Iran War Update: Tankers hit | Hour 3

What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to three on WBT radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to the Pete calendar show dot com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button. Get every episode for free right to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support. Let me go over here to the Iran war update. It's been a while, but stuff is happening. You've heard the news there at the top of the hour that the price of a barrel of oil is now hitting $ 100 a barrel. And so people are now going to obviously feel it when they're filling up their cars. Outrage ensues. Political pressure builds, right? So what prompted all of this? Well, there is a larger strategy that Iran is employing. as part of this. I will get to that. But this has been building for the last few days, almost a week. So, according to Iran International, Iran launched an attack on U.S. Navy ships on Monday. They claim, you know, that it was great success, inshallah, God willing, it was massive success. We hit all of these boats and all these vessels, and in fact, they didn't hit any of them. But that's what, of course, they, that's what they say. U.S. officials say that, told the Wall Street Journal, that Iran's recent attempts to hit American naval assets have raised concerns that Tehran is using more sophisticated weapons and maybe, maybe, we don't know, maybe, receiving assistance from, wait for it, China or Russia. That's right, China or Russia. I know. I am as shocked as you are. The United States has so far destroyed 10 oil tankers in the last week. These tankers are part of what's called the Shadow Fleet. These are the vessels that have been moving Iranian oil in order to avoid the sanctions. bringing it to Russia, bringing it to China, using intermediaries and stuff. U.S. CENTCOM said that it destroyed five of these tankers yesterday after the IRGC launched two ballistic missile attacks on a U.S. Navy warship over the last two days. The warship evaded both attacks. No U.S. personnel were harmed. So the IRGC launches the missiles. We respond by blowing up five more oil tankers. That brings the total to 10 over the last week. The IRGC threatens a response and then does so. Last night, I was seeing the reports coming in that they flung a bunch of missiles into Jordan, targeting the U.S. base in Jordan, which is like, this is one of the reasons I keep pointing this out, that the U.S. bases in the Middle East are not there for Israel. They are there for the other Middle Eastern countries that are threatened by Iran. So this is, according to the Hormuz letter, this is the largest single U.S. strike on oil tankers since World War II. There were three on September 5th. The tankers were the Kaviz, the Shamanar, the But one of them, or two of them, were near Karg Island. Remember that? Remember Karg Island? Yeah. When the U.S. struck the three tankers on September 5th, Iran answered with the single largest attack in the Strait of Hormuz of the war, hitting six vessels, three of them oil tankers. Okay, so they also hit other boats. Now, there are dozens of Iranian vessels at Karg Island. Trump has been threatening to... you know, blow up their infrastructure, blow up their energy, blow up their Karg Island, right? Making all these threats for months now. Jordan says that its air defenses intercepted 18 Iranian missiles. Two other missiles fell in unpopulated areas without causing casualties. And that is, by the way, sort of the SOP, the standard operating procedure here, which is If you know that the missile or the drone, if it's going somewhere where there's no damage to life or property, then they just let it go. They don't waste the ammo shooting it down. However, this does raise the question of, you know, how much ordnance do we have to continue to shoot down all of these missiles? The IRGC said... The Hormuz letter. says Iran's IRGC Navy announced it captured one of the U.S. military's newest unmanned submarines at the entrance of the Strait of Hormuz at dawn, describing it as a complex intelligence and operational action, and says the vehicle carries the newest underwater tech, the newest in the world, and was delivered to the U.S. fleet last year. The vehicle is an Enduril Dive LD, a six-meter, three-ton survey submarine rated for 10 days underwater and can go down to 6,000 meters deep. The new photos were released showing the white hull of this unmanned sub intact, and it's connected to a crane sling in an Iranian pier, which means Iran now holds current generation U.S. underwater platform in one piece. This was the same position Iran was in With the Israeli Hermes 900, it took earlier in the war, and then it hands these things off to the IRGC engineers so they can open it up and figure out how it's made, and then they can try to replicate the tech that we built, right? The U.S. RQ-170 Iran captured in 2011. Never left that country either. One of the newest vehicles in the U.S. Navy's undersea inventory is now on a crane hook in an Iranian harbor. Not sure if we're going to blow up the harbor. Not sure if it's still there. But they captured an unmanned sub, which they've been using to survey as they've been going through and taking out the mines that Iran put in the Strait of Hormuz, which that operation's been going on for weeks. And they've blown up a whole bunch of these mines that Iran had laid in the Strait of Hormuz. They've also been shepherding a whole bunch of tankers