President Trump's Latest Ultimatum to Iran: Adm. Chris Grady

on some of these islands. I'm host Michael Allen with Beacon Global Strategies, today I'm joined by Admiral Chris Grady, former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He previously served as the commander of U.S. Fleet Forces Command and Commander of Carrier Strike Group 1.

Admiral Grady joins us today to discuss the latest developments in the Iran conflict, including the tactical realities around the straight of Hormuz and the broader strategic picture. Stay with us as we speak with Admiral Chris Grady. Admiral Chris Grady, welcome to NatSec matters. Michael Glare, to be with you today and thank you for taking the time and thank you for inviting

me. Now of course, we're old colleagues from the Bush National Security Council and it's an honor to have you on the podcast today. So let's get into it. Things are moving quickly on the situation with Iran.

We're here in the aftermath of the President's address to the nation about two days

ago, but let's talk a little bit about first, the April 6 deadline, which the President

seemed to indicate was something he was going to do to hit energy infrastructure inside of Iran. If Iran had not released its chokehold, so to speak, on the straight of Hormuz. Would tell me a little bit about that.

“Do you think that's still operative or have we heard much about it lately?”

Yeah, I think the April 6 deadline, which built on the original kind of five-day deadline, so it's kind of five days at another ten days based on what was reported to be some daylight with the Iran. I think the sixth is legitimate. We've got a little signal of that by the way, over the last couple of days, you correctly

pointed out that the the the the the the the the President is using there is a transitioning to attacking infrastructure, electrical, and the rest. And so we saw this this bridge hit the B1 bridge that leads out of Tehran, and we saw that bridge hit over the last couple of days. That's a classic example, I think of the hitting infrastructure.

He says he hit three other bridges with her three bridges in total, and so that one is pretty significant as a maybe a signal of what's to come on on April 6th. That's a pretty symbolic bridge to a great pride in the engineering that went into that. And so I don't think that, you know, that was unintentional.

“So, you know, I think what we look at now is, oh, okay, what happens on the sixth of April?”

And largely is a function of where we think the negotiations are, we can talk about that. But I think there's the least three outcomes that we should consider.

The first is in fact the size of action.

And so, a transition from strictly military targets to infrastructure targets is which is an electrical and and and bridges and roads that the President has indicated this bridge that we talked about maybe maybe this this the size of action includes carg island in some way. We can dig into that if you like.

And then certainly the islands and what might happen in and around the straight-a-horse moves to solve that most of the to me the most significant strategic problem for the President. Because so that's one end to the spectrum. The other is perhaps there's another because the negotiations are going some daylight perhaps there's another extension of some kind.

And then as always on, you know, kind of the three courses of action, there's probably

something in the middle which would be some limited strikes, some limited use of the boots on the ground chest pieces that are there maybe in and around the straight or her moves something like take one of the smaller islands that the threat and the straight something like that to say, hey, I'm I'm not getting around on that and so it'll be something like that.

So those are at least three the least things. And it does kind of hang on the negotiations and we're what we think is going on there. Well, we're going to get to all these issues, but just real quick, that was intriguing on the islands. Do you think we would seize one because we want to deny it to the Iranians or do you

“think it materially benefits us as we begin an escort mission?”

Yeah, I think the islands, whether it's whether it's Leroc or Keshim or the greater

that.

The Iranians have fortified those, they use those says as places for to give them indications

or warnings and to observe the sir, to observe what's moving through the straits, they're launching things from those areas, there's some discussion that they had GPS or chambers and that kind of thing. So there are operational and tactical reasons to take that as we endeavor to sanitize the strait and reopen it.

So yeah, I mean, I think there are operational tactical reasons to do it. And then at the strategic level, it is the signal that, say, we can do this.

“Yeah, remember that's high, and it's high risk, it's high risk.”

And here we've been just talking about carg Islands so much and this is at least has some direct relevance to reopening of the straits. So I mean, maybe that's the where we should start training our attention than rather than carg Island.

