Iran and Ukraine Are Creating New Challenges for Global Security

0:00 Speaker 1 Sunday morning, what the heck is going on in the whole world? Well with us today is General David Petres, a retired four star general and he was served as the head of the CIA. So there’s nobody better that has his ear to the ground and knows what the heck is going on. And well, General, give the American

0:20 people Sunday morning, give the American people a heads up what’s going on, and we could start it. I guess I ran as the big item.

0:29 Speaker 2 Well, it’s clearly become a contest of wills between the hard line as Iranian leadership, which has issued demands essentially to the US that are totally unacceptable. They want to have all sanctions lifted on their economic activity. They want to be given the frozen reserves that they have around the world, tens of billions of dollars. They want us

1:01 to pay warp reparations and a variety of other again, demands that no US president of any party could accept. And in return, we are putting a blockade on the strait of her moves when it comes to traffic into and out of the Iranian ports, and creating greater economic hardship for a country that already is suffering from terrible inflation,

1:29 currency devaluation, and a variety of other challenges because eighty percent of the commerce that normally goes through the ports isn’t flowing the way it normally would. And then we are now working, it appears to try to get more ships out through the Strait of her Moves on a nightly basis, so that enough crude oil comes out through

1:54 the Gulf through a passageway that reportedly Central Command has established and which they try to protect when the ships are moving. And that that together with what the Amiorandies can send two million barrels to the Gulf of Oman port of Fujeria and the saudis able to send six or seven million barrels to the Red Sea, you get

2:19 back fairly close to what the normal export from the Gulf region would be. If you can sustain say eight to ten million barrels coming out through the strait or from Moose on a nightly basis, that still remains to be seen over an extended period of time. But if that’s the case, we can maintain this blockade for a

2:41 very long period of time, the price of Brent crude would come back to something reasonable, not the resting heart rate that it was before all of this, But it would make it possible, i think, for the US to continue this for an extended period of time until Iran is willing to discussed the strait of hormuse and freedom

3:03 of navigation through it in a reasonable manner.

3:09 Speaker 1 Do we have does Saudi Arabia have Oman under control? Does Israel have Lebanon under control? The Hasbala in Hamasa? Have they calmed down?

3:22 Speaker 2 Well? Hamas obviously is a shadow of his former self. It can’t really pose any kind of threat to Israel at this point in time. Israel continues to go after Hamas leaders when they identify them through various intelligence means and then strike them with precision weapons. And the Palestinian population in Gaza is occupying about forty percent of the territory,

3:48 the Israelis control the rest, and there are virtually no Palestinians in that area. So again that threat is dramatically removed. It’s not done though. The goal, of course, with Prime Mister Who was to destroy Hamas and to keep it from governing again, in addition to getting the hostages back, and those first two objectives have still not been achieved,

4:09 although Hamas is very much contained within the territory. His Bullah remains problematic, although it has been considerably diminished by the Israeli Defense Force operations and strikes. The objective there is to have the Lebanese armed forces take over control of areas that Israelis currently control and from which they ejected his Bullah forces. There are some cases where this

4:43 has happened, but there are a number of others where it needs to happen. And frankly, we need to provide additional assistance to the Lebanese armed forces to enable them to have greater capacity to perform this particular mission. Noting that his Bullah does remain still a threatening adversary for Israel.

5:04 It still has some drone capability, some rockets, some missiles, but again it’s quite substantially diminished. And then with respect to Oman, Oman is a country that could be one of the winners out of all of this, because among the initiatives that are being already pursued by the Gulf States to reduce their reliance on maritime traffic going into

5:32 and out of the Strait or for Moose, are those that bypass the Strait. You already have the UAE, for example, which can pipe oil again two million barrels a day at this point, with another pipeline of similar capacity being finished within the months that lie ahead that actually pipe the oil to the Gulf of Oman, and therefore the

5:55 ship doesn’t have to go through the Straight or for moose to load up. And I think that there will be a numberumber of other initiatives that send again crude oil, perhaps even natural gas and other commodities through ports of Oman to avoid having to be dependent on the Straight or formos.

6:18 Speaker 1 So you think that’s the reason that things are under control in the crude oil in that area. That’s why oil hasn’t gone It’s gone to eighty five eighty six, but it hasn’t gone to one hundred, one hundred and fifty like some people who wanted to predict.

