreans, the Indians, our European allies, anyone who depends on Middle Eastern oil and natural gas.

The notion that Trump would do a deal where we're gonna share Hormuz with the Iranians, with the Ayatollah, I think should be terrifying because if that is the case, and again, I just wanna get back to this, I think it's worth harping on.

If Trump has gone in two and a half years and the next president is not willing to confront

the Iranians, and the Israelis don't have the capabilities to do enough damage to their war-making capabilities, then Iran ends up not, we don't end up sharing the Strait of Hormuz with Iran.

They end up owning it.