Yeah, it's one of the options, clearly on the table, and we should be thinking through all

of that. And I do think carg is still on the table. These islands you mentioned, they give indication in warnings to the Iranians about activity. But how fortified are they?

Is it going to be hard, militarily, to take them? And is this what you think the Marines might be able to do? Yeah. So they are fortified for sure.

“And I think they're probably doing more to fortify them even even more.”

And so like we say, it gives them oversight and observation of the strait, their own indications and warnings that allows them to launch things from there and all the rest. But that's where the Marines are good at. The Marines are good at raids like that to go in and neutralize that kind of thing. And the, you know, an argmu and amphibious readiness group marine expeditionary unit is, you

know, it's, it's got three tasks that is that it trains very hard to non-combatant evacuation operations, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief. And what's important to us here in addition to those is it's a raiding force to go in and neutralize threats like we just discussed. So they're really good at that and they're trained to it.

Now again, they don't hold land, they don't hold territory for very long, at least not Dr. Andley. But they're very good at getting in and getting out and neutralizing threats like might be on some of these islands. Got it.

Hi, Rusco. Yes, sir.

“So let's talk a little bit about Carg Island moving up the list.”

Carg, I guess, has been talked about maybe the most and I've seen sort of a body of expert opinion out there that says, well, we don't need to hold it. We don't need to invade it per se. We could just hold it at risk by threatening to target a tanker if they were to dock there. And then that would functionally achieve the same aim of actually going in and taking

the island. So by that, or do you think the symbolic value of us holding it hostage is why Trump may be interested in it? Yes, to the latter part. But let's talk about how you can achieve the operational effect of Carg Island.

And so just to restate, 90% of -- so it's said that 90% of oil revenues that feed the regime, the IRGC come from -- come from Carg Island. And so that thinking would be to deny that as leverage to say, we want to get you -- we will take that away from you until we figure out the right way to open the straight that's acceptable to the -- to us, to the region, and to -- into the world.

So that's -- it's the lever piece. You can do that by bombing it out of existence, and we could clearly do that. We've already hit it. We've hit the military targets there, so we can certainly do that. We can do that again.

One way we could do it, I suppose, is to just hit the peers there, so you can maintain the oil infrastructure that's on the island, but you can't do anything with it, because the ships can't pull up. That's a way to do it.

You could put the Marines, or the 80-second paratroopers there, and hold that territory.

And they're not really built to do that, but they are -- particularly, the 80-second is very good at things like airfield seizures and that kind of thing. So you could go in and kind of clean up what's there, and then come out. Two other comments on this. The Iranians are certainly reinforcing that position, particularly after the strikes that

we had before. And then, and then secondly, I think what's important for us to understand is the difference

So if you bomb the hell out of it, that's kind of irreversible, and so is that the policy

decision? Or do you take it away, and say, as a negotiating tool, and say, I can give it back to you,

“should you come to the table in an acceptable manner in the straight?”

And so that's where I think the troops on the ground come in, because they could take it, hold it, and so that we can give it back to them as the negotiations play out. So I would be pretty confident thinking that this, do we want a reversible or irreversible solution to this problem? How does that fit into the negotiations?

And then what tool then, based on that to you want to use? Now one last thing, if I could, you talked about ships. The other thing that Marines in the straight can do, that we haven't heard a lot about,

but that they are trained to do, is they can do ship takedowns.

They're very, very good at ship takedowns, and so you can vertically insert Marines, and they can land on a ship, and say, do the inspection of the cargo, and everything you say, we are diverting you, and you're going to go somewhere else because you're moving sanctioned oil or whatever. So there's a lot of, you have a goal, baggage with that, but they can do that.

So that's another chip on the table with the Army, and maybe it's ready to screw up there. Yeah, this has come up a couple times. I can foresee it, a period where we may be trying to escort through the straights and not letting some rainy entankers through, and like we've done in Venezuela, but maybe we'll come back to that as well. But I want to follow up on one car gear.