through the strait, which has kept the oil market stable, and they've been doing it at night. They've been gathering in groups, and then the U.S. escorts them through, and Iran was blind to this for almost a month. But they figured it out about a week ago or so. which probably prompted their flinging of drones and missiles at the boats in the water. Now, what is the messaging that the IRGC is sending out regarding all of this? All right, for over a year now, you've heard me talking about Create-A-Video, great local company in Mint Hill that has helped more than 2 million families preserve their memories by turning old photos, VHS tapes, film reels, and slides into lasting keepsakes. Now, Create-A-Video is helping families and groups create brand new memories while they're traveling. Introducing Group Travel Videos. Perfect for family reunions, church mission trips, group vacations, destination weddings, student trips, senior adult groups, sports teams. I mean, really any gathering of people that you care about that's traveling together. 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From old memories to new adventures. Preserving life's moments for a lifetime. Do I have some texts to get to, actually? John says, do you know if the new Venezuela deal is expected to have any downward pressure on oil prices to counter the upward pressure from the Middle East? My personal expectation is yes, for a couple reasons, I think, off the top of my head. Number one, under the socialist rule, their oil industry, you know, because they nationalize, quote-unquote nationalize, which just means that the Marxist government steals all of the assets, the industries that free market capitalist businesses built, right? So they seize them, they steal them, and then they run them into the ground because they're Marxist, and they don't really know how to manage it, they don't know how to how to, you know, look at price signals and the like. And so their capacity has been degraded over time. Okay. Like Venezuela should be one of the dominant oil producers on the planet. And just over time since the, you know, Hugo Chavez took over and then Maduro, like it's just been on a gradual decline. Number one. So you're going to have, you should start seeing once these assets get, rehabilitated, the industry starts pumping more oil, you should see more oil into the system, number one. Number two, I think them being a member of OPEC, and Venezuela is a member of OPEC, they then abandon OPEC. They're out. Now they're not constrained by the caps that OPEC puts on production. And OPEC does that. in order to protect their own revenue streams, right? So, and this is why, who was it? UAE, I believe it was. They left OPEC a couple of, about a month or so ago. They got out of OPEC because their economy is not, it's not all tied up in oil. They've got a whole bunch of like other financial services and like they got a bunch of other industries that, that do well, so they're not totally reliant on oil, unlike Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia has these very rich social net programs, and they pay their citizens in this oil revenue and stuff, and that requires, I believe it's like $ 60 a barrel, I think, is their break-even point. So they always have to be above $ 60 a barrel. So anytime there's too much supply in the world market, that it's driving down the price, they then limit production. So this way, it keeps the price high because their internal budget, their domestic funding requires that level of funding, $ 60 a barrel. I think it's 60. It's been a couple months since I looked at that number, but I believe it's $ 60 a barrel. So I do anticipate it having an impact. I don't know when, but I've said that since the beginning of this war, I've said like, there are different games. If you look at like all, you look at the world stage as a game of risk or something, right? There are, there are different games being played. And I always qualify this by saying, I am not one who believes that Donald Trump is always playing 72 dimensional chess here. However, just looking at the Iran situation through, through just a U S Iran lens, or even a, Israel is an Iran lens. That is myopic. You're blinding your view to all of these other pieces, which involve China, Russia, Venezuela, Cuba, world oil markets, choke points around the globe. All of these straits that are vital shipping lanes. Then you get into UNCLOS, the UN Law of the Seas. The convention, I think it is on the law of the seas, UNCLOS. So you start dealing with all of these security issues all around the globe, and they're all interconnected. You've got NATO as part of that and Turkey inside of NATO. There's all these different players moving pieces and such. So I do think it has an impact. I don't know when. But the realignment of the global oil markets, I think, is part of this game. It is part of the game that's playing out. And I know we as Americans, we have very short attention spans. We don't have a lot of patience. Right. So we want everything lickety split. We want it right now. However, like this is a massive shift that's going on, a realignment that's going on. Venezuela comes online and now you're trading all of that oil. America, a dominant oil producer now, thanks to Trump's first term, the fracking that has unleashed all of the energy production in that realm as well. And that puts a lot of pressure on these countries like China and Russia. All right. So Jeff also says, I also wonder how the