Richard Haass

Well, if I may, in the spirit of this podcast, be self-referential, I think it's a good idea because it was mine originally.

I came up with it a few weeks ago.

what I call that the straight has to be open for all or close to all.

Anthony, I find it preposterous that Iran gets to decide who goes through the straight, who doesn't.

And here we are trying to pressure them to essentially compromise at the negotiating table.

In the meantime, they're banking billions.

I just don't get it.

And everybody else, by the way, is unable to export their oil and it's causing havoc in the world economy.

So I wish we had done this weeks ago, better late than never.

But the whole idea is to basically say, look,

Same point.

The state's not Iran's to close, or it's not for Iran to say who can use it.

So either everybody gets to use it or nobody gets to use it, including Iran.

That's our position.

It turns out it's a lot less difficult to do this.

If we do it in a smart way, then it would be to seize and hold Karg Island.

This is a lot more efficient than trying to escort individual tankers.

So it makes sense militarily.

I've spoken to previous CENTCOM commanders and all that.

And again, the idea is to essentially incentivize Iran to be reasonable about this trade.