Admiral Carg seems to be very far away from the straights. I'll north of it, up the Persian Gulf, and I mean, maybe you parachute the Marines in, or maybe you parachute in the 82nd Airborne, but I keep hearing they're going to

“be held at tremendous risk, and do you need the destroyers, or do you need a ship nearby?”

So does that mean they have to traverse the straight in order to support an effort to get on to the island, and won't that be the long tail? Yeah, it's a great question. I do think there's some misconceptions there about how we could insert the Marines as an example.

I'll get to them in a second.

But the 82nd, as you say, it compares shooting, and I'm trying to open source here, as they perhaps coalesce in places like Jordan, Saudi, and Kuwait, as jumping off points as they are moving now from North Carolina as jumping off points. So they can parachute in, and so the ship piece is not as big a deal to them, but they're going to have to be sustained, and so how do you do that?

Again, they're not a whole territory group, right? That's not their mission. So they would have to be sustained over time, and so we probably can, that's a key issue. From the use of the Marines in this capacity, doctrinally you can do this two ways. One is you can do it from off shore, coming out of the three vessels of the amphibious

readiness group. We train and practice to that, and that's the scenario that you describe, which would then necessitate a straight-of-hormous transit and then take station off the island, and then press the Marines in from there. That's a way to do it.

Another way to do it is a vertical insertion using MV-22 tilt rotors and large helicopters that are organic to the amphibious readiness group to insert them from the North-Rabian Sea to Carg Island is within the legs of those airplanes, that road-rewinged to do that mission. In fact, we've inserted Marines as far as from the North-Rabian Sea as far as Kabul before, doing it.

That way, right? So you can do it that way, and you would kind of fly across the peninsula there, that is UAE and with Oman on the top there. You would fly across there, and then you could go directly to the island, or you perhaps you could stop somewhere, if you have a partner, a willing partner, a co-ape, or anything

like that, and get set again, and then press from there. In both cases, those sustainment will be the key. Will you be able to sustain them for an up period of time to make holding that chip on the table worthwhile, and to your point about you need a chip like a destroyer off the coast to protect it?

“I think we would do that with air cover.”

Okay. I think we would do that with air cover. We would do that with air cover. We would do that with air cover. We would do that with air cover.

We would do that with air cover. We would do that with air cover. We would do that with air cover.

defense.

It's a necessary prerequisite for a cargo take down or at least invasions.

Okay. Without it, but without it, to your point, the risk goes up. The risk goes up. Okay. Yeah.

Got it. Let's also talk about economic targets. Of course, President Trump's been referencing economic targets recently, but those have mostly been energy, oil and gas stuff.

“What about you mentioned this earlier, the bridge that we blew up yesterday?”

Does this mark a new move by the United States into a different target set?

In my, because what I think we might be seeing is, as we talked about earlier, a demonstration of post April 6, what it might look like per the president's notification to the Iranians that, hey, I'm going to transition to infrastructure targets in a bridge and highways and all that. Particularly if they are tied to any movement of military or the rest are those types

of infrastructure targets. So yes, energy, he's talked about that, but infrastructure, more broadly, can include roads and rail networks and anything that has some kind of nodal map to it that the military could take advantage of. I think people talk about other things as well.

T-cellinization plans as an example, or you mentioned pharmaceuticals before, I'm less comfortable with that, because I don't see the strong or even tacit military attachment to that.

“I'm not in a certain U.S. did that, but I don't know who did that, but anyway, I think”

that fits with what he said in his dialogue with the Iranians about any pro-6. Well, just to, I guess, state the obvious, I guess the point of it all is the Iranians have apparently shown no sign of wanting to compromise or capitulate, and so it feels like the president's going to push harder. Hit target sets that maybe you're closer to home.

Maybe the case. Again, we don't know, I don't have full insight in order to, I think, anybody rightly so have full insight into what kind of negotiations are happening. Of course, you have the Iranian saying, nothing is happening to the president saying that things are happening.