IRGC manages to still be so wealthy after we so handily wiped out their Air Force and Navy. Do we not know where they are? No, they don't really, they don't have an Air Force and Navy anymore to speak of. Everything that they're doing, these are all like what they call in the Strait of Hormuz or um, in the Gulf, they, they call it, um, the, uh, the fast boats. These are smaller vessels that just, they're like little speed boats and they just cruise around and they harass ships and stuff. And then you add in drones on, you, you put somebody with a drone onto a fast boat and then they can launch the drone from the boat or they can launch it from the shoreline. Right. So that's, you know, it's harassment of the ships. And this is, This ties into global shipping issues, right, where they're like, okay, who's writing the insurance for these tankers? And the insurance companies are like, all right, we're not going to give you any insurance anymore if you're coming through the Strait of Hormuz. That means people don't want to ship there. That has an impact on the oil markets. Also keep in mind, all of the nations around Iran, they are racing right now, and they have been for a couple months, to build underground oil. pipelines that go all around the Gulf. And then they don't have to worry about this anymore. That's what they've been doing. And so once all those pipelines get turned on, then the leverage, the card that the IRGC had to play by doing this exact thing, they've already played it. They can't play it any longer. All right, so I asked earlier... What's the IRGC strategy? What's their messaging on all of this? According to open source intel, from monitoring IRGC accounts, here is what the IRGC is pushing. Don't go for the kill yet. Wait until two or three weeks before the elections and then go all out. That's their message. that they are pushing out, because remember, under the Mosaic strategy that they implemented after the decapitation strikes on Iran, or actually after the 12-day bombing campaign by Israel and America, they implemented this Mosaic strategy where they pushed out authority to all of these regional IRGC actors and army units and such. So they are free to act on their own, because they knew that any kind of central command and control... would likely be taken out. And so by telling everybody then, okay, you're on your own, this would allow them to continue to project power without having orders coming directly from the regime. So what they are telling, what they're pushing out to all of these units around the country is wait until mid-October and then step up the war Why? Hmm. Huh. That's a brain buster. I wonder why the IRGC would be interested in our midterm election calendar. Why would they be trying to... Oh! They want Democrats to win. Which really should tell you everything that you need to know. If Iran wants Democrats to win, then to me, that's a pretty good that I should not want them to win. Because if that's what Iran wants, I shouldn't want that. Those are the terms the IRGC is trying to set. The U.S. probably has different terms. I would bet. And here's why. There's a lot that happens that we don't know about And people make all of these guesses and speculations and such. I mentioned the clearing of the mines in the Strait of Hormuz. This was two days ago. Or three days ago. The Financial Times did a big... write-up on how the mines were cleared. Apparently, for the last four months, the U.S. Navy has been secretly clearing Iranian mines and sometimes literally diving into the water to place explosives on the mine itself. No American casualties reported. While Iran has been bragging about controlling the strait, and Western media has been repeating every threat out of Tehran, American servicemen and women were quietly underwater blowing up their mines. I would just... I just offer this as a caution. Iran lies. They lie a lot. They lie about everything. Okay? So they lie, lie, lie. And our media, Western media, keeps treating all of their claims like these are actual legitimate facts. And they're not. So Iran is out there lying. And the U.S. military is actually going out and doing the work and removing the mines. This is from John Spencer. He is the chair of War Studies, Madison Policy Forum, executive director of the Urban Warfare Institute. He points out, this was a week ago, 20 million barrels per day. 20 million barrels was the daily amount of oil that was moving through the Strait of Hormuz before the war, okay? So before the war, 20 million a day. Gulf pipelines increased their flow, and there are reports now that more than pre-war oil is flowing out. He says the U.S. is actually in control of the Strait of Hormuz. The world's oil is in fact getting out. Iran remains under full and effective blockade. Zero Iranian oil is getting out. Their primary customers are now finding alternatives. He goes on to say the U.S. controls the strait. Economic operations are working. The rial, their currency, is worthless. Inflation, like 150% inflation. gas restrictions and shortages all across the country getting worse by the day. The U.S. controls the sky and strikes any threat that they see in the massively degraded Iranian military capabilities. And Scott Besson, U.S. Treasury Secretary, says in two years, the Strait of Hormuz will be a worthless piece of water. The oil will be going on pipelines on land. That's the long game. That's what the Trump administration is reordering. It's like, you know what? This is the