How to Deal with Grief

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
The issues that matter most, right here.
The Drew Mariani Show. On Relevant Radio.

**Trey Yanks** (0:10)
Another heavy night of US strikes against Iran. This was the 10th consecutive night of strikes aimed at degrading Iran's ability to threaten vessels in the Strait of Hormuz. US Central Command released a statement saying, since early May, CENTCOM forces have helped to facilitate the transit of approximately 900 commercial vessels and 450 million barrels of crude oil. They went on to say American forces remain postured and prepared to hold Iran accountable for unwarranted aggression towards civilian mariners seeking to freely and openly transit the Strait.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:42)
It's The Drew Mariani Show. On Relevant Radio.

**Drew Mariani** (0:46)
Yeah, that was Trey Yanks for Fox News reporting on the continued US bombing of Iran. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome. I'm Drew Mariani. Thank you for being here. Thanks for allowing me to spend part of my afternoon with you. It's always great to hang out and give you a look at life. I want to thank Ed Marcy, who had sat in for me while I was gone. And it's good to be back behind the mic. So much was going on. I was actually in kind of a remote location, was checking in on the news. And I saw, you know, day seven, day eight, day nine, day 10 of bombing. And it raises question, could the world be moving towards a wider war without fully realizing in this? Where does this end? Every day, the headline seemed to bring another exchange of missiles and airstrikes and threats in the Straits.
That Straits of Hermos is a very narrow waterway, which roughly about a fifth of the world's oil passes. If that passage is closed, yeah, I would argue the consequences won't stay in the Middle East. They won't. They're going to ripple out. We've already seen how it affected Australia, China, so many other places. They're reaching your gas pump, your grocery store, maybe even your sense of security. We're going to talk with David Wurmser about this today, and we will get his take on what is now unfolding.
As I've been watching this, we are now on the 10th day, 10th day, in a row, where our American military's been carrying out very heavy strikes on Iran. They've been responding, of course, by lobbing their missiles at their neighbors again. And two Americans have been killed. Another one's missing as a result of those strikes. And Iran's targeted American air bases in Buran I should say, and Qatar.
But on top of that, they are now enlisting the Houthis in Yemen. And I want to get David's take on this too. They want to cut off a strait that goes from the Red Sea into the Gulf of Aden. It's on the west side of the Arabian Peninsula. And if they do that, they're going to cut off access to the Arabian Sea, preventing oil from getting out to markets there. Now, I've saw that earlier today. I think it's about 7% of the world's oil supply flows through there. But you're talking about a lot of oil. So, there's another nuclear site. One final thing here that the president may order the military to go after. It's called Pixax Mountain, and it's another one of those deep, deep tunnels underneath the mountain where the Iranians have been carrying out the pursuit of a nuclear weapon. So far, the US has not carried out strikes on the power plants or bridges, as Donald Trump has threatened. That could be the next escalatory step, but we'll see. Let's talk about it. Let's find out what's unfolding, how long this will go on. Could it get larger, or will this be what's necessary for a breaking point? Dr. David Wurmser joins me, Senior Analyst for Middle Eastern Affairs at the Center for Security Policy, which you can find at centerforsecuritypolicy.com. Doctor, great to have you with me once again. Thank you for joining me.

**David Wurmser** (3:33)
Well, it's great to be with you and an honor too.

**Drew Mariani** (3:36)
Yeah, this is day 10, could be day 11, who knows? Give me your big picture view on this.
I don't know how much longer the Iranian leadership can hold out, how much munitions they have left, whether or not we're getting close to a breaking point or whether this can be in a protracted, in an event where the harass, innocent freighters in the Straits, but play it out for us.

**David Wurmser** (3:59)
Yeah, I mean, first of all, unfortunately, I think the Iranians still have quite a bit in their arsenal and they spent the last two, three months trying to restock and I think they got help. They got help from China for precursors, they got help from China and some radar structures and even missiles and some more high tech equipment. So unfortunately, I think they enter this in a stronger position than they exited the war two, three months ago and that gives them a little bit of staying power. Second thing is in terms of the choking of the Iran, Iran's economy suffering, it's not exporting oil right now and it needs the money. But at the end of the day, the government really doesn't care about its people. In the end, everybody, every nation, its government depends on some economic activity by their population or else they go broke. But the tolerance for having Iran suffer by the Iranian government is extremely high.