It's somewhere in the middle, I'm sure, and fully understandable how each side is presenting that. So there is some dialogue going back and forth, but I do think both sides feel they have leverage. Yeah.

And so, therefore, we're kind of in this escalatory cycle, and the president has some tools. Quite a few.

“We've talked about some of those already, and I think the Iranians have one big tool.”

And that's the straight. Well, let's go to the straight, this is a topic of intense interest. I think I've heard the variety of experts say that, of course, the military knew of this contingency, and of course, would have briefed it up to policy makers, but we were in a mission of attack and then missile defense, of course, before we could get to the explicit mission of sort

of hitting infrastructure around the straight, so that we might be able to lesson the threat for a passage first, maybe of a navy ship, and then later to bring it back south again, an escort of a commercial vessel or a tanker. And I think about that correctly, is that how it's going to happen and what do you think the timeline is?

Yeah.

So, first, I am 1,000 percent confident that contingencies and risks to include disposition

in and around the straight were discussed and put on the table. We've been planning for that for years and years and years, my own strike group, when I went through there, was tasked with, okay, plan to how you're going to do this in a contested environment and around the straight, when I was the straight group commander. There is no doubt in my mind that that was laid out for the president, so I reject any

of the folks who say that, you know, this wasn't thought about. Those risks, those options were put on the table and other factors came to play, and that's why the president gets paid the big bucks, so to the straight then, you know, I think it's going to be, if it's, if it's get it open, then what we want to do, just kind

is there around the straight.

“That then allows mine countermeasure assets to get and come through and clear if, if any”

mines have been put on water, but at least to, to some level of confidence, they're not there, then start some kind of escort operation, you know, because this would be the trust but verify part, and then from the escort, you know, maybe a pilot of an escort operation to, okay, larger, larger combo is moving through to get back to the 80 or so, 80 or so ships a day, 80 to 100 ships a day that roll through there.

That's kind of the big, the big flick on that, and if there's no negotiated solution, then that sanitization of the straight becomes the hard part, because you then have to eliminate the asymmetric threats.

What has happened thus far quite successfully is the static targets, the 11,000 plus targets

that's in common in Israel, I've been hitting, have been largely eliminated, and now you have to get rid of anything that shoots, scoots and, and moves, the mobile threats. These are coastal defense cruise missiles that bounce around in the straight or or moves. These are, these are small boats that can deploy mines or, because anything to deploy mine, any doubt, can do that.

These are uncrewed systems that can threaten, either in the air or on the surface, perhaps even under the sea, all of these things would need to be rolled back to then allow, to allow, and CM forces to come in and then the pilot of a convoy and then the larger groups going through all, by the way, to the satisfaction, not just of the military level of confidence, but to industries level of confidence.

“I think where we are now, that's going to take, if, if, if, if, if negotiation doesn't solve”

that problem, and it might, that's, that's, we're still in the matter of weeks to do that, I think. Yeah. Oh, well, all right, well, that was what I was going to ask you next.

Well, first, have we seen any of the assets, and I thought I had read 18 word hogs, and

maybe I's in the sky, type planes that you can help us understand, or, or the assets, in addition to the troops we talked about earlier, they didn't theater yet, or they already prosecuting the mission of the targets around the straight. Yeah. So, I'm only going to discuss open source, yeah, just pieces that are, that are in theater.

You know, you know, of course you know that, so all of this is readily available open source, by the, you know, the large network of watchers and observers, but I'm confident to say that, in addition to the 80 second, and the, and the, the triply amphibious, ready in this group, group with the 31st view and the boxer, who's on her way with the 11th reign of expeditionary unit, that other assets have been moved into theater, again, all open source,

eight, 10 word hogs, the, the, the vaulted, 10 hardened tank killers are there, and I'm pretty

“confident they're working in the straight, right now, I think Secretary mentioned that,”

so that gives you some real firepower, even beyond fast moving jets because they can go a little bit slower, and, and just that tactically, they're a perfect asset for that in that environment. Additional, additional eyes in the skies, you put it, Michael seemed to be flowing, again, based on the open source, E3 centuries, this is the AWax, unfortunately, we lost one on

the ground, but I think another one might be coming, but more importantly, to me, is the addition of the E2D Hawkeye, the Delta version of the Navy's ability to, to look down. It's very similar, it's a little bit smaller than the century, the E3 century, but it has the radar on the top, and it has the best capability because of the Delta version and the radar on the top of it, to look down and see small targets, whether it's small,

concrete systems flying or on the surface or cruise missiles or small boats and the rest. Those are inherent to the carriers that are there, particularly in the straight area to the Lincoln, but there are indications from the open source watcher network that additional E2D's have been flown in to help build that, to build that in the sky. And then similarly, long duration, uncrewed systems that we have appeared to be in the area

to, this would be the MQ4C Triton, and that gives long dwell, either over, over, over

So that starts to build the eyes and the skies that it's so that we can execute this,

if you move, you die plan to get after the mobile asymmetric targets. We're going to take a quick break, and we'll be right back with more of our discussion with Admiral Chris Grady. Beacon Global Strategies is the premier national security advisory firm. Beacon works side by side with leading companies to help them understand national security

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“Okay, so I take the point about the eight tens, but I remember reading for years now about”

the threat from small boats, and the idea that the Iranians might transform one of our vessels. So I guess the war hogs will help with that. I mean, you can see them from miles away, can't you, and are there 50 cow weapons on the navy ships that can take these things out before they get close?

In other words, how much of a threat are the drones and fast boats if you have this military assets around? Yeah, they're threat for sure.

We should never underplay those, and if you step back, just kind of go up and not strategically

and think about as the, as the, as forces prior to the February 28th, we're kind of flowing in theater, and we started to feel that something was getting going, and we were putting in place what we needed. The Iranians were executing their plan to their mosaic defense plan.

“So specific to in and around this trade, I think the key word there is dispersal.”

So they were taking these mobile assets and dispersing them, and this is, we've gained this forever. They were dispersing mine layers. They were dispersing small boats. They were dispersing the ability to launch drones all around that key, that key choke point.

That was their plan, and they executed it, and we would have expected them to do this. So they still have that capability, but we are a triding that over time. So you use this surveillance piece that we talked about. If you move, you die piece. You use things like A10s.

The Marines can play in this with the patches and the others. They have rotary-wain capability that could be used to, and I suspect, will be used to shoot down and take out small boats in the like. Now where it gets risky, and where it could be comes challenging, and we practice this of course, but is very challenging, is if 30 are coming at the same time.

And you clearly see that, and so we have, again, I don't want to get too much into the tactics, techniques, and procedures, but that becomes a lot harder, but we do practice against that, and I'm sure that everybody from the strike group commander to the org-mue commander to everybody else is thinking about that and how we would defend against that.

“The best way is to see it as far away as possible so that you can bring in your own”

layered defense against it, start with rotary-wain, or fixed-wing farther out, and then as you get closer, then you start bringing guns and screw-serve weapons and all the rest in that you talked about. But that is a significant challenge. Very rude.

Before I get back to the timeline of how long it would take to begin an escort operation, let me just ask you one thing, we talked about the insertion of ground forces earlier. I keep reading that it, one possible deployment might be onto a run proper, run-ins territory proper, maybe because there's a point where we're particularly vulnerable, or there's something about the, we can't reach it with maybe from the sky.

Is that, is that conceivable? Could you see some sort of deployment to secure a patch of land that might really hold this at risk more than others? Yeah, absolutely could, because the question should be asked, well, wait a minute, team, why aren't we just using, using the air cover, the air dominant is that we, you know, when

it comes as we have that I'm pretty comfortable with what we do, what we just do that and bomb it and just do it from the sky.

shows us that here's a, here's a nest of boats, here's some minds that we didn't see

“that are in caves or in garages or something.”