6:38 Speaker 2 That’s correct, John, Again, there were predictions that it would go much higher. There’s really a number of factors actually that have led to the price, which right now is somewhere around eighty nine dollars a barrel, but it’s eased back a little bit from the over nineties. So there are several factors. One of the biggest is that the

6:59 Chinese have been demanding far less crude oil. Their demand has gone down very considerably because they have the largest strategic oil reserves in the world, probably a billion barrels when all this started, they’ve been releasing that. They’ve also reduced how much they were refining and then exporting from China as well, but that literally has been as much

7:25 as three to five million barrels per day. Keeping in mind that there is about twenty million barrels of crude and crude refined products that come out through the Strait on a given day when they had freedom of navigation.

7:41 Now you have the Saudis that are pumping six to seven million barrels to the Red Sea, the Amiradies, as I mentioned, pumping two million barrels per day to the Gulf of Oman their port of Figiera. You’re getting out of the Gulf on a nightly basis. They turn off their transponders and so forth, and it appears to be

8:02 coordinated by and to the extent they can secured by central command forces. You’re probably getting out anywhere from five million barrels to maybe as much as ten million on some nights out through the Strait. You add all that up and then there’s also an additional production from the combination of the US and Venezuela. That’s five hundred thousand

8:24 barrels a day since this all started, and you are approaching again what is needed to balance supply and demand for the world, noting in particular that China is consuming far less than it did before. And then there’s some other countries where there’s had so called demand destruction as the price has gone up, they’re just not importing what

8:48 it was they used to. Again, if this could really balance out, if the price of rent could get back below eighty dollars somehow, if you can get more out of the strait on a nightly basis, that.

9:01 Speaker 1 Was the normal.

9:02 Speaker 2 What was the normal, Well, we were back in seventy seventy ish price.

9:10 Speaker 1 Now what was the normal amount of ships going through?

9:14 Speaker 2 Well, the ships we’re talking about one hundred and thirty or so, and you’re talking about dozens now. But the key is that it’s the very large crewde carriers. Some of these ships carry over two million barrels each.

9:30 Speaker 1 Yes, okay, let’s go on. We got a few minutes left. People want to hear what’s going on in Russia and Ukraine. I mean is that ever going to come to an end?

9:42 Speaker 2 Well, I hope it will. I hope that the way it ends is that the Ukrainians are able to continue to stop the Russian forces on the front lines inflict enormous casualties. They are inflicting a thousand killed and wounded on the Russians on a daily basis, and probably ninety p percent of that is with unmanned systems, unmanned aerial

10:04 systems in particular. They are going deeper into the Russian rear, so they’re getting after the logistics and supplies for the front lines, and the Russian gains on the battlefield are really quite incremental at best. There have been some months where the Ukrainians actually gained more incrementally than did the Russians.

10:25 They’re in the process of isolating the Crimean peninsula. There’s no gasoline for sale for civilians there. Electrical generation is way down. They’ve hit all the electrical generation stations, and they’re even going after the transmission infrastructure. They’ve sunk over two hundred and fifty or so vessels that used to supply Crimea with various fuel and other necessities. They’re going

10:52 after the flow of ground traffic that goes into Crimea from the north as well, and then they’re going deep into Russi and they’ve hit virtually every refinery within three thousand kilometers of Ukraine. Haven’t destroyed them all, but have hit them all. And there are actually gas lines reportedly today in Moscow they’re having to deploy paramilitary elements to

11:16 gas stations to try to avoid any unrest there.

11:22 Speaker 1 There were some reports that Putin was sort of hiding out or not making himself well known.

11:33 Speaker 2 Well, I think he correctly assesses that there are various threats out there. Certainly again on a nightly basis, the Ukrainians are hitting energy infrastructure in the Russian Federation, elements of their military industrial complex, and also a dual use logistics facility called wild berries. Think of Amazon distribution centers on steroids. And this is having a significant effect on Russia.

12:04 And I suspect that he is a bit worried about the possibility of unrest. For example, the opposition party is not going to be allowed to run in the next parliamentary elections. They have banned any protesting in Red Square and Moscow, so the repression is actually increasing. And meanwhile Russia is running out of money in their national welfare fund,

12:28 which they’ve been diverting to pay for their military industrial production. The challenge for Ukraine is that it has run out of missile interceptors and Russia has by no means run out of missiles, and it’s still making more on a monthly basis, and so they’re absorbing a lot more missile strikes now than was the case when they still had

12:52 the interceptors for their Patriot and Nation systems another missile interceptive system, and that is a big challenge for them. And there are rumors that are very substantial. Night of missile strikes is going to come up these and these rumors normally are validated. This is based on you, Frank him, intelligence that’s released to the population.

13:16 Speaker 1 General Petraeus, thank you so much for coming on and thank you for your common sense. Thank you for everything you’ve done for a country and continue to do for a country. And we’ll catch up with you again real soon.

13:29 Speaker 2 Always a prival, John, and thanks to you.