only card they have to play, and so we're going to make that card worthless. Meanwhile, you've got their proxy armies that are just getting ripped. The Houthis, no blowfish were harmed. The Houthis, they've been getting pounded in Yemen The Saudis have been fighting them, the Yemen government has been fighting them, and they've cleared out all of this territory that the Houthis had been in control of. They had massive losses over the last 48 hours. So that's a proxy army. You've got Hamas that's boxed in in Gaza, and you've got the Lebanon and Israeli governments laying the wood to Hezbollah. So These are the components, along with the nuclear capabilities, right? These are the components of the overall strategy that the administration has been targeting. There's an outlet called 2CTV, Iranian, not state. This is an anti-regime channel. They report the cracks inside the Islamic Republic are reaching the security forces now. One police officer says people have no money left and prices have become so expensive they're being pushed onto the streets to protest, only to then be labeled as terrorists by the authorities. Even those tasked with enforcing the system are questioning why they are being used to crack down on their own people. Everyone in Iran is unhappy and the Islamic Republic is losing control of the chaos. Iranians are protesting fuel shortages, soaring prices, and economic collapse. Regime supporters are protesting the government. Hardliners are furious over negotiations and any concessions. Even the regime's own base is feeling the pressure. And this is the clock that we are on. The IRGC is looking at the midterms, and the U.S. is looking at Iranian economic collapse. That's the timeline. We are live out here at the Jiffy Lube on North Polk Street in Pineville for... the 7th Annual WBT Little Heroes Blood Drive. Brett is getting ready to take the comm, and so stick around for that. Come on by, make a blood donation, and you'll get 50% off your oil change here at Jiffy Lube. And, yeah, we just had fire vehicles roll past. All righty, so from the text line, 704 number says, Very good explaining all of this, but I still have a hard time figuring out why gas is now $ 3. 99, especially with all that Venezuelan oil. Again, I've explained this over the course of the last seven months. The price of a barrel of oil is tied to markets, and so when things happen, they're looking forward to replace the current stock of oil. And so anything that happens that make the traders think that oil is going to be harder to get, harder to move, to transport, to refine, whatever, they then start pricing because it's all speculative. So that's one part of this equation. Number two, the Venezuelan oil is not producing oil all that it can because, as I went over earlier, the degradation of their refining capacity, their drilling capacity, like all of that because Marxists have been in charge of that country for so long. And so, like, this stuff takes time. All of this stuff takes time. Let me see here. This is Timoteo who says, what we Americans are is spoiled. We want everything cheap and easy and now. The IRGC is counting on this, defeating Trump in the midterms. In the meantime, China and Russia are using Iran for research and development with real-world testing of their armaments that they are sneaking into Iran. Yeah, because what they witnessed during the 12-day war, during this operation, as well as the arrest of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela... like it laid bare the lie that their systems could compete with ours. And so they need, like, if they're going to be selling their systems to all of these other countries, and we just gave them a real world test against us and our systems, and they failed miserably, they're not going to be able to sell their systems because other countries are going to be looking at it. And they're going to be like, we don't, we don't want to buy your crap. That's T-move stuff, right? Like we don't, we want systems that work and so yeah they're they're they're pushing their arms into this region as well because i i agree they they need the real world testing in order to try to uh to salvage their reputation and in order to make improvements uh to their systems that's part of this equation as well um John says, during Republican administrations, the price of oil and gas is news. During Democrat administrations, it's just right-wing commentary. Yeah, there is a bit of a double standard there, I would suspect. Okay, I can't see that. Where would Iran get new technology? China. Iran was... Was, is about keeping oil from China. Correct, Oscar. China has been one of the, if not the global buyer of Iranian oil. And they've been, they got these little teapot refineries and they've been funneling all the oil over there in violation of the sanctions. And we just did another round of sanctions that was announced. The U.S. Treasury ratcheting it up. 36 Iran-related sanctions targeting the country's aviation sector and other companies as part of a broad push to escalate economic pressure. And so we got the waters, and now this is anybody flying in and out of Iran. We're going to start sanctioning all of those carriers as well. All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast. So if you'd like, please support them, too, and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to the Pete Kaliner show dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening and don't break anything while I'm gone.