As we find these things, you may not be able to bomb that and that's when you would send into rating force to clean that out, eliminate that threat and then come back. So in, we find it, go in, clean that cave out, clean that little port out that we didn't, that we didn't see or we don't want to bomb for collateral damage reasons or something else, go in, clean that out, eliminate that threat and come back and execute that rating doctrine

that is so good, I could absolutely, I could absolutely see that holding territory, again,

I keep saying this, holding territory is a bit of a different challenge, different challenge.

Okay, so the totality of being able to set up a pilot run of a US Navy vessel is how, if you had to guess based on the open source and I feel like we may have had a conversation where I heard that it would take at least four to five weeks and everything seems to slip and that's no, no, nobody's faulting anyone, but when do you think we're ready to do this? When can you foresee that the military would look at this, maybe sent com and say, okay,

there's still a threat but we've reduced it significantly and now we feel safe enough to go through at least with the Navy ship. You're asking just a Navy ship or a Navy ship with three to five tankers of some kind? Yeah, well, right, the Navy ships are south of the straight now, right? And they got to get north to get to the tankers to turn around and escort them.

“And so you should correct me, I'm just assuming that the first act of undertaking an escort”

is that one Navy ship or multiple traversed the straight south to north so that they're up there with the commercial and tankers to eventually escort them back south to the Arabian Sea. Do I have that right? Yeah, but of course you've got tankers outside that need to get in as well, right? Yeah, so the pilot, yeah, yeah, you could do it the other way.

Yeah, the Navy ships are marshaled on the outside as well, that's for most of the more. So you could very conceivably see that the pilot will be going in and then you pick up another group

and come out, right? So in first and then out, now it could be what you describe.

It could be that we're going to test, you know, our sanitization is straight and just push to do destroyers through and then, okay, that went well, then let's pick up the first three to five and bring it back out. It could be that. But instead of the timeline, again, you know, sanitize the layered thread. Get the mind countermeasure assets in play. Right now they're not in theater, but they'll get there shortly. Open source says they're

in Singapore finishing up some maintenance and marrying up with their MCM stuff.

“And then execute this pilot and then if that's how we do it and then, you know,”

bigger groups moving through. I think we're, you know, if you listen to the present, we're probably three weeks away from finishing the sanitization effort, then you bring in the mind countermeasure that, you know, they'll probably move and be in position such that at the end of that sanitization effort they're ready to go in. We'll have to watch that. That's how I would do it. And so sanitize, then bring in that. That probably takes 10 days to make sure that there's a

clear there's a cleared lane and they can't work unless it's, you know, they can be protected and it's safe. And then, so that's, let's call that another week and a half. So that's five plus two say. That's, that's a three plus two. That's five. And then, and so at least five weeks maybe. Before we see something move. And that's just me. I mean, I, you know, I don't have a strong sense of the attrition of the, uh, and sanitization of the threat other than what Admiral Cooper is putting

out about, then General Kane, the chairman are putting out about numbers of ships that have been eliminated. I do know that they're working really hard to do that, though. Well, this is really interesting because this is where we have to overlay the forecasts about the price of oil and the knock on economic effects that are already being seen in Asia. And as I understand it, a lot of the physical shortage of oil and gas will manifest itself soon. In other words, there's been a lot

And then when they have actual physical shortages of it, he's when you might see the prices spike. And it seals, everyone feels like the president's been job-boning the oil markets to try and, you know, keep the price down. But the rubbers going to, the rubbers going to meet the road here soon. Yeah, a little outside my, X level of expertise, but my read is very similar to yours. The president has done a pretty good job of trying to keep the markets calm and appreciate that. But your comment

about what's a flow, you know, kind of the ghost fleet of stuff that's in tankers that was already

underway, you know, we'll burn that down and then ultimately, you know, the other pressures that

that our president has to deal with, whether it's, you know, the political pressure of midterms or the economic pressure of, you know, the onset of global, you know, high gas prices or the rest. I mean, that will, that will certainly come into play. It is interesting, you know, I was looking

“at the China. And I think they, you know, given their level of reserves, they probably got, you know,”

I think they're, they're banked, they had the largest reserves in the world. And they probably have 120 to 140 days of reserves. And I don't even think they've, they've touched it too much based on what I can see. But the rest of Asia, as an example, Southeast Asia is going to, it's going to need it. And, and, and others, around the world who depend on this trade. Of course, as the president says, we don't. And that's, that's the more leverage for him to deal with

this partners. Okay. The, the president is very keen on getting help from our allies. And UAE is volunteered. The statement coming out of a UK hosted meeting yesterday was that there's a group willing to help, you know, quote, once the conflict eases. But I've heard people say, you know, what, they just don't have the capability that we do. And we're going to have to do this ourselves.

“What do you think of that is, could other navies, if not, can they help in this mission in any way?”

Yeah. I think the answer to that is yes. I would just say, a priori, it's always better to have

a coalition help with this, because you're able to tap in on, you know, to kind of the political strength that that comes with that, as well as the various assets and strengths and weaknesses, as they come together in a complimentary way. I think that's where the president says, and, you know, this straight means a lot to you. You ought to be part of this plan to get it back open. I think that's entirely, uh, that's entirely okay. It's a bit of a tale of two, right? I mean, if you use UAE

is an example, and again, this is just what I'm reading an open source. They're getting closer and closer to saying, we're going to get in in a heavy way. And then we have lots of support from the, from the,

from the region. They may be forced to do that, of course, but lots of support from the region,

“but maybe some dissembling on the part of our, our European colleagues. And I think you're exactly”

right Michael, uh, the, the summit. I think they called it the Duk had over the last couple of days, really was a discussion of what we would do, how we would come together, um, once the, once the fighting stops. And, um, so, you know, you can make all the value judgments on that that you, then you like, particularly given that they're more dependent on what comes out of them than others. As to the, to the, to the, to the game that they have, you know, I, again, there's some really good

capability there. I fought with many of them. Um, and so there is good game, but they, not one individual country can do it. They have to come together to aggregate to the level that that we have. And there are just some things that they, they won't be able to do, because they just, they just don't have that capability. Now, one thing that they do have, um, are pretty good mine countermeasure ships and, and it capability to do that, but they are a long way away. And,

and should this drapey mind, and I'm still not convinced that it is, that would be a great place for them to come in. Of course, that will be when the bullet stop flying. And you could bring in their capability to do that. And, um, and they're pretty good at it as well. So, the, you know, I think aggregately, they have some game individually, not enough. They still things that they can't do that, that, that we can do. And they're a long way away. Um, and, and it, and it, uh, and it may be,

as the UK, some it's suggested. We'll be until after the bullet stop. Yeah, I feel like the last week said when peace breaks out. And so conflict eases, I guess, there's a little bit of an improvement from our standpoint and wanting to do this, sure sooner rather than later. So, one thing that was

missing HEU. So, 440 kilograms of highly enriched uranium to 60%, which if you put back into a centrifuge could, you know, rather easily get up to weapons grade in excess of 90%.

It was first bombed or so we thought when we hit S. Fahan during the 12th day war.

And it's been assumed to have been deeply buried. If not destroyed. The New York Times reported three or four Sundays ago that there might be a quote in a narrow corridor to get to it, which is led to a variety of newspaper articles saying that one hears the way we could do. I call it a raid, but it feels like a two-day deployment to ferret it out. And then this week, the Washington Post reported that the president was actually briefed on options. But in the speech,

he seemed to say, hey, we've got another solution here. We're going to stare at it with satellites

and if they come close, we're going to bomb them. So, that could be a faint of her to be other people,

“say, well, you know, it's a head fake. What's your take on all of this? How hard would it be to pull this off?”

Yeah, a lot in that question. But I think you've summarized it well. I think there are several options that the president has to get after this up to 1,000 kilograms of HF6 that all over the map on that. But one is the raid. And so, if a carguer island is 1,000 people and the raids that would happen by the Marines and run this trade or booze or company or a larger size raids that go in, orders that magnitude beyond what I've been in my view, a raid to go into deep into a

ran to go get that stuff with boots on the ground. You would need special operators who we have. They're highly trained to handle the so the canisters of that kind of thing. They got to know what to look for. You would need engineers to, you know, remove, rubble and dig their way down and find it. The finding would take time. So, therefore, you're going to need to protect them while they're doing it and then you got to get out of there. And so, that's rotary weighing drive it out and build an

air strip, whatever it's going to take. So, this is a massive undertaking with thousands of people,

“I think, maybe 3,000 or something. So, that's highly risky. Could we do it? You absolutely”

would it be high risk and a guaranteed? It would be high risk and not necessarily guaranteed. But it's an option that President has. And he should be demanding and I think he is that we continue to refine that plan. But it's high risk. Another way to do it is negotiation. And so, we'll see how

that goes. I'll just leave that to negotiating. And third way to do it is the one you just described.

And that is entomit. So, you know, rubbleize everything around it, entomit inside that rubble. And then anything that moves based on our ability to use overhead assets or even the air dominance that we might have, this would be kind of, this is just Chris's view. But this would be kind of northern watch, southern watch, you know, where we're flying and looking. Anything that moves to it. Oh, there goes a backhoe, there goes a crane, there goes, you know, whatever to start

“them digging in to get it. Then we eliminate that. And that's what I think what he said. And so,”

that's a denial, right? You're not actually going to get it. You entomit, make it really hard for them to dig down to get it. You move to dig it and we shoot you. And so, that's a denial operation, which is, I think, eminently doable. The challenge with all of this, though, is perhaps the intel gap and where it all is. And, and I don't know what I don't know in that. But that would be, that would be a level of uncertainty there that then we would have to think about.

Well, thank you so much. Let me one more question. Let me slip in here. And that's the United States dropped a bonkerbuster on Esfahan. And that was a missile site nearby. And as I've heard it described in the open source, they have their missiles pretty deep. I mean, you know, deep enough apparently where we could hit it with a bonkerbuster. But that's a big expenditure of, of ordinance

maybe have more to do. Do you have a take on this? That's sure. I'm pretty confident that

that is the act like exactly what we've been doing. And in the 11, 12,000 strikes that we have

“been underway. Because again, the theory there is to remove and I think we are cheating this”

to St. Common and the rest, they're credit. The theory there is to remove the tail of the

scorpion, their ability to project power outside of the region. And particularly the ballistic missile threat, which threatens everybody in the region. We see that playing out every day. And

“certainly, and certainly Israel. And so we're getting after the missiles themselves. We're getting”

after the missile launchers. And we're getting after the industry that creates those missiles.

Right? The factories that do it, where they mix propellant, where they put them all together. And so we're trying to get after that. And an element of that ecosystem that requires

“the bonkerbusters is these missile cities that you probably read about, right? Where they put”

these things deeply underground, so that we can't get after them. And so I would suspect then that this bonkerbusters being used in our campaign to eliminate these missile cities and the missiles and launchers therein that can threaten the region. So certainly part of the operational military campaign to cut the tail off the scorpion so that it can't threaten the region in the world for a generation. Right. Yeah. Well, thank you. This has been a tour to force

Admiral Chris Grady. Thank you for joining Natsec matters. It's a real pleasure to be with you Michael and look forward to working with you in the future. That was Admiral Chris Grady. I'm Michael Allen. Please join us next week for another episode of Natsec Matters. Natsec Matters is produced by Steve Dorsey with assistance from Ashley Barry. Natsec Matters is a production of Beacon Global